Resumen de Towards a Dual Approach: Comparing the Effects of Parliamentary Committees on Gender Equality in Denmark and Finland

Anne Maria Holli, Mette Marie Staehr Harder

• Drawing on insights from state feminism and legislative studies on parliamentary committees, this article develops a dual approach for the comparative analysis of committees on gender equality. Empirically, it compares the standing committees on gender equality in Denmark and Finland, two Nordic countries acknowledged as forerunners in gender equality, which also have ‘fairly strong’ parliamentary standing committees. The results show that both committees on gender equality can be regarded as ‘feminist’ in character and both interact with relevant civil society organisations. Their impact as measured by legislative outputs and oversight differs, however, in line with differing committee system characteristics: the Finnish committee has more impact on legislative outputs while the Danish committee has more impact on overseeing government.