Introduction

After presenting the results of thirty-six debates on prostitution from twelve countries, this chapter returns to the original question that motivated the RNGS research project: do women's policy agencies matter? If they do, the results make the case for state feminism: governments can be effective in promoting an agenda in favour of improving women's status. The analyses also enable us to answer the question as to the conditions in which effectiveness occurs.

In the preceding chapters all authors have provided an in-depth analysis of the politics of prostitution in their countries. Here their findings have been adapted for the purpose of the analysis of this chapter. Such an adaptation invariably entails a loss of detail and runs the risk of eliminating important cultural aspects of the politics in a country. To minimise this risk, all authors, being the most familiar with the national context of ‘their’ debates, have provided the classification of their findings within the conceptual framework of the RNGS project. The resulting measurements will be compared to examine the hypotheses presented in chapter 1 aimed at assessing the effectiveness of the women's policy agencies. The impact of the women's movement actors will then be determined across debates and countries, after which the role of the women's policy agencies in the debates making for movement success is assessed. Movement success will be related to the characteristics of the women's movement; then the characteristics of the agencies are analysed to determine which ones are associated with impact.