Affective virtuosity : Challenges for governance feminism in the context of the economic crisis

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE Affective virtuosity: Challenges for governance feminism in the context of the economic crisis Anna Elomäki 1 |Johanna Kantola 1 |Anu Koivunen 1 | Hanna Ylöstalo 2 1 Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University 2 Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies Correspondence Johanna Kantola, Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University, 33014, Finland. Email: [email protected] This article explores the possibilities and constraints for feminist knowledge production and diffusion, and its influence over policy making and public debate in the context of austerity and neoliberal governance. By analysing the process in which a group of Finnish academic feminists used their expert position to influence government policy in 2015–2017, the article illustrates the strategies they adopted to engage in political debates and how they negotiated the new political landscape. The research material was derived from two years of action research and participant observation and is considered through the theoretical lens of governance feminism. The article makes a distinctive contribution to extant theories of governance feminism, by drawing upon theories of affects and ambivalence as a complement to governance feminism's focus on discourses and co‐optation. We coin the term affective virtuosity to highlight the importance of affect in feminist knowledge production and diffusion, and in shaping the various perspectives available to feminist scholars in encounters with politicians and policymakers. KEYWORDS affects, austerity politics, economic crisis, feminist knowledge production, governance feminism, neoliberalism ------- --------- -------- ------- ------- ---------- ------- ------- ------- ---------- ------- ------- ---------- This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. © 2018 The Authors. Gender, Work & Organization published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received: 15 October 2017 Revised: 27 August 2018 Accepted: 17 September 2018 DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12313 822 Gender Work Organ. 2019;26:822–839.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/gwao 1|INTRODUCTION A male minister, encountered in our research, argued that economy and equality were like fire and water in a crisis: the two are thus presented as incompatible, with the economy self‐evidently assuming priority in policy deliberations. Feminist knowledge about the economic crisis has indeed had frustratingly little impact on public debates and political decision‐making. The primacy given to economics and neoliberal policy solutions at times of crisis makes feminist knowledge more contested than ever (Prügl, 2016). Using the case of Finland, this article explores the feminist production of knowledge about the economic crisis and austerity politics, and the processes of feminist knowledge diffusion: the conditions under which feminist knowledge can have an effect on policy making or fail when trying to do so. On the one hand, we illustrate the difficulties that academic feminist actors face when they engage in political debates about the economy, especially in the context of neoliberalism and the dominance of austerity politics. On the other, we analyse the specific strategies adopted by academic feminist actors who were willing and able to negotiate the terrain of such a political context. The distinct theoretical contribution in this article is to broaden the debates about governance feminism by underlining the analytical insights offered by affect theory. The scholarship that has employed theories of governance feminism has revealed some of the challenges to feminist knowledge production and diffusion in the context of neoliberal governance. For example, many studies have highlighted the familiar risks of cooptation. We suggest that there is an identifiable pressure to read feminist engagements in such pessimistic ways within the governance feminism framework. We qualify these tendencies with the help of affect theory and bring out the ambivalences in feminist knowledge production and diffusion. Our further contribution is to coin the term affective virtuosity. Governance feminism frameworks have been effective in showing the impact of hegemonic discourses such as neoliberalism, and in suggesting that feminists need to acquire ‘discursive virtuosity’, so they acquire a command of, and speak, the right language to be heard (Brunila, 2009, 2013). The notion of affective virtuosity employed here, highlights ‘the vital role of emotion in the construction of knowledge’(Jaggar, 1989, p. 151) and shows how affects shape the roles available for feminist scholars in policy making and political environments. The specific empirical case study involves Finland. Finland has a relatively weak feminist movement that has relied on institutionalized cross‐party collaboration between women's organizations. Like other Nordic countries in varying degrees, feminist knowledge producers in Finland (women's organizations, feminists in political parties, feminist state actors and feminist academics) have traditionally aligned themselves closely with a presumably