Women’s Organizations of Political Parties : Formal Possibilities, Informal Challenges and Discursive Controversies

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=swom20 NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research ISSN: 0803-8740 (Print) 1502-394X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/swom20 Women’s Organizations of Political Parties: Formal Possibilities, Informal Challenges and Discursive Controversies Johanna Kantola To cite this article: Johanna Kantola (2019) Women’s Organizations of Political Parties: Formal Possibilities, Informal Challenges and Discursive Controversies, NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 27:1, 4-21, DOI: 10.1080/08038740.2018.1529703 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2018.1529703 © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published online: 14 Feb 2019. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 319 View Crossmark data Citing articles: 1 View citing articles ARTICLE Women’s Organizations of Political Parties: Formal Possibilities, Informal Challenges and Discursive Controversies Johanna Kantola Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University, Gender Studies, Tampere, Finland ABSTRACT Feminist research focusing on gender policy successes in the 1990s and 2000s emphasized the strengths of women’s organizations of political parties in advancing key gender equality issues in Finland. However, both the “feminism”and “politics”of political parties’ women’s organizations, hitherto apparent in Finland and elsewhere in Europe, are now deemed outdated, a paradox that is critically explored in this article. The analysis is based on interview data with women and men politicians and party workers and is structured around the key research question: how are the women’s organizations of political parties discursively constructed by the interviewed politicians and party workers and with what effects? These discursive constructions are studied in relation to: (i) the formal institutional position of the women’s organizations of political parties, (ii) informal institutional position vis-à-vis the mother party, and (iii) discursive controversies surrounding their feminism and politics. The discourse analysis reveals the contradictions and challenges faced by women’s political organizations in contemporary politics. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 19 January 2018 Accepted 19 September 2018 KEYWORDS Gender; political parties; women’s organizations; feminist institutionalism; discourses Introduction Gender and politics scholars have studied political parties for a long time to understand how they act as barriers to gender justice in politics. Political parties are the key gate-keepers and powerplayersforfairrepresentationofwomenand ethnic or racialized minorities. Their policies and practices can either advance or block women’s and minorities’political representation and concerns. Gender research has demonstrated how political parties operate on the basis of gendered norms and customs, which hinder women’s political careers even when formal institutions allow for and enable their participation (see e.g. Haavio-Mannila et al., 1985; Lovenduski & Norris, 1993). Such norms and customs may function as informal institutions and exhibit important stability and continuity over time and resist progressive change. To counter some of these challenges many political parties have adopted formal rules to advance gender equality in candidate selection and in elections, and these have been extensively researched by feminist scholars (Bjarnegård & Kenny, 2016; Kenny & Verge, 2016;Krook,2009). Other forms of advancing gender equality and diversity—including for instance political parties’internal gender equality plans—have attracted less scholarly interest. CONTACT Johanna Kantola johanna.kantola@uta.fi NORA—NORDIC JOURNAL OF FEMINIST AND GENDER RESEARCH 2019, VOL. 27, NO. 1, 4–21 https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2018.1529703 © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. One such topic requiring further research is bodies within political parties dedicated to advancing gender equality (and potentially diversity), most commonly known as women’s political organizations. They represent one possible route to advance gender equality within political parties. Traditionally, such organizations have been an important topic in gender research in the Nordic countries (Dahlerup & Gulli, 1985; Haavio-Mannila et al., 1985). Feminist research focusing on gender policy successes in the 1990s and 2000s emphasized the strengths of women’s organizations of political parties in advancing gender equality (Holli, 2003,2006). They were important partners in the so-called velvet triangles where feminists within state administration (femocrats), women’s movement organizations (including women’s organizations of political parties), and gender experts co-operated to advance gender equality (Holli, 2008). This was the case particularly in Finland, which has been suggested to have had particularly well-resourced women’s organizations of political parties since the 1980s when compared