Seeking Policy Impact

Abstract

In this chapter we explore women’s movements’ efforts to change public policies in Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom. Influencing government is not necessarily women’s organisations’ most urgent raison d’être,¹ and yet, to challenge public policy is sometimes central to their aims. This was the case after the fall of Franco in 1975, when the feminist movements in Spain mobilised to re-establish women’s autonomy and rights in private and public life. Political and legal changes were perceived as necessary to these aims. Women’s organisations successfully engaged in the process of writing the new democratic 1978 Constitution which established the principle of gender equality and repealed women’s obligation to abandon employment upon marriage.