benign welfare state. Feminists have operated in the state, in its working groups and meetings, and this closeness has been framed as a key resource of gender equality policies. Recently, however, this tradition has been challenged. In contrast to the other Nordic countries, Finland recovered slowly from the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent Euro Crisis. Instead, the Finnish economy fell into a new recession, and by 2015, Finland had elected a right‐conservative‐populist government to implement stringent austerity policies in order to remedy the situation. The political and economic landscape that was cultivated in the wake of the crisis is thus the context of this article. We argue that in this specific environment, the traditional processes of state feminist knowledge production failed to insert the gender aspect into the new political agenda of the government, and thus created a political vacuum for new types of feminist actions, from which a more prominent role for feminist academics emerged. The so‐called Sipilä government (named after Prime Minister Juha Sipilä), comprising the conservative Centre Party, the right‐wing National Coalition Party and the populist right Finns Party, published its government programme in May 2015. In addition to its highly gendered austerity agenda, it was the first government programme in 20 years to exclude measures that promoted gender equality. Instead, it included the infamous sentence ‘Women and men are equal in Finland.’The government programme, which made visible the inability of the state feminist knowledge processes to influence policy making, triggered the feminist actions that are studied in detail in this article. At the centre of these actions was a demand that the government undertake a gender impact assessment of the government programme drafted by a group of academic feminists. This demand —along with a preliminary gender ELOMÄKI ET AL.823 impact assessment drawing on academic research and illustrating the programme's highly differential impact on women and men —took the form of an open letter to the government. Unfolding throughout 2015–2017, the process initiated by this feminist action, provided a rich source of material to analyse the conditions of feminist knowledge production in the context of austerity politics and neoliberal governance. The key research questions were as follows: How are the conditions of feminist knowledge production and diffusion negotiated in the context of neoliberal austerity politics? What roles and positions are available for feminist knowledge producers in their encounters with politicians and policymakers, and what kinds of affects are mobilized and negotiated in these encounters? Of particular interest was what our case revealed about shifts in expertise and advocacy, as well as what kinds of expertise and knowledge are perceived as relevant and important in the context of policy making. In the analysis sections of this article, a narrative of feminist knowledge production and diffusion are traced in five acts. Firstly, the open letter is traced as a form of political protest shaped by the feminist affects of anger and frustration but kept strictly under control in order to make the feminist knowledge of the open letter effective. This neutral position of academic experts, it is argued, depoliticized the content of the letter. Secondly, when publicized by the media the academic knowledge of the open letter was de‐neutralized and reframed as an issue of disadvantaging women, calling for political mobilization and forcing politicians to react. Thirdly, meetings with offended politicians who treated academic experts as political opponents, offered feminist knowledge production the role as a deferred evaluator of government policy sometime in the future, not now. In the fourth act, frustrated feminist scholars participated in strictly controlled ministerial workshops and were disappointed by the government's action plan for gender equality. Finally, two projects emerged to consolidate and build on the new feminist ways to produce knowledge and engage with the media and politicians. In contrast to the obstacles encountered by traditional gender equality actors in the field, the academic‐led projects gained new levels of access and influence in debates about economics, but also precipitated the dilemma of cooptation. The findings presented here illustrate that even when feminist knowledge —in particular when provided by feminist academic experts —is welcomed in politics and policy making, its position remains marginal. In schemes of evidence‐based politics, feminist knowledge becomes a footnote or a variable in impact assessments, and in methodological hierarchies, theoretical approaches and qualitative studies weigh lightly in comparison with randomized controlled trials. When cast in the role of evaluator, critic or educator, a feminist knowledge producer has little agenda‐setting power. At the same time, co‐optation of feminist knowledge also includes possibilities for positive change. The negotiation with neoliberal governance results in affective clashes and ambivalences that condition knowledge production and diffusion at all stages, requiring what we term here as affective virtuosity. 