to the other Nordic countries (Dahlerup & Gulli, 1985). Despite this history, women’s organizations of political parties have been and are increasingly contested in politics, within political parties, and in public discourse. Some of the challenges relate to general trends in party politics, and others are specific to feminist organizing. In the mainstream scholarly literature on party politics, there is a strong argument that the combination of increased levels of intra-party democracy and the centrality of political leadership renders specific interest groups such as youth or women’s organizations redundant (Childs & Kittilsson, 2016; Cross & Katz, 2013). Alternatively, a trend towards professionalization within political parties carves space for individual gender experts rather than collective women’s groups (Erzeel & Vandeleene, 2014). Both of these general trends work against specificwomen’s groups of political parties. In terms of key debates on gender theory and activism, both the “feminism”and “politics”of political parties’women’s organizations are being deemed outdated. As indicated by their name “women’s organizations of political parties”, these actors focus on the category of women and seek to advance women’s political careers and a womancentred feminism, whilst gender theory and feminism now emphasize the need to understand gender and feminism as intersectional, always cut through with race and ethnicity, sexuality, and class. The politics of these actors has been challenged as operating on the basis of an imaginary collective identity of women and for relying on outdated, exclusionary, and hence harmful women-centred ways of operating. The aim of this article is to explore these paradoxes, which surround the women’s organizations of political parties, to understand their potential for advancing gender equality and limitations to it. The article focuses on the case of Finland, where all political parties, including the populist right, have women’s organizations, which, in contrast to other Nordic countries and many European countries, receive an equal percentage of party funding. At the same time, the discursive controversies about their feminism and politics outlined above are strong and limit their effective functioning in Finland too. Theoretically, the article draws on feminist institutional analysis (see e.g. Bjarnegård & Kenny, 2016; Chappell & Waylen, 2013; Kenny & Verge, 2016;Waylen,2014,2017)and combines it with discourse analysis drawing on Foucauldian notion of discourse (Foucault, 1978). The article suggests analysing not just informal institutions but also discourses, which sheds light on the contradictions and challenges faced by the women’s political organizations in contemporary politics, and further illustrates that formal and informal institutions of party politics are shaped by the broader discursive context where they are placed. NORA—NORDIC JOURNAL OF FEMINIST AND GENDER RESEARCH 5 The analysis is based on an extensive interview data with women and men politicians and party workers (2013–2015). The key research question is: how are the women’s organizations of political parties discursively constructed by the interviewed politicians and party workers and with what effects? These discursive constructions are studied in relation to: (i) the formal institutional position of the women’s organizations of political parties, (ii) the informal institutional position vis-à-vis the mother party, and (iii) discursive controversies surrounding their feminism and politics. The discourse analysis illustrates the contradictions and challenges faced by women’s political organizations in contemporary politics. The findings show that informal institutional positions and discursive politics challenge the position of women’s organizations in political parties. Whilst the women’s organizations of political parties are discursively constructed as fairly strong in terms of their formal institutions (resources, powers, and accountability) (Childs & Kittilsson, 2016), informal institutional norms about political action, as well as discourses about marginalization and old-fashioned ways of working, undermine their capacity to undertake effective political work. In the context of new narratives of masculine domination in politics and economic austerity, on the one hand, and the feminist context of new feminist movements and actors, on the other, the Finnish women’s political organizations are on a delicately balanced tipping point of either renewal or demise. How to study and theorize women’s organizations of political parties? Women’s organizations of political parties have been conceptualized in diverse ways in different contexts. Childs and Kittilsson (2016) write about “party member women’s organizations”to emphasize the linkage to party membership, and Lovenduski (2005) uses the term “quasi women’s policy agencies”to discern whether women’s organizations in political parties could act as state feminists (i.e. women’s policy agencies proper) in advancing women’s movements demands in policy making. In the Nordic context, Dahlerup and Gulli distinguish between women’s committees, which organize ad hoc