This is the first exploration of women's campaigns to gain equal rights to political participation in China. The dynamic and successful struggle for suffrage rights waged by Chinese women activists through the first half of the twentieth century challenged fundamental and centuries-old principles of political power. By demanding a public political voice for women, the activists promoted new conceptions of democratic representation for the entire political structure, not simply for women. Their movement created the space in which gendered codes of virtue would be radically transformed for both men and women.
This volume assesses one of the most important developments in contemporary Latin American women's movements: the engagement with rights-based discourses. Organised women have played a central role in the continued struggle for democracy in the region and with it gender justice. The foregrounding of human rights, and within them the recognition of women's rights, has offered women a strategic advantage in pursuing their goals of an inclusive citizenship. The country-based chapters analyse specific bodies of rights: rights and representation, domestic violence, labour rights, reproductive rights, legal advocacy, socio-economic rights, rights and ethnicity, and rights, the state and autonomy.
This book explores the politics of gender and democracy in post-communist Europe. Utilising the concept of political representation, the book scrutinises women’s legislative presence and highlights the opportunities and obstacles to parity democracy in this region of Europe. The book examines the link between women’s membership of national parliaments and the substantive representation of gender interests. It investigates the role of civil society, the state and the European Union in representing women’s interests and in promoting gender politics. The book provides an important and timely contribution to the classical political questions of who represents, what is represented, and how representation takes place. In adopting an integrated approach to political representation, the book extends current understanding of this fundamental concept. Using new research, it provides the first comprehensive comparative analysis of the interplay between emerging democracies and gender politics in post-communist Europe.
What do we know about women, politics, and democracy in the United States? The last thirty years have witnessed a remarkable increase in women's participation in American politics and an explosion of research on female political actors, and the transformations effected by them, during the same period. Political Women and American Democracy provides a critical synthesis of scholarly research by leading experts in the field. The collected essays examine women as citizens, voters, participants, movement activists, partisans, candidates, and legislators. The authors provide frameworks for understanding and organizing existing scholarship; focus on theoretical, methodological, and empirical debates; and map out productive directions for future research. As the only book to offer "state of the field" essays on women and gender in U.S. politics, Political Women and American Democracy will be an invaluable resource for scholars and students studying and conducting women and politics research.
This book investigates women’s political participation in Africa. Going beyond the formal institutions of electoral politics, it explores a range of spaces where everyday politics take place, at national and at local levels. In recent years there have been significant improvements in the number of women elected to parliament in Africa. However, there is little indication that this is translating into better developmental outcomes, and indeed there is mounting evidence that it could in fact help to bolster some authoritarian regimes. Starting from the premise that politics is a far broader project than securing a seat in national or local legislatures alone, this book explores the opportunities for women’s political participation across a number of informal spaces where women and men gather, organise and interact in a more regular and systematic manner. Combining insights from political science, sociology and feminist theory and drawing on detailed cases from the Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria and Rwanda, it examines how power in its multiple dimensions circulates across a range of everyday political spaces, while drawing attention to the links between domestic gender inequalities and the global political economy. Inviting scholars, practitioners and activists to broaden their focus beyond formal electoral institutions if they want to support women to become more politically active, this book provides fresh insights into major issues at the heart of African studies, development studies, gender and development, democratisation, and international relations.
This book discusses the current tendencies in women’s representation and their role in politics in Latin American countries from three different perspectives. Firstly, the authors examine cultural, political-partisan and organizational obstacles that women face in and outside institutions. Secondly, the book explores barriers in political reality, such as gender legislation implementation, public administration and international cooperation, and proposes solutions, supported by successful experiences, emphasising the nonlinearity of the implementation process. Thirdly, the authors highlight the role of women in politics at the subnational level. The book combines academic expertise in various disciplines with contributions from practitioners within national and international institutions to broaden the reader’s understanding of women in Latin American politics.
