Auditing Gender Equality 

This study contributes to critical literature on educational equality policies by examining equality promotion through school level functional equality planning. Equality policies in Nordic countries, such as Finland, have been described pro-active and exemplary, especially because state-feminism has an established status in the national policies (Kreitz-Sandberg and Lahelma, 2021; Lahelma, Öhrn and Weiner 2021). An equality planning obligation was extended to Finnish basic education (grades 1-9, age group 7-15 years) in 2015 in the reform of the Act of Equality (609/1986). The reform was a state-feminist establishment of equality work in elementary schools, that feminist researchers have desired for decades (Kreitz-Sandberg and Lahelma 2021). In this study, I examine critically the steps and missteps that the Finnish gender equality work has taken when the recently implemented equality tool – equality planning – was operationalised in elementary schools and reflects its potential in equality promotion in Finland and elsewhere. 

The functional equality planning is targeted to challenge the educational equality policies that have repeatedly failed to problematise gendered binary structures and norms (see Ikävalko and Brunila 2019; Myyry 2022). In general, schools draft their equality promotion policy on the grounds of the gender inequalities, which school community find out by surveys addressed to pupils (FNAE 2015). Previous studies have examined the equality planning in upper secondary education (Ikävalko 2016), working life (Ylöstalo 2012; Ikävalko and Brunila 2011), and a diversity planning in universities (Ahmed 2012). These studies on equality tools have shown that the equality planning can offer a stage for institutional discussions on gender equality, but unfortunately the plan and the planning process are often truncated into technical performances of fulfilling the requirements. Additionally drafting a document requires time and effort from every-day school practices and thus after completing the formal document, there is no time left to critically ponder and raise awareness of inequal structures (Ikävalko & Brunila 2011, 328-329). Thus, despite the step forward in equality promotion, policy researchers have shown that bureaucratic logics of equality techniques depoliticise feminist approaches, because then feminist knowledge becomes mainstreamed and equality work is audited from the viewpoint of efficiency and effectiveness (Prügl 2011; Ikävalko 2016; Ahmed 2012; Ylöstalo 2012). From the critical viewpoint, equality planning represents an auditing culture of education, and then the plan is a document in which schools perform their equality (see Ball 2000).

However, due to the novelty of the gender equality tool in basic education, there is no information yet on how the equality plan succeeds in challenging binary inequalities. In this study, I show how equality planning as an equality tool discursively fix, shrink, stretch, and bend meaning of gender equality and what happens to problematisation of gender binarism in the process of functional equality planning. In particular, I will show that drafting a document does not itself problematise gender binarism, but instead it can be harmful for equality promotion, if the meaning of gender equality is stretched and bended to other premises or fixed to some depoliticised questions (see Lombardo, Meier and Verloo 2009).

Data and methods The data of the study consists of 140 school-specific functional equality plans from six municipalities representing all Finnish regional state administration areas. I received the functional equality plans from the schools between years 2021-2022. The length and the structure of the plans varied. The shortest plan comprised of five rows of text and the longest included six pages of text contributed by a school. Some plans represented a specific illustration of equality planning process and reports of a surveys, and equality measures, but some only described values and general principles of the school. In the analysis of functional equality plans, I understand language usage as a relative action which together with discourses and social practices construct and reflect social reality (Fairclough 1992), and as Ahmed (2007, 607) has advised I do not read ‘documents as doing what they say’. I view the equality planning tool as a process and a text, that shapes and reflects a meaning of gender equality. Prior (2003) has argued that analysis of documents should not focus only content of the documents but additionally to take account the context of the text manufactory and consumption. To be able to make text manufactory visible I analyse processes, in which gender equality was shaped in the different parts (problems and measures) of the documents and illuminate the potential influences of the meaning shaping in the schools’ social practices. In the process analysis of the documents, I apply idea of the discursive shaping of the meaning of equality from Lombardo, Meier, and Verloo (2009) and examine, how equality plans discursively fix, shrink, stretch, and bend meaning of gender equality. The analysis focuses on the two main elements of equality plans: determined equality problems of the schools and equality measures set by the schools. I pay attention, how gender equality is 1) fixed in different concepts and depoliticised goals, 2) stretched towards wider meanings or 3) bent to fit a variety of other goals or 4) shrunk to a particular issue, in represented equality problems and measures (Lombardo, Meier and Verloo 2009). After analysing the discursive shaping of gender equality, I take a closer look at discursive practices of equality plans and examine what happens to problematisation of gender binarism in the discursive process of functional equality planning.

Expected Outcomes This study shows that equality planning as an equality promotion tool fails to problematise binary gendered power relations at schools. The discursive shaping of gender equality in the equality plans was repeatedly bent to other goals such as bullying and support of learning, fixed to depoliticised measures, such as mixed groups and gender neutrality or stretched to resource distribution according to pupils’ conviction or immigrant background. This kind of bending, stretching, and fixing did not put equality promotion into movement, and they obscured the existing equality problems. Thus, it seems that schools only perform their equality and a fulfilment of requirements in equality plans. Equality planning guidelines direct schools to shrink recognised equality problems to easily handled measures. However, shrinking was a marginal discursive shaping of equality in the plans analysed in this study. Marginality of shrinking is explained by the fact, that it requires schools to determinate their equality problems, but only 48 of 140 schools had conducted surveys on pupils. When recognised structural equality problems (e.g. gender and sexual harassment) were shrunk to some specific goals the measures were targeted to pupils behaviour, language usage or lacking knowledge. Then equality promotion was not targeted to gender binary structures maintained in school’s everyday practices but was constructed as an issue of pupils’ misbehaviour. This study shows that the equality planning process emphasises auditing problems and measures no matter how they fixed, shrunk, stretched, or bent meaning of gender equality. Despite gender equality was discursively shaped diverse ways, equality plans constructed together one discourse: The discourse of equal school which self-evidently maintains equality. Thus, it seems that the obligation to document school specific equality policies alone do not challenge the binary gendered structures.

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