events and give opinions on specific issues, and women’s organizations proper (Dahlerup & Gulli, 1985, p. 17). They argue that Sweden, Finland, and Iceland have traditionally had independent women’s organizations proper with their own membership (Dahlerup & Gulli, 1985, p. 17). As these organizations in Finland are separate from party membership yet tied to the mother parties through funding, this article uses the term women’s organizations in political parties throughout. Women’s organizations of political parties were studied in the Nordic countries in the 1980s and up to early 2000s. Dahlerup and Gulli (1985, p. 19) distinguished between five different objectives that the organizations had: “1. to persuade women to vote for the party, 2. to recruit women members, 3. to activate women in the party and train them for top posts, 4. to pursue women’s policies inside and outside the party, 5. to participate in cooperation with women in corresponding parties abroad”. While the mother parties were supportive of the first two objectives as they were for the “good of the party”, the other three were subject to controversies in most parties (Dahlerup & Gulli, 1985, pp. 19–20). Childs and Kittilsson (2016), in turn, develop a systematic analytical framework for studying women’s organizations in political parties. They suggest focusing on three dimensions to discern the role and impact of these 6J. KANTOLA organizations: institutionalization, powers, and accountability—within which they highlight the importance of both formal and informal institutions. Their operationalization of the components includes, first, constitution, resources, and status of the organizations (institutionalization); second, participation in policy development and guarantees for descriptive representation (powers); and, third, to whom women’s organizations are accountable (accountability). These previous studies illustrate the need to study the women’s organizations of the political parties in relation to formal and informal institutions. The theoretical contribution of this article is to combine this with an analysis of discourses. Each approach and their interlinkages are explicated below. Whilst formal institutions can be defined as codified rules, enforcement, and legitimacy, informal institutions signify customary elements, traditions, moral values, religious beliefs, and norms of behaviour (Chappell & Waylen, 2013, p. 605; see Kantola & Lombardo, 2017). They are “hidden and embedded in the everyday practices that are disguised as standard and taken-forgranted”(Chappell & Waylen, 2013, p. 605). The interactions between formal and informal institutions are particularly pertinent for gender inequalities. The relationship may be competitive or complementary on the basis that informal rules may subvert or reinforce formal ones (Waylen, 2014, p. 213). Gender and politics scholars have indeed mapped a set of informal norms that are pertinent in relation to political parties (see Bjarnegård & Kenny, 2016; Kenny & Verge, 2016; Piscopo, 2016). Some powerful examples include: men performing gendered rituals in party meetings and dominating conversations even in gender-balanced bodies (Verge & De la Fuente, 2014, p. 73); women being subjected to “super-surveillance”and carrying the “burden of doubt”about their competencies; women who do not conform to the norm and show political ambition or assertiveness facing gendered informal sanctions such as removal from high-ranked offices or a subtle weakening of their competencies (Verge & De la Fuente, 2014, p. 73; Kenny, 2013); political consensus being sought in informal networks to which women’s access is limited (Bjarnegård, 2013, p. 24); and informal networking constituting a challenge for many women due to care responsibilities (Verge & De la Fuente, 2014, p. 73). Late-hour meetings are typically entrenched in party culture, and they reflect men’s schedules and “wifely support”, which makes individuals with fewer family responsibilities more likely to join and to be active participants in political parties (Kenny & Verge, 2016, pp. 358–359). As a nuanced contribution to the extant scholarship on informal institutions and gendered party politics, this article employs a discursive approach to institutions as a means to explore the broader context where women’s party organizations are situated, and its effects on their actions. The key argument is that an analysis of the discourses helps to understand the broader societal debates, which constitute the political actions of women’s organizations. The article adopts a specific approach to discourses and applies a Foucauldian notion of discourse to refer to knowledge—namely, that which it is possible to speak (Foucault, 1978). In contrast to language or communication, Foucauldian discourses are not things, but practices that always matter in relation to institutions, thus making this perspective different from “discursive institutionalism”(Bacchi & Rönnblom, 2014, p. 174). In attempting to develop an approach called discursive institutionalism, some feminist NORA—NORDIC JOURNAL OF FEMINIST AND GENDER RESEARCH 7 scholars define discourses as ideas and communicative