Defensa de tesi doctoral de Nuria Alcaraz

Títol: Les relacions de gènere a les organitzacions públiques. Temps, treballs i transformacions.

ABSTRACT

This dissertation aims to understand why, despite the increase of women's political representation, political organizations still reproduce gender inequalities in the distribution of political power. The theoretical framework uses structuralist theoretical approaches to gender inequalities in time and work paired with the feminist institutionalist perspective. The gender regimes of political organizations are analyzed from three dimensions: the gendered structure of time, the sexual division of political work, and the agencies and resistance to change. Additionally, the thesis investigates the effects of the degree of institutionalization of political organizations on their gender regimes and incorporates the intersection of social class and life course. The research is based in Catalonia and uses a qualitative methodological strategy with three case studies comparing the following political organizations: a political party - Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) - , a movement party - la Candidatura d’Unitat Popular (CUP) - and a social movement organization - the Comitès en Defensa de la República (CDR). 

The results show that political parties and movement-parties have a model of militant commitment that expects intensive dedication of those in positions of power. This model also gives more importance to the domain of the hegemonic codes of deliberation (re)producing a class bias. On the other hand, the assembly organizational model present in the organizations of social movements and parties-movements requires more temporary availability and the presence of all the militancy. This model also presents segregation in the distribution and recognition of the different political jobs. Beyond the comparison between typologies of political organizations, the results point to a vicious circle between the material conditions and the differentiated socialization of militancy based on their gender, social class and life course that feeds back the gendered informal norms and practices of political organizations. This vicious circle (re)produces segregated militant trajectories between men and women that exclude women from the most powerful positions. Despite the advances in the implementation of formal measures in the political parties and party movements based on women's collective agency, the lack of responsibility of men and the organizational structures in the implementation of measures are the primary resistance to the feminist transformation of these organizations. Overall, this thesis confirms that when the interrelation between the sphere of life and the militant sphere is not considered, the distribution of power between women and men in political organizations will be inequal despite equalitarian discourses and the increase of women’s political representation.