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There are many theories as to why women remain severely underrepresented in democratic governments. Perhaps voters do not consider women to be capable leaders, or maybe party elites obstruct women's paths to office because they don't believe that they are electable. But if these attitudes are hurdles standing in the way of women being elected to office, where did they develop?In The Image of Gender and Political Leadership, Michelle M. Taylor-Robinson and Nehemia Geva bring together parallel experiments conducted in countries around the world to compare the ways in which young adults view gender and leadership. Together, the chapters in this book present findings from on-site experiments con...
In 1998, Sweden was the first country in the world to criminalise the purchase of sexual services, but not the sale of sex. The law represented a new prostitution regime that problematised power relations in prostitution as inherently gendered and hierarchical and made the male buyers of sexual services responsible for the act of prostitution. The Swedish case is critically important to the