action in a Habermasian sense, thus giving them a causal role in relation to institutions (Kulawik, 2009). Those who define discourses in a Foucauldian way, in terms of knowledge and power (Foucault, 1978), maintain a critical distance from the notion of discursive institutionalism because of its tendency to fix institutions as something given, an antithesis to Foucauldian ways of understanding institutions as fluid and in constant need of reproduction (Bacchi & Rönnblom, 2014, p. 171; Kantola & Lombardo, 2017). This Foucauldian take on discourse analysis and institutional analysis is followed in this article. Discourses always matter in relation to institutions, and that it is not an empirical question of whether or not they matter (Bacchi & Rönnblom, 2014, p. 174). The concepts of power and legitimacy are employed here to illuminate the interconnectedness of formal institutions, informal institutions, and the discursive context. Instead of being clearly legitimate or illegitimate (an either/or dichotomy), Foucauldian inspired scholars have worked on the notion of a-legitimacy to understand the contested position that gender equality can have in a society (Nousiainen, Holli, Kantola, Saari, & Hart, 2013). Despite its formal enshrined position in national legislation, gender equality is constantly pushed to the undecided grey zone of a-legitimacy in different policy implementation processes. Gender equality thus becomes neither legitimate nor illegitimate despite its formal institutional position in national legislation or —in this case—party politics. Combining the perspectives on informal institutions with a consideration of legitimacy and power allows for the analysis of how women’s organizations in political parties move outside the sphere of the legitimate, and how these patterns are institutionalized in informal practices and norms. Understanding the Finnish context of gender and party politics Finnish party politics is characterized by high levels of descriptive representation of women in both the parliament and government. In early 1991, the proportion of women members of Parliament was, at 38.5%, notably high. This proportion was exceeded in 2011 (42.5%) followed by a small drop, to 41.5%, in the 2015 elections. In an electoral system of open list proportional representation, gender quotas have not been applied on the electoral lists (as they would not be effective). Instead, left-wing parties have had formal internal party quotas for their decision-making bodies (Holli & Kantola, 2005), an idea that has now been extended to some right-wing/conservative parties (The Centre Party). The recent drop in women’s descriptive representation is due to the governing parties’poor record (Centre Party 29%, The Finns 32% in 2015). This is replicated in ministerial portfolios. The government composition (36% women in 2015) does not follow the informal rule of parity between women and men that had been in place since 2003. High political representation of women constitutes a political context, which raises public questions about the need for separate women’s organizations in political parties to promote the position of women even further. Most parties in Finland have women’s organizations that are officially constituted in so far as they are registered as associations. Two waves can be discerned relating to their establishment within parties: the old parties, namely SDP Women (1900), National Coalition Party Women (1919), Finnish Centre Women (1946); and the new-comers, namely the Green Women’s Association (1993) and The Finns Women (1996). They all, 8J. KANTOLA bar one, abide by the national laws about associations. That is to say, they have association rules, which determine lines of accountability in annual meetings, election to the board, and the chair of the board. Only the women’s organization of the Left Alliance (1994) is not a registered association, but rather a “network”that emphasizes its independence from the party. The women’s organizations also have local branches at the municipal level. At the national level, they employ 1–2 people to co-ordinate work, and many publish their own magazine (Pepper of the Left Alliance Women, Women of The Finns Women, and Dooris of the SDP Women). The women’s organizations are positioned very differently in terms of membership numbers. This resembles debates about the change of parties from mass member organizations to professionalized parties. SDP Women’s organization accepts men as their members subject to board approval. The Finns Women organization accepts men as support members but do not have any. The others, in contrast, continue to be women-only, reflecting the tradition of gender-specific organizing or women-centred notions of feminism as discussed in more detail below. Women’s organizations are resourced through state funding to political parties. In practice, every four years, after parliamentary elections, and in the coalition government negotiations that follow, the percentage of the funding that goes to “women-specific activities”is agreed upon. This has varied between 8% and 12% of the party funding for political activities and is now at 10% (2015–2019). Already