2|FEMINIST KNOWLEDGE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE ECONOMIC CRISIS AND NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE IN FINLAND The effect of the global financial crisis manifested itself markedly more slowly in Finland than in southern European countries and was a result of both external and internal factors, both of which were heatedly contested in public debates. External factors included the global collapse of export markets, the downfall of the Russian economy, and the sanctions regime against the country, which resulted in the collapse of trade with one of Finland's main trading partners. Internally, two key economic sectors of Finland (IT and forest industries) underwent structural changes, which increased unemployment (see Holmström, Sixten, & Matti, 2014). As a result, Finland's gross domestic product (GDP) declined by nearly 9 per cent in 2009, growth remained modest in 2010–2011, while output declined once again in 2012–2013 (Holmström et al., 2014, p. 2). The government worked hard in 2011–2015 to raise public awareness about the ‘crisis’and to create the right atmosphere for introducing austerity politics (Kantola, 2018). The right‐conservative government, which came to power in 2015, implemented these austerity measures with the intention of increasing Finland's competitiveness in global markets. 824 ELOMÄKI ET AL. Feminist scholarship has generated a considerable volume of research about the gendered impact of the ongoing economic crisis and its policy solutions (Bargawi, Cozzi, & Himmelweit, 2017; Bettio et al., 2012; Hozic & True, 2016; Kantola & Lombardo, 2017; Karamessini & Rubery, 2014; Lahey & de Villota, 2013; Walby, 2015). In Finland, men's employment in the private sector (e.g., in construction businesses) was initially the worst hit, whilst the crisis worsened the working conditions of women in the public sector in the second and subsequent phases. The government adopted a policy of making significant cuts in public services and benefits, including dismantling the hallmark of the women‐friendly welfare state: the statutory right to public childcare for all children. It also proposed to corporatize and marketize public social and healthcare provision by transferring costs from employees to private employers in order to increase international competitiveness. A number of scholars have discussed how decreasing the public services relies on, and reproduces, gender roles that delegate the major responsibility of care to women, and thus shifts national gender regimes toward more conservative directions (Klatzer & Schlager, 2014; Lombardo, 2017). In Finland, the political projects of neoliberalism, conservatism and nationalism resulted in detrimental effects on gender equality, equality policies and women's movement activism (Elomäki & Kantola, 2018). The previously effective ‘state feminism’and the close cooperation between the women's movement, femocrats working within the state as well as academic feminists (see Holli, 2006) were in crisis too as the state ceased to generate favourable outcomes to advance gender equality. Similarly, the primacy of the narrative about the ‘economic crisis’pushed feminist knowledge production into new margins (Cavaghan, 2017; Kantola, 2018). The language of ‘gender’and ‘gender equality’seemed incommensurate with the heightened primacy of the economy, economic competitiveness and austerity. Academic feminist knowledge production, and its diffusion in the context of economic crisis (see,e.g., Pereira, 2012), is characterized by a constant struggle between the desire to have an impact and at the same time to remain critical. The key question has been whether feminist academic knowledge becomes compromised, or co‐opted, when it engages with political processes, actors and institutions, such as states, governments and international organizations (Caglar, Prügl, & Zwingel, 2013). The concern about co‐optation has been an integral element to debates about state feminism and academic feminists in Finland (e.g., Holli, 2006). The neoliberalization of national and global governance structures has intensified these concerns and sparked the emergence of new analytical concepts such as ‘market feminism’,‘governance feminism’and ‘crisis governance feminism’, which have all illustrated in their distinct ways how feminism itself changed when it engaged with neoliberal governance structures (Griffin, 2015; Halley, Kotiswaran, Rebouché, & Shamir, 2018; Kantola & Squires, 2012; Prügl, 2011). At the core of this process is the development of a particular kind of feminist knowledge: co‐opted, governance‐friendly expert knowledge that fits with the prevailing logics of neoliberal governance (Griffin, 2015; Prügl, 2011). As a result, governance feminism has been markedly silent about the gendered underpinnings of global governance and financial governance, focusing instead on supporting institutional measures to enhance women's participation (Griffin, 2015, p. 66). The case of Finland starkly illustrates how the belief in the state as a partner in progressive change for gender equality breaks down. It has resulted in the emergence of new forms of feminist activism, not only the loose grassroots networks more distant from state institutions and the academic feminist actors studied in this article, but also the emergence of new, more explicitly