Work, Care and Gender: Statistical Data in the Reframing of Public Policy in the Netherlands

Abstract

This article analyses how statistical data have been used in the reframing of Dutch emancipation policies. It is argued that, even though the framing literature in post-positivist analysis has acknowledged the relevance of the analysis of the use of statistical data in the reframing of policy (Schön & Rein 1994; Stone 1988; Van Hulst & Yanow 2014), they have not engaged in detail with the different aspects of this analysis. Elaborating the insights of post-positivist policy analysis and bringing them, together with the work of Bacchi (2009) and governmentality studies, I will construct a model for the analysis of the relationship between the use of statistical data and reframing processes. Applying this model to the case of Dutch emancipation policies, the article shows how statistical data operate both as interpretive products of situated subjects and as knowledge producers that constitute subjects as governable subjects.

Keywords: post-postitivist policy analysis, framing, governmentality, Schön & Rein