in the 1980s, Finnish women’s organizations of the political parties were the best-resourced (along with Swedish ones) in the Nordic countries (Dahlerup & Gulli, 1985, p. 18). The capacity of women’s organizations in political parties to represent women’s concerns has been explored in feminist research. Dahlerup and Gulli argue that the women’s organizations of political parties have been most influential in Finland and Sweden, the weakest in Denmark and Iceland, and in-between in Norway (Dahlerup & Gulli, 1985, p. 17). A specific characteristic of Finland has been the close co-operation between the women’s movement, women’s political organizations, state feminists, and the state; this has resulted in lots of successes, thanks largely to their shared framing of political problems across the board (Holli, 2006). The political parties’women’s organizations work together in a cross-party organization Coalition of Finnish Women’s Associations (Nytkis) along with the other main women’s movement organizations. More recent studies, however, point to a less favourable climate for women’sorganizations in political parties. The consensus among women’s organizations is that the shared framing of gender policy issues has declined over time (Elomäki & Kantola, 2018). For example, the right-wing parties no longer support statutory childcare rights, which is in stark contrast to the 1990s when they jointly achieved the statutory right to childcare, whilst the right was dismantled in 2016. Methods and data The empirical analysis of this article is based on 38 interviews conducted with Finnish politicians and party workers between 2013 and 2015. The research covers the six biggest parties represented in the Finnish parliament. It is clearly a challenge to undertake qualitative in-depth research in such a multi-party system. A considerable number of interviews were undertaken, of which the number per party varied between five and NORA—NORDIC JOURNAL OF FEMINIST AND GENDER RESEARCH 9 seven. Notwithstanding this, a saturation point was clearly reached. Despite the huge variety in terms of the structures, histories, and ideologies of the political parties (Mickelsson, 2015), in relation to gender—and in the case of this article, the women’s organizations in political parties—the 38 interviews reveal the patterns of formal and informal institutional power and the discursive context within which women’s political organizations currently operate. Finnish politics is far less hierarchical when compared to other Western countries, and obtaining interviews with politicians is relatively easy. The interviewees were selected, first, on the basis of gender. The aim was to interview an equal number of men and women; however, men constituted 25% of the total, were far more difficult to access, more likely not to respond to inquiries, and more inclined to postpone and cancel agreed interviews. The men in the Finns Party especially refused to be interviewed about gender equality, perhaps reflecting their political stance on the topic. Women politicians and party workers across the political spectrum were particularly keen to share their views, and this included the radical right populist party, The Finns. Attention was also paid to age, interviewing politicians from different age groups, and electoral district, to ensure that interviewees came from different parts of the country. Party workers were selected on the basis of their position within the party, targeting party secretaries and women’s organizations in particular. The semi-structured interviews began with a discussion about the practices and structures of the political parties in relation to gender equality; gender-specific organizing in the party (i.e. women’s organizations); gender equality policies of the party; and social media. They lasted from 40 minutes to two hours and were later transcribed. The analysis has focused on aspects that centre on gender-specific organizing within political parties. All interviewees were promised full anonymity. For this reason, the citations below only give the broad position of the interviewee (politician or party worker), the party, gender, and the date of interview. “Politician”refers to local, national, or European-level politicians (municipal bodies, MPs, and MEPs) and “party worker”to party secretaries, state secretaries (political appointments), women’s organizations’staff, and other party workers in the parliament or the party office. The texts were approached with the method of Foucauldian inspired discourse analysis. When tracing discourses and their workings in the research material, particular attention was paid to power and its relations. The strength of this kind of discursive reading is its capability to show how discourses produce “truths”, namely normative ways of being and doing and the “right”kind of knowledge and knowing (Foucault, 1978; Lombardo, Meier, & Verloo, 2009). The aim of the analysis is not to discover and name different discourses but to consider what discourses do and what effects they have (Kantola, 2006). This enables answering questions such as: how, and to what effect, do politicians frame and construct women’s organizations in political parties? It also traces the ways in which dominant discursive constructions emerge, pinpoints marginal discourses that may rupture dominant ones, and opens up space for resistance. As suggested above, previous feminist research has revealed the crucial significance of how the interplay between formal and informal institutions achieves or undermines progressive change. This contribution to these debates illustrates the fundamental role played by discourses in shaping institutions, and that discourses always matter in relation to institutions (Bacchi & Rönnblom, 2014,p.174). 