state feminist actors, such as the Feminist Party and the feminist network of the Parliament (Elomäki & Kantola, 2017). Similar to governance feminism, these new forms of activism may be co‐ opted in new ways, however, the case studied in this article also illustrates the continuing power of state feminism. After a moment of upheaval, there is a partial return to old ways of operating, namely close cooperation with the state and the consequent risks of co‐optation. It is argued here that despite their differences, both ‘state feminism’and ‘governance feminism’tend to result in pessimistic interpretations about the possibilities of feminist knowledge to have an impact on the state and governance structures. Critical feminist analyses drawing on the literature on governance feminism are better equipped to see co‐optation and the downsides of compromises. To counter this and to bring out the ambiguities of the process that are studied, we expand the theoretical and conceptual framework with the study of affects. In what follows, we analyse the dynamics of affects, political will and knowledge production between the diverse feminist actors and ELOMÄKI ET AL.825 the state, as well as coalitions and loyalties between the actors. Furthermore, we shed light on the affective work that negotiating the conditions of neoliberal governance entails for feminist academics engaged in political processes. 3|METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH MATERIALS This case of feminist knowledge production and diffusion is based on a two‐year period (2015–2017) of action research and participant observation by the authors (as researchers) in a feminist action that combines reflection and action, and sought to influence government policies and public discussion. These methods have been used to go back and forth between our own experiences, their social and cultural context, as well as feminist theory in order to involve ‘the self’in feminist knowledge production (see Etorre, 2017). However, we use the notion of action research with some hesitation since the process did not start with a specific plan. Rather, we found ourselves moving from the open letter to the government in June 2015, to encounters with politicians, involvement in policy preparations and the launch of a new research outreach project as a framework for cooperating with public institutions. Very soon in 2015, we came to regard our own actions as objects of research, and what initially felt like a singular case of feminist activism, became reconceptualized as a case study of feminist knowledge production and diffusion in the context of austerity politics and neoliberal governance. The research materials consist of written documents, including the open letter to the government, materials relating to its preparation (email exchanges and notes on face‐to‐face discussions), media coverage (print, TV, radio and social media), minutes of parliamentary debates, press releases by various organizations, as well as our own public statements and notes on encounters with politicians and participation in policy preparation. Based on these materials, a narrative was conceptualized that until now has five acts. Beginning with the open letter and concluding with a spin‐off project under the auspices of the Ministry of Finance, each offered insights into the possibilities and constraints of feminist knowledge production and diffusion and the role of affect in various instances. In reading the process as a narrative, a sequentiality is highlighted, reflecting the intentions and actions, as well as analysing interactions as occasions where we and others enact and frame feminist knowledge. Importantly, when reading the acts as consequential, the narrative frame allows for the tracking of effects, and the trajectory of the demands and goals of the initial open letter and, hence, to discuss the conditions of feminist knowledge production and participation in policy preparation. Previous research on gender equality policies and feminist resistance in the Nordic countries is drawn upon in the analysis. Significantly, poststructuralist studies and critical discourse analyses have highlighted a tradition of discursive competence, underlining the importance of gender equality proponents for achieving competence in a variety of argumentation modes (Brunila, 2009; Lombardo, Meier, & Verloo, 2009; Magnusson, Rönnblom, & Silius, 2008). Here, this perspective is pursued, but enlarged to encompass an understanding of both affects and emotions as thoroughly social, and able to structure social situations and interactions (Ahmed, 2004, 2017; Koivunen, 2010; Seigworth & Gregg, 2010; Skeggs & Wood, 2012; Wetherell, 2012). Academic expertise and discursive competence have played a crucial role in building political consensus on gender equality, but both the preparation and the reception of the open letter and our consecutive encounters with politicians and policymakers testify to the importance of affects informing both knowledge production and diffusion. As Alison Jaggar (1989) has argued, the western philosophical tradition has established a gendered opposition between rationality coded as male and emotionality coded as female: considering emotion as irrational and epistemologically subversive, thus serves to uphold ‘the myth of