Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-qxdb6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T02:56:16.660Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Constituting ‘Problems’ through Policies: A WPR Approach of Policies Governing Teenage Pregnancy in France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2021

Eléonore Komai Open the ORCID record for Eléonore Komai [Opens in a new window]
Eléonore Komai*
Affiliation:
Political Science Department, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada E-mail: eleonore.komai@mail.concordia.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines the construction of policy problems through the exploration of the theoretical space opened up by the ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be?’ (WPR) approach developed by Bacchi (2009). It proposes a critical analysis of current policies governing teenage pregnancy in France through the deconstruction of the structures that have participated in shaping the ‘problem’ today. Focusing on discursive practices, the analysis unveils the political essence of the knowledge that constitutes the problem of ‘teen pregnancy’, and points to the constant flux characterising it, which is captured and stabilised in policymaking through problematisation. It is argued that these conclusions call for greater self-reflexivity in research and policymaking and prompt critical and feminist researchers to engage with disrupting current policymaking rationality.

Keywords

Discursive practicesfeminist public policyFrench social policyteenage pregnancypost-structuralism
Type
Article
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 22 , Issue 2: THEMED SECTION: Mapping the Shifts in Russian and European Welfare Polities , April 2023 , pp. 226 - 242
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allwood, G. and Wadia, K. (2009) Gender and Policy in France, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/9780230244382CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bacchi, C. (2009) Analysing Policy: What’s the Problem Represented to Be?, Pearson Australia.Google Scholar
Bacchi, C. (2011) ‘Gender mainstreaming and reflexivity: asking some hard questions’, Keynote Speech, Conference Advancing Gender+ Training in Theory and Practice, Complutense University, Madrid, February 3–4.Google Scholar
Bacchi, C. (2015a) ‘The turn to problematization: political implications of contrasting interpretive and poststructural adaptations’, Open Journal of Political Science, 5, 1–12.10.4236/ojps.2015.51001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bacchi, C. (2015b) ‘Problematizations in alcohol policy: WHO’s “alcohol problems”’, Contemporary Drug Problems, 42, 2, 130–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bacchi, C. and Bonham, J. (2014) ‘Reclaiming discursive practices as an analytical focus: political implications’, Foucault Studies, 17, 173–92.Google Scholar
Bacchi, C. and Goodwin, S. (2016) Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice, New York, Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/978-1-137-52546-8CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bereni, L. (2009) ‘Accounting for French feminism’s blindness to difference: the inescapable legacy of universalism’, Paper presented at the NYU Symposium: “Feminism/s without Borders: Perspectives from France and the United States”, 16 October.Google Scholar
Bilge, S. (2009) ‘Théorisations féministes de l’intersectionnalité’, Diogène, 225, 1, 70–88.Google Scholar
Bletsas, A. (2012) ‘Spaces between: elaborating the theoretical underpinnings of the ‘WPR’ approach and its significance for contemporary scholarship’, in Bletsas, A. and Beasley, C. (eds.), Engaging with Carol Bacchi: Strategic Interventions and Exchanges, University of Adelaide Press, 37–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bradley, C. (2018) ‘The construction of teenage parenting in the Republic of Ireland’, in Kamp, A. and McSharry, M. (eds.), Re/Assembling the Pregnant and Parenting Teenager, Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang UK, 147–72.Google Scholar
Cahen, F. (2014) ‘Le gouvernement des grossesses en France (1920-1970)’, Revue d’histoire de la protection sociale 1, 7, 34–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chapman, H. and Frader, L. (eds.) (2004) Race in France: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Politics of Difference, New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Collins, P. H. (2000) Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd edn, New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, K. (1989) ‘Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a black feminist critique of discrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist practice’, University of Chicago Legal Forum, 89, 139–67.Google Scholar
Daguerre, A. (2010) ‘Les grossesses adolescentes en France et en Grande-Bretagne: un phénomène dérangeant pour les pouvoirs publics’, Informations sociales, 157, 1, 96–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daguerre, A. and Nativel, C. (2004) ‘Les maternités précoces dans les pays développés: problèmes, dispositifs, enjeux politiques’, CERVL – Institut d’Études Politiques de Bordeaux: Dossiers d’études n. 53, Paris: CNAF, https://www.caf.fr/sites/default/files/cnaf/Documents/Dser/dossier_etudes/dossier_53_-_meres_adolescentes.pdf [accessed 16.06.2021].Google Scholar
Durnova, A. and Zitoun, P. (2013) ‘Discursive approaches to public policy. Introduction’, Revue française de science politique, 63, 3, 569–77, doi: 10.3917/rfsp.633.0569.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, M. (1971) ‘Nietzsche, genealogy, history’, in Hommage a Jean Hyppolite, Paris, Presses Universitaire de France.Google Scholar
