Does Federalism Impact Gender Architectures? The Case of Women’s Policy Agencies in Germany and Austria.

This article investigates how strong German and weak Austrian cooperative federalism affect women’s policy machineries. We find that it is the federal organization of both polities that has posited engrained advantages for the establishment and the sustainability of women’s policy agencies (WPA). We also find that center/left parties are crucial for sustaining and advancing the role of WPA. However, during economic crises, we see that the women’s policy infrastructure in the strong federal state (Germany) was downsized while Austria’s national social democratic WPA protects subnational institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]