dispassionate investigation’(p. 161), which has historically marginalized women as knowledge producers. Consequently, it denies any understanding of the interconnectedness of emotions, values and knowledge. This gendered and hierarchical distinction has also informed research into social movements, where ‘cold cognition’has been prioritized over ‘hot emotions’(Ferree & Merrill, 2000). The ideas of social movements have often been studied as dispassionate thought, ignoring the importance of emotions and passions to political judgments and engagement with a cause (see, however, Ahmed, 2004, 2017; Hesford, 2013). At the 826 ELOMÄKI ET AL. same time, the notion of emotions as ‘hot’limits critical analysis, risking the misreading of ‘coldness’or non‐passionate expressions as absence of affect. In our case, the encounters between academic scholars and politicians feature ‘hot’emotions such as anger, frustration and being offended, which emerged as important frames for making claims about gender equality. Expressing emotions, or withholding them, shapes social relations and the authority of knowledge. At the same time, regarding affects as ‘hotter’or ‘colder’intensities and forces, increase or decrease the capacities of both individuals and institutions, thus arranging relations between people and things; attaching or detaching, bringing them close or pushing them away (Seigworth & Gregg, 2010, p. 1; Skeggs & Wood, 2012, pp. 134–138). As Skeggs and Wood contend in their study of television, the concept of affect is needed to introduce a notion of ambiguity to our understanding of governmentality. The notion of hegemonic discourse is not enough to describe and account for the many, often contradictory, forms of political agency or argumentation (Skeggs & Wood, 2012, pp. 136–142). The reality television audiences studied by Skeggs and Wood recognized the ideological invitations of neoliberal society to self‐controlling citizenship but respond with ambivalence. Similarly, we suggest here that feminist knowledge producers negotiate their relationship with neoliberal governance, needing not only discursive, but also affective virtuosity. Whereas discursive virtuosity is about manifesting command of contradictory aims and discourses in equality work (Brunila, 2013, p. 95), affective virtuosity entails not only the competence to analyse and negotiate the conflicting emotions in the room but also within oneself. This importance of affective virtuosity as emotional labour is evident in Sara Ahmed's (2012, 2017) research on diversity practitioners’experiences of ‘being included’and fighting sexism in universities. Figures of ‘angry person of color’(Ahmed, 2012, p. 159), ‘feminist killjoy’or ‘pushy feminist’(Ahmed, 2017, p. 110) exist in the room or public sphere before anybody gets there. Characterizing the politics of emotion that frames antiracist work in academia, she argues that, ‘when you do turn up, if things become tense, you become the cause of tension or even the one who is “tense”’ (Ahmed, 2012, p. 159). While not suggesting any simple equivalence, Ahmed's (2012) account of the emotional labour entailed in attempting to transform institutions, to embed diversity or to make it a given issue as well as the frustrations and fatigue of ‘the experience of the brick wall’(p. 26) exposes recognizable dynamics of affects, arguments and political will in feminist knowledge production and diffusion. It makes visible how affect, rather than indicating clearly definable psychological states, reads as a question of forming and patterning social relations (Wetherell, 2012). In our analysis, we distinguish several affectively charged figures that emerged in the process of negotiating feminist knowledge in neoliberal governance. Embodying and circumventing the figure of angry or pushy feminist, we met with infuriated and offended politicians as well as benevolent policymakers, and ended up in the roles of: (i) the respectable academic; (ii) the female complainant; (iii) the empathetic listener; (iv) the frustrated expert; and (v) the strategic partner. In our analysis, we read all instances as negotiations with affective ambivalence, and the affective figures as symptoms of variously critiquing and compromising with governance. 4|THE RESPECTABLE ACADEMIC: THE DEPOLITICIZING GESTURES OF EXPERTISE Mainly as a consequence of their close relationship to the state and political parties, established women's organizations reactions to austerity were too slow and too timid, thus leaving a void to be filled by new actors. Although the actions studied in this article were not the only new feminist initiatives sparked by austerity, they were the most visible and effective ones. The anger and frustration that we as feminist academics felt in the face of the gendered austerity policies, the sidelining of gender equality and the inaction of established women's organizations, manifested itself as a political protest in June 2015. The protest, which took the form of an open letter and a preliminary gender impact assessment of the government programme, was based on mobilizing existing feminist knowledge about the gendered impact of austerity. The first act thus illustrates how feminist researchers can use their expertise as the ELOMÄKI ET AL.827 basis of political critique. However, the case