Gallot, F. and Pasquier, G. (2018) ‘L’école à l’épreuve de la ‘théorie du genre’: les effets d’une polémique: Introduction’, Cahiers du Genre, 65, 2, 5–16 .CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, S. (2012) ‘Women, policy and politics: recasting policy studies’, in Bletsas, A. and Beasley, C. (eds.), Engaging with Carol Bacchi: Strategic Interventions and Exchanges, University of Adelaide Press, 25–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hancock, A. (2007). Intersectionality as a Normative and Empirical Paradigm. Politics and Gender, 3, 2, 248–254.Google Scholar
Houssin, D. (2013) ‘Indépendance et expertise: santé publique et prévention des conflits d’intérêts’, Pouvoirs, 147, 4, 111–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Inspection Générale des Affaires Sociales (IGAS) (2009) ‘Evaluation des politiques de prévention des grossesses non désirées et de prise en charge des interruptions volontaires de grossesse suite à la loi du 4 Juillet 2001’, http://www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/var/storage/rapports-publics/104000047.pdf [accessed 16.06.2021].Google Scholar
Jasmin, E. (2007) ‘Existe-t-il une place pour l’amour dans l’éducation sexuelle?’, Informations Sociales, 8, 144, 56–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jenson, J. (1986) ‘Gender and reproduction: or, babies and the state’, Studies in Political Economy, 20, 2, 9–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Le Den, M. (2012) ‘Les indicateurs des grossesses à l’adolescence en France: enjeux et modalités de leur mobilisation dans la mise en place d’une politique de prevention’, Sciences sociales et santé 30, 1, 85–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Le Den, M. (2014) Grossesses et Maternité à l’Adolescence: Socio-Histoire d’un Problème Public, Paris: L’Harmattan, Logiques Sociales.Google Scholar
Le Guen, M. and Bajos, N. (2014) ‘Adolescent pregnancy in France’, in Cherry, A. L. and Dillon, M. E. (eds.), International Handbook of Adolescent Pregnancy, Springer US, 293313.Google Scholar
Le Van, C. (1998) Les Grossesses à l’Adolescence: Normes Sociales, Réalités Vécues, Paris: L’Harmattan.Google Scholar
Le Van, C. (2006) ‘La grossesse à l’adolescence: un acte socialement déviant?’, Adolescence, 55, 1, 225–34.Google Scholar
Lefaucheur, N. (2019) ‘Des filles-mères aux familles monoparentales: Nadine Lefaucheur commente La mère célibataire et son enfant, 1968 ; Familles monoparentales, 1979 et Après la séparation, 1988’, Informations sociales, 200, 2, 58–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loriol, M. (2002) ‘Les acteurs des politiques de santé: la domination médicale’, in L’impossible Politique de Santé Publique en France, 33–57.Google Scholar
Marshall, C. (1997) ‘Dismantling and reconstructing policy analysis’, in Marshall, C. (ed.), Feminist Critical Policy Analysis: A Perspective from Primary and Secondary Schooling, UK: Falmer Press, 1–39.Google Scholar
Ministère de l’Éducation Nationale. (1973). ‘Information et éducation sexuelles’, circulaire n° 73–299, 23 Juillet, Bulletin Officiel de l’Éducation Nationale, n° 30, 26.07.1973.Google Scholar
Monk, D. (1998) ‘Sexual education and the problematization of teenage pregnancy: a genealogy of law and governance’, Social and Legal Studies, 7, 2, 239–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Odul-Asorey, I. (2013) ‘Congé maternité, droit des femmes?’, La Revue des Droits de l’Homme, 3, doi: 10.4000/revdh.204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Offen, K. (2018), Debating the Woman Question in the French Third Republic, 1870–1920, Cambridge University Press, 573.Google Scholar
Olivier, C. (2002) ‘Du « crime contre la race ». L’avortement dans la France de la Révolution Nationale’, in C. Bard, F. Chauvaud, M. Perrot and J. Petit (eds.), Femmes et Justice Pénale: XIXe-XXe siècles, Presses universitaires de Rennes, doi: 10.4000/books.pur.16193.Google Scholar
Olszynko-Gryn, J. and Rusterholz, C. (2019) ‘Reproductive politics in twentieth-century France and Britain’, Medical History, 63, 2, 117–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pavard, B. (2012) Si Je Veux, Quand Je Veux. Contraception et Avortement dans la Société Française (1956–1979), Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, coll. Archives du féminisme.Google Scholar
Rivière, A. (2015) ‘Mères sans mari. Filles-mères et abandons d’enfants (Paris, 1870-1920)’, Genre and Histoire, 16, http://journals.openedition.org/genrehistoire/2292 [accessed 16.06.2021].CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rixain, M. (2018) ‘Rendre effectif le congé de maternité pour toutes les femmes’, Rapport présenté au Ministère des Solidarités et de la Santé, https://solidarites-sante.gouv.fr/ministere/documentation-et-publications-officielles/rapports/famille-enfance/article/rapport-rendre-effectif-le-conge-maternite-pour-toutes-les-femmes [accessed 16.06.2021].Google Scholar
Schneider, A. and Ingram, H. (1997) Policy Design for Democracy, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press.Google Scholar
Simon, P. (2010) ‘Statistics, French social sciences and ethnic and racial social relations’, Revue française de sociologie, 51, 5, 59–174.Google Scholar
Smithbattle, L. (2018) ‘Teen mothering in the United States: fertile ground for shifting the paradigm’, in A. Kamp and M. McSharry (eds.), Re/Assembling the Pregnant and Parenting Teenager, 75–103, doi: 10.3726/b10545.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stone, D. (1997). Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision-Making, New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company.Google Scholar
Union Nationale des Caisses d’Allocations Familiales (1968) ‘La mère célibataire et son enfant’, Informations Sociales, 1-2, Bibliothèque nationale de France.Google Scholar