From Policy Design to Behavioral Change: Applied Social Marketing and Gender Equality

Gender equality has become a very important goal of public policy programs at multiple levels, leading to a significant adoption of legal strategies intended to promote equal opportunities. Despite this noticeable policy development, a constant gap remains between formal policy designs and the actual outcomes accomplished by public institutions. Existing strategies for implementing gender equality policies continue to count on legal and administrative tools, focusing on procedural alignment while giving little consideration to behavioral, cultural and institutional communication aspects. This paper claims that gender equality policies are not only working as administrative instruments but also as social interventions that plan on influencing norms, attitudes and everyday organizational practices. Building on applied social marketing theory, the study adopts a qualitative, conceptual research design based on a structured synthesis of academic literature regarding gender equality policies, social marketing and public-sector governance. The paper addresses the research question of how applied social marketing can support the actual implementation of gender equality policies in public institutions. The main result in the study consists in the development of a conceptual framework that incorporates all the fundamental concepts of applied social marketing into the implementation stage of gender equality policies. Instead of emphasizing formal compliance, the framework reframes policy implementation as a process of behavioral change and institutional engagement. By doing so, the paper contributes to the literature on social innovation and public-sector impact, providing a theoretically based strategy for improving the effectiveness and sustainability of gender equality programs in public organizations.