also shows how feminist attachments (Ahmed, 2004) are negotiated as a dilemma in knowledge diffusion, and how the neutral position of academic experts calls for distance from the affective basis of feminist critique and the depoliticizing of its political edge. The idea behind conducting a gender impact assessment of the government programme was to criticize the government with its own tools —reflecting governance feminism. Gender impact assessment has been one of the tools of the Finnish government regarding gender mainstreaming. Our initial plan was to publicize the gender impact assessment in collaboration with established women's organizations to gain more credibility. The key collaboration body of women's organizations, the Coalition of Finnish Women's Associations (NYTKIS), on whose board some of us represented the gender studies community, and the Association for Gender Studies in Finland (SUNS), rejected the idea, illustrating the differently restricted roles of these organizations. Whereas NYTKIS was limited by a membership constituted of women's associations of political parties, the SUNS’view was that a scientific association should not take part in politics. Finally, we decided to gather the signatures of individual professors and researchers and write an open letter based on a preliminary gender impact assessment, and direct it toward the government and the media. This strategy ensured that academic prestige and expertise would give our concerns the credibility and weight they needed in order to be heard. Given the contemporary anti‐feminist sentiments among populist and other politicians, the aim was to include as many male signatories as possible on the basis that gender balance would make it more difficult to dismiss our claims. Eighty‐five professors from different disciplines and universities signed the letter, 40 per cent of whom were men. In the open letter, we presented three arguments about the government programme. Firstly, because of the gender impact and the sidelining of gender equality, the letter asserted that ‘the government will not be able to reach its goals related to employment, well‐being and education’. Secondly, that ‘women and female‐dominated sectors pay an unreasonable economic and human bill for the adjustments’. Finally, that the government programme ‘waters down decades of long‐term work to promote gender equality’, noting a particular concern that ‘transferring responsibility for care from the society to families in practice transfers it to women and leads towards a male‐breadwinner family model’(Professoreiden …, 2015). Two requirements were demanded. Firstly, that similar to previous governments, the current administration should adopt an action plan for gender equality. Secondly, that the gender impacts of the government programme should be systematically assessed, and measures that are found to increase inequality should be rejected or changed. The open letter represented a new form of feminist critique and advocacy in Finland. In contrast to the case of established organizations, the credibility of the initiative did not come from representing the interests of women per se, but from individual prestige and academic expertise. The absence of an organizational structure, such as a board, made it possible to act fast. Furthermore, the initiative engaged well‐known individuals who would not normally participate in public debates about gender equality. Despite the fact that many of the signatories perceived it as an enlightened opinion based on academic knowledge, for us, the statement was clearly an act of feminist activism. The form that our activism took is comparable to recent transformations of governance as well as with governance feminism. The increasing emphasis on evidence‐based policy making —criticized for highlighting the rational aspects of policy making and pushing the political aside (e.g., Marston & Watts, 2003) —has meant that gender equality actors are encouraged to ground their advocacy on ‘legitimate’and ‘objective’expert knowledge rather than on more political claims. As researchers we easily adopted the role of the objective and rational knowledge provider, subscribing to the ‘myth of the dispassionate investigation’(Jaggar, 1989, p. 161). Taking the position of academic experts led to an implicit, yet self‐evident effort, to control affects. The risk that feminist critique could be reduced to ‘a politics of emotion’(Ahmed, 2004, p. 170) and dismissed as such was tangible, which is why the anger and frustration caused by the government programme were hidden under the cloak of neutral expertise. Avoidance of direct blaming and affective expressions was also the wish of many of the signatories of the open letter. The emphasis on academic expertise, and the use of the tools of governance feminism, had a distancing and depoliticizing impact on the content of the open letter. First, this focus masked the feminist basis of the critique 828 ELOMÄKI ET AL. by formulating the message in a way that sidelined questions about gendered power and prioritized, economized and instrumentalized understandings of gender equality. In the final analysis, we changed the order of the key arguments to make the message more acceptable: prioritizing the idea of the ineffectiveness of gender‐blind policies over