10 J. KANTOLA In the actual analysis, it was traced how each interviewee offers her or his own interpretation of the issue—be it a formal or informal institution—and the method traces the frequently appearing, and thus dominant, discourses that, on the one hand, underpin their statements and, on the other, show that which is not spoken of, namely silences and marginal discourses (see e.g. Lombardo et al., 2009). The question then becomes not what women’s organizations objectively are, do, and achieve, according to the interviewees—as their perspectives differ considerably—but rather, how women’s organizations are discursively constructed and with what consequences for their political action. Women’s organizations in political parties: formally successful and powerful In this first analytical section, the article will explore how the formal institutions of women’s organizations of political parties are discursively constructed by the politicians and party workers. Childs and Kittilsson (2016) distinguished three dimensions of such formal institutions: institutionalization, powers, and accountability. The analysis here illustrates that politicians and party workers construct Finnish women’s organizations as relatively successful and powerful in relation to the formal institutions. More specifically, the analysis shows that whilst there are some unclarities and uncertainties around the formal institutions too—making them less “legitimate”than the word “formal”might indicate—the women’s organizations of political parties are constructed as formally powerful and successful in Finland. Despite the long history of many of these women’s organizations, today the reason for their existence was discursively constructed in relation to funding. Many interviewees suggested that the organizations exist because they have funding that is guaranteed “by the law”. One interviewee called it a problem in inverted commas—the funding was both a problem for parties and an opportunity for the women (Woman, politician, The Finns, 6 March 2014). Other statements illustrated how there was lack of clarity about the funding. One interviewee suggested, for instance, that the “‘law’required that level of funding was at 12.5 %”(Man, politician, Green Party, 26 October 2014). The discourses about funding were therefore used both for and against women’s organizations. The discursive construction resembles ones identified in relation to gender equality planning in Finland: these gender equality actions too are taken because the “law”requires it, not because there is a desire to advance gender in this way (Ikävalko & Kantola, 2017). One crucial issue was that of declining membership numbers. The issue was considered delicate—it was perceived as something that could be used against them to prove decline, and those interviewees from the women’s organizations with information about the numbers were not too keen to talk about it. Well, it is a bit painful, [women’s section] isn’t very attractive from the point of view of members. We have renewed our ways of acting, internal organizational issues, but well, the age structure is such that getting new ones in is simply challenging. And perhaps for young women, women-centred activism is not the thing. They rather work with certain issues . . . (Woman, party worker, National Coalition Party, 11 December 2013). 1 Despite attempts to reform the organizations, they have not been successful in reaching out to the next generation according to the interviewee above. According another interviewee, NORA—NORDIC JOURNAL OF FEMINIST AND GENDER RESEARCH 11 I feel that women’s sections can be to some degree harmful, if it encourages people to think that “the women’s section will take care of these women and feminist questions”, because these should in fact be at the core of the party’s politics and not outsourced and externalized somewhere so that “a women’s section is twiddling with them there”. (Man, politician, Green Party, 26 October 2014). These interviewees have no doubts about the importance of gender issues or feminism for their party. However, the responses suggest that when gender equality questions are considered, the women’s organizations have hindered, rather than advanced, women’s rights: thus, it has become far too easy for parties not to engage with questions and issues related to gender equality as they can be deflected to someone else. Related to this is the problem of the message becoming predictable, which—on the basis that gender equality has advanced only in small steps over time—has been heard