Older Women,Policy and Politics:

No abstract available for this article.     

Women and Politics in Comparative Perspective:

No abstract available for this article.     

Outreach: International Women and Politics

No abstract available for this article.     

Current Research on Women and Politics:

No abstract available for this article.     

The Cross-Cultural Study of Women and Politics:

This essay seeks to examine the approaches andmethods most propitious to the cross-cultural study of women and politics, because it is in the cross-cultural context where the methodological problems of studying women and politics are posted in their complexity. Using Arend Lijphart's concept of the "comparative method," the essay applies this concept to the cross-cultural study of women and politics as a means of avoiding a number of conceptual problems inherent in the subject matter. The essay focuses on political participation, broadly defined, and uses this focus as a means of illustrating through substantive examples the problems of studying women and politics. A critique of the predominantly American literature is offered, as well as an examination of the successful uses of the comparative method as examples for future research. The particular data problems for women's studies scholars are discussed. Operationalization of the variable sex or gender is placed in the context of cross-cultural study. A number of research approaches are discussed: the case study variant of the comparative method, longitudinal analysis, elite studies, cohort analysis, cross-sectional analysis, and the ecological approach. The last two approaches are critized as being particularly unsuited to studying women and politics.     

Women in Politics in Post-Transitional Democracies: the chilean case

This article looks at women's participation in formal political institutions in posttransition politics. Employing the case of post-dictatorship Chile, it outlines the barriers to women's participation in the formal political arena; discusses the various strategies that Chilean women are currently employing to overcome their exclusion; and finally, examines the challenges that political women confront in promoting 'women's interests' in political institutions. Throughout the article two main arguments are advanced. First, where women's movements do not demand institutional reforms during the transition period - a time when movements enjoy influence and parties are in flux - then the barriers to women in political institutions re-emerge. In Chile, the fact that women did not demand institutional reforms, such as quotas for women in decision-making positions, is linked tothe broader strategy of the movement tomake citizenship demands based on women's 'difference'. This strategy inhibited women from demanding power (i.e. access to institutions as individuals) because this conformed to a masculine-defined notion of politics inconsistent with women's 'different' style of practising politics. A second,related argument is that a strategy based on women's 'difference' hinders women in politics frompromoting feminist goals,especially in the climate ofsocial conservatism that characterizes post-transition Chilean politics. Despite these constraints and the many challenges Chilean women in politics confront, gains are being made, as women recognize the need for, and begin to demand, institutional reforms to expand their presence in formal politics.     

Women in Politics in Norway

This paper attempts to explain how and why women in Norway have achieved unusually high political representation. The study, based on forty-three personal interviews with female politicians and persons familiar with Norwegian political culture, found that certain favorable social and political preconditions existed in Norway that encouraged women's entry into politics. However, it was the strong and effectively organized women's movement which was responsible for the significant increase of women in politics. A number of environmental opportunities and threats facilitated the formation of a successful coalition between establishment and new feminist factions of the women's movement. This coalition then used effective strategies to get more women into politics.     

The Management of Unwanted Pregnancy Among Women in Nairobi,Kenya

ABSTRACT. Objectives: This study probed both the meanings women ascribe to their unwanted pregnancies and the drivers of their choices in relation to the management of such pregnancies. Methods: Cross-sectional qualitative in-depth individual interviews were conducted with 80 women and girls in Nairobi, Kenya. Results: Gender, livelihoods, morality, marital status, and male partners exerted extensively complex and multidimensional influence on women's management of their unintentional pregnancies. For instance, although gender norms were frequently invoked to justify terminating unwanted pregnancies, they also regularly provided strong motivations for carrying such pregnancies to term. Conclusions: Urgently needed are programs and policies that support women to avoid unwanted pregnancies and help them respond safely and pragmatically to such pregnancies when they occur.     

The Parable of Matthew: Identity Politics, Politics of Desire, and the Politics of Performance

Matthew Shepard's murder in October 1998 provides an opportunity to examine and reconsider identity politics as they play out around Matthew's body. After a sustained critique of identity politics, the author proposes, in their stead, a politics of performance, which offers a constructive alternative to current political agendas by allowing the simultaneous preservation and erasure of difference.     

Life politics,nature and the state: Giddens' sociological theory and The Politics of Climate Change

Anthony Giddens' The Politics of Climate Change represents a significant shift in the way in which he addresses ecological politics. In this book, he rejects the relevance of environmentalism and demarcates climate‐change policy from life politics. Giddens addresses climate change in the technocratic mode of simple rather than reflexive modernization. However, Giddens' earlier sociological theory provides the basis for a more reflexive understanding of climate change. Climate change instantiates how, in high modernity, the existential contradiction of the human relationship with nature returns in new form, expressed in life politics and entangled with the structural contradictions of the capitalist state. The interlinking of existential and structural contradiction is manifested in the tension between life politics and the capitalist nation‐state. This tension is key for understanding the failures so far of policy responses to climate change.     

Women in the Field: Women,Farming and Organizations

One striking feature of farming as an occupation is that there are few women who farm in their own right. The passing of land from father to son means that women rarely own land. Their typical entry to farming is through marriage. Women's route of entry to farming affects interpersonal relationships within the family, and also women's role in the public space of farming. Women are under‐represented in farming organizations, in training programmes, and in the politics of farming. This article focuses on the position of women within farming organizations and the interaction between (male) farming organizations and women's farming organizations. Farmers are an extremely well‐organized occupation and wield considerable political power because of this effective organization. However, farming organizations are almost entirely male. This article examines how women are treated within farming organizations, and also the interaction between (male) farming organizations and women's farming organizations. Drawing on the theory of organizations, I argue that the inclusion of women in farming organizations and the existence of women's farming organizations reinforce gender divisions within agriculture and do not in any way question the understanding of men as farmers, or the political power they hold.     

Framing Identity Politics: Right-Wing Women as Strategic Party Actors in the UK and US

ABSTRACT

Women’s political underrepresentation in right-wing parties remains a global phenomenon. Despite their rejection of “identity politics,” the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party and the United States’ Republican Party have launched formal initiatives to recruit women legislative candidates. In this article, we ask: How do right-wing women advocate for increasing women’s representation within parties that explicitly reject group identity politics? More specifically, we examine 1) how party elites frame the UK’s Women2Win and the US’s Project GROW campaigns, and 2) the role that women play in each of these initiatives. Through interviews with party elites and content analyses of news articles and campaign materials, we show that right-wing women in both countries function as strategic party actors, advocating for women’s representation tactically within the specific ideological and electoral context of their party.     

Reforming Poor Women: The Cultural Politics and Practices of Welfare Reform

This article employs participant observation and interviewing at a community-based job readiness program operating under welfare reform to explore how attempts at cultural retraining (that is, bringing presumably deviant behavior in line with dominant cultural norms) are delivered, received, and interpreted by welfare-reliant women. This study finds that poor women—the targets of these reforms—largely resist cultural retraining, but, ironically, assert its usefulness for welfare-reliant women generally. These ethnographic data support and expand upon previous interview and focus group studies that have encountered the same attribution paradox among welfare-reliant women.