the gendered effects of austerity measures. In doing so, we offered the government an economized, neoliberal gender equality discourse that viewed gender equality as an instrument to reach economic goals and improve effectiveness (Elomäki, 2015; Roberts, 2015). Reliance on statistics and numbers was also a conscious choice. Knowing them to be governance feminist tools, for us, they underlined the emphasis on expertise thus strengthening the message. Second, we made attempts to consciously avoid formulations that would connect us to the parliamentary opposition and its critique of the government programme. We neither openly questioned the government's austerity policies, nor did we make any specific challenge to the view of the economic situation, and the need for spending cuts that framed the government programme. Equally, we uncritically adopted the government's own language of ‘adjustments’and ‘savings’(sopeutukset and säästöt), instead of the tactic of directly discussing ‘austerity’as left‐wing politicians would have done (leikkaukset,leikkauspolitiikka). Although our critique of austerity and its gendered consequences were more explicit than that of established women's organizations, our emphasis on academic expertise and the tools of governance feminism led to co‐optation effects on us similar to those experienced by them. Finally, the role of neutral academic experts that we as feminist knowledge producers played masked both the neoliberal and the conservative ideologies informing the government's policies. The emphasis we placed on knowledge and facts was connected to the belief in the transformative potential of expert knowledge. The logic behind the initiative was that if the government had been aware of the gender impacts of its policies, it would not have made the kind of proposals that it did. This logic downplayed the possibility of the government's conscious effort to make gender equality‐weakening policies due to its neoliberal and conservative ideologies. 5|THE FEMALE COMPLAINANT: THE GENDER CONFLICT REPOLITICIZED As a media event, the open letter was, despite rhetorical strategies to the contrary, removed from the realm of academic neutrality and placed into the realm of politics. The letter was posted on 11 June 2015 on the website of The National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) that published gender equality information and was also distributed on social media. The open letter was framed as a political act by the largest Finnish daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, giving it a prominent place as a major news item in its print version and published it as a cover story on its website (Kauhanen, 2015a). Helsingin Sanomat published the news headlined, ‘Professors: Women Pay the Bill’ (Kauhanen, 2015b, p. A7) on the front page, along with ‘The Government Forgot Women’. The online version had the caption ‘Tens of professors criticize the government fiercely: women pay for the cuts. 85 professors and research directors criticize the government for a lack of gender equality perspective in its programme’(Kauhanen, 2015a). The newspaper's decision to make a news story about the open letter turned it into a media event. Furthermore, it reframed the letter in terms of the gender conflict; the headline statements (‘government forgot women’,‘women pay the bill’and ‘women pay for the cuts’) mobilized online activism. The online news story remained the most‐read until early evening and was shared up to 15,000 times on social media. Whilst we in the letter had neutralized feminist and political critique, highlighting academic expertise instead, Helsingin Sanomat exposed the underlying gender conflict and the political critique at the heart of the open letter. The figure of the female complainant (Berlant, 2008) surfaced in the underlying feminist anger and consequently downplayed its neoliberal message of gender equality as a means of enhancing efficiency. The Helsingin Sanomat story was quoted by other major news outlets (e.g., Iltalehti, 2015; Järvi, 2015; MTV, 2015) and distributed via the national news agency. Many news outlets noted that the letter was signed by many professors from different disciplines, including Deans and even Vice Chancellors, and that 40 per cent of the signatories were male. Helsingin Sanomat described the list as featuring ‘virtually the whole of Finnish research elite in the fields of sociology, work life studies, and social policy’(Kauhanen, 2015b). Some newspapers (e.g., Halonen, 2015) ELOMÄKI ET AL.829 outside Helsinki interviewed the local signatories, asking them about their motivations for participation. Many news stories named and interviewed well‐known male professors. In retrospect, had the signatories been mostly women and/or scholars in gender studies, it is likely that the open letter would not have received the extensive media coverage that it did, meaning it would have been taken less seriously. A recent study showed that 70 per cent of media experts in Finland are men, suggesting that the role is coded as male to some extent (Niemi & Pitkänen, 2017). From this perspective, the fact that the SUNS refused to publish the letter may be considered a lucky coincidence. When collecting signatures, it was assumed that well‐respected male scholars would lend the gender