too many times. This separation is argued to not only marginalize gender concerns, but to narrow them down to hegemonic discourses about gender equality. So the fact that the women’s section has only family and equality questions on its agenda narrows down the range of topics to which women should contribute in politics. A women’s section leaves some women to work only in the women’s organization. And masculinizes the image of the political party. (Woman, politician, Centre Party, 12 February 2014) Part of the discourse is that women’s organizations are argued to represent unhealthy bonding and representing only certain women (The Finns) or only certain types of feminism (Left Alliance) And then there are these big differences between different feminisms, where some think that others are anti-feminists and they in turn think that the others are very conservative feminists. This debate is a lot more visible in Left Alliance than in other parties. For example, the Home Care Allowance and parental leave system is one such issue and the rights of the sex workers is another. [. . .] They divide very classically and there is this sense of patronizing versus self-determination. (Man, politician, Left Alliance, 18 February 2014) I don’t participate in the work of the women’s organization. [. . .] That group of women forms very tight cliques. It’s very protective towards its own [. . .] There’s this small circle and if you are not part of it it’s very difficult to get in. (Woman, politician, The Finns, 7 March 2014)<<typesetter: please set this paragraph as a displayed quote>> In comparison to homosocial male bonding and men’s networks, these women’s cliques are negatively discussed in the interviews. They are constructed in ways that reinforce the narrowness of gender equality definitions and feminisms. Strong discursive controversies exist, then, around the kind of politics and feminism that women’s organizations of the political parties are said to represent. Feminist organizing is regarded as facing two countervailing trends. On the one hand, the women’s movement has professionalized towards “managerial feminism”, yet, on the other, it has disintegrated into one-issue campaigns and the so-called third wave or post-feminism that uses individualized tactics focusing on the fun side of being feminists (see Evans, 2015). In the discourse of being old-fashioned, women’s party organizations are struggling with both: neither professional enough for party managers, nor attractive enough to younger feminists. 18 J. KANTOLA Conclusions Formal and informal institutions, and discursive contexts, shape the political actions of political parties’women’s organizations. Focusing on the discursive constructions of the women’s organizations’formal institutionalization, powers, and accountability paints an overly positive picture about their position and effectiveness in Finland. An analysis of the discursive constructions of the informal institutions in the form of norms constructed around the relationship of the women’s organization to the mother party moderates this finding. A focus on the discourses about their old-fashioned politics and feminism further deepens the understanding of the kind of challenges that women’s organizations currently face. Variations in the discursive constructions of the formal and informal institutions of women’s organizations between political parties on the left and right were observed. The formal institutions were shown to be fairly similarly constructed for all women’s organizations. For informal institutions, however, there was more variation in the discursive constructions of the norms that shaped the relationship of the women’s organization to the mother party, with the two conservative parties constructing this relationship more positively than the left-wing/green parties. Yet, the personalized character of this good relationship also created points of vulnerability for the two political parties. The discursive context, whereby both “feminism”and the “politics”of the women’s organizations were constructed as oldfashioned and out of date, was surprisingly similar for all women’s organizations. These discursive controversies undermined the legitimacy and powers of the women’s organizations, even if they were successful and effective in terms of their formal institutions. It pushed them to the grey zone of a-legitimacy, as opposed to being either legitimate or illegitimate. Notes 1. All translations from Finnish to English by the author. 2. Hellä (“Gentle”)—Hoivapoliittinen asiakirja (Care politics position paper of the Left Alliance Women’s organization, 2014). 3. Naispoliittinen asiakirja RITVA (Ritva is a 1950s woman’sname in Finland; this was the name of the women’s politics position paper 2002). Funding This work was supported by the Academy of Finland [259640]; Notes on contributor Johanna Kantola is Professor of Gender Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University. Her research focuses on gender and politics including political parties, European Parliament and European Union, economic crisis, and gender equality policies. 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