A critique of concepts has been central to feminist scholarship since its inception. However, while gender scholars have identified the analytical gaps in existing social science concepts, few have systematically mapped out a gendered approach to issues in political analysis and theory development. This volume addresses this important gap in the literature by exploring the methodology of concept construction and critique, which is a crucial step to disciplined empirical analysis, research design, causal explanations, and testing hypotheses. Leading gender and politics scholars use a common framework to discuss methodological issues in some of the core concepts of feminist research in political science, including representation, democracy, welfare state governance, and political participation. This is an invaluable work for researchers and students in women's studies and political science.
As developments in the European Union and elsewhere make the re-examination of citizenship a pressing issue, this book reflects on the persisting "masculine" character of contemporary democracy and the measures taken in the EU to combat it. Combining a theoretical approach with a specific critique of EU gender policy, The Gender of Democracy argues that substantial democracy as a social project cannot co-exist with the existing system of gender relations ,which are inherently dichotomous and thus demarcate social categories of superior and inferior status. Drawing on utopian thought, Maro Pantelidou Maloutas proposes a re-examination of the notion of the gendered subject and a revision of the dominant perceptions of the relations between sex, sexuality and gender. The book contains a critique of specific EU gender policies and shows how in seeking to do away with gender inequality, simply formulating policies that are pro-women is not enough. In order to approach democracy’s emancipatory component, far-reaching policies which deconstruct rather than modernize gender relations are needed.
Democracy in Thailand is the result of a complex interplay of traditional and foreign attitudes. Although democratic institutions have been imported, participation in politics is deeply rooted in Thai village society. A contrasting strand of authoritarianism is present not only in the traditional culture of the royal court but also in the centralized bureaucracies and powerful armed services borrowed from the West. Both attitudes have helped to shape Thai democracy's specific character. This topical volume explores the importance of culture and the roles played by leadership, class, and gender in the making of Thai democracy. James Ockey describes changing patterns of leadership at all levels of society, from the cabinet to the urban middle class to the countryside, and suggests that such changes are appropriate to democratic government--despite the continuing manipulation of authoritarian patterns. He examines the institutions of democratic government, especially the political parties that link voters to the parliament. Political factions and the provincial notables that lead them are given careful attention. The failure to fully integrate the lower classes into the democratic system, Ockey argues, has been the underlying cause of many of the flaws of Thai democracy. Female political leadership, another imported notion, is better represented in urban rather than rural areas. Yet gender relations in villages were more equitable than at court, Ockey suggests, and these attitudes have persisted to this day. Successful women politicians from a variety of backgrounds have begun to overcome stereotypes associated with female leadership although barriers remain. With its wide-ranging analysis of Thai politics over the last three decades, Making Democracy is an important resource for both students and specialists.
Under what conditions do citizens most effectively connect to the democratic process? We tend to think that factors like education, income, and workforce participation are most important, but research has shown that they exert less influence than expected when it comes to women's attitudes and engagement. Scholars have begun to look more closely at how political context affects engagement. This book asks how contexts promote women's interest and connection to democracy, and it looks to Latin America for answers. The region provides a good test case as the institution of gender quotas has led to more recent and dramatic increases in women's political representation. Specifically, Magda Hinojosa and Miki Caul Kittilson argue that the election of women to political office--particularly where women's presence is highly visible to the public--strengthens the connections between women and the democratic process. For women, seeing more "people like me" in politics changes attitudes and orientations toward government and politics. The authors untangle the effects of gender quotas and the subsequent rise in women's share of elected positions, finding that the latter exerts greater impact on women's connections to the democratic process. Women citizens are more knowledgeable, interested, and efficacious when they see women holding elected office. They also express more trust in government and in political institutions and greater satisfaction with democracy when they see more women in politics. The authors look at comparative data from across Latin America, but focus on an in-depth case study of Uruguay. Here, the authors find that gender gaps in political engagement declined significantly after a doubling of women's representation in the Senate. The authors therefore argue that far-reaching gender gaps can be overcome by more equitable representation in our political institutions.