equality agenda public credibility; this was proven to be right. Paradoxically, female scholars specializing in gender studies are not necessarily recognized as experts but viewed as representatives of their sex, and somehow robbed of their expertise and framed as ‘activists’. In the public eye, female experts on gender equality tend to be framed by a historical imagery of feminism as emotionally out of control (Ahmed, 2004, 2017; Hinds & Stacey, 2001). Thus, for feminist scholars, demonstrating affective reticence, manifesting ‘cold cognition’(Ferree & Merrill, 2000), emphasizing academic respectability and using a technical discourse on gender equality offered an alternative role to feminists rather than just testifying from experience. The media attention and circulation the open letter received led to a quick response. The Helsingin Sanomat correspondent in Brussels approached the Prime Minister the same day and received this response to our demands: ‘Let us first do the reform and then review what we achieved. Then, of course, we assess the impact of the plan’ (Kähkönen & Raeste, 2015). The Prime Minister's answer revealed his unfamiliarity with the general principles of an impact assessment —that assessments should be conducted as part of comparing alternative solutions to issues before decisions about a bill are made. His statement was duly criticized, and the following morning, the Prime Minister posted on Twitter: ‘Promoting gender equality is self‐evident for the government. According to the governmental programme, page 25, a Legislation Assessment Council will be established’(Sipilä, 2015). This tweet became a news story as well (e.g., Aamulehti, 2015). He patched up his earlier statement by referring to a long‐term project aimed at ameliorating the quality of legislation. With the help of the media, the open letter and its demands were raised on the Prime Minister's agenda, and through the media the signatures were figuratively handed over as we had hoped. As an important arena of politics, the media has offered relatively little space for gender equality issues and feminist discussions, but the open letter made a significant impact: making newspaper headlines, gaining national coverage, and being featured on the public service television's morning show and even in editorials. The analysis shows that highlighting academic expertise played a key role in this exposure. By comparison, a public statement issued the same week by women's organizations, critiquing many of the same issues as the open letter, received barely any media attention. 6|THE AFFECTIVE POLITICIAN AND THE EMPATHETIC LISTENER The third act in the narrative of feminist knowledge production and diffusion focused on politicians’reactions and consequent meetings with them. The open letter reflected the distance between feminist academics and politicians as quite short in Finland, a feature which state feminism often exploits. In this case, the closeness and the access were aided in art by the media, which challenged the politicians to react. Although politicians offered feminist academics the position of ex posteriori evaluators, the gender mainstreaming mandate is for a priori assessment of the gender impact of a proposed policy, since evaluation afterwards has few practical consequences (Roggeband & Verloo, 2006; Verloo, 2001). The case also shows that when access was granted, the politicians were not interested in feminist knowledge per se but in expressing their emotions —anger, frustration and offended feelings generated by this knowledge. The following paragraphs explore how critiquing a politician's gender politics is often read as a critique of the politician's personal characteristics and interpreted as offensive. The news about the open letter was published on the day of question hour in the Finnish Parliament and was exploited by opposition MPs. 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Her research focuses on the intersections of gender, politics and the economy: economic policies and governance, economization of gender equality policies in Finland and in the EU, the changing conditions of feminist movements, and theoretical questions about gender, neoliberalism and economization. Johanna Kantola is Professor of Gender Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University. Her research focuses on gender and politics including political parties, European Parliament and European Union, economic crisis, and gender equality policies. Anu Koivunen is Professor of Gender Studies at the Faculty of Social Science, Tampere University. Her research interests include gender, sexuality and nation‐building, the affective turn in feminist and queer theory as well as mediated cultures of emotion. Dr Hanna Ylöstalo works as a University Researcher at the Helsinki School for Advanced Studies at the University of Helsinki. Her current research is concerned with the changing economy‐society relations and the changing conditions of gender equality policy in a Nordic welfare regime. How to cite this article: Elomäki A, Kantola J, Koivunen A, Ylöstalo H. Affective virtuosity: Challenges for governance feminism in the context of the economic crisis. Gender Work Organ. 2019;26:822–839. https:// doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12313 ELOMÄKI ET AL.839