Theorizing Changes in Gender Regimes and Gendered Institutions during the Crisis: Complexity Theory and Intersectionality

The crisis is restructuring gender relations.  But how are these changes best theorised?  What is the relationship between changes in the gender regime at the macro level and multiple gendered institutions at the meso level?  The substantive terrain of analysis is the restructuring in the European Union during the crisis, which is conceptualised as cascading through finance, to the real economy, to the fiscal, to the political and to violence.  The changes in gender relations intersect with changes in other inequalities.  This paper utilises complexity theory to rethink the concept of social system in order to address the theoretical issues at stake.  It addresses the debate between feminist theorising of regimes and the feminist theorising of institutions as to the most appropriate level to theorise these changes.  It argues that there has been a change in the path dependent trajectory of the gender regime from social democratic public gender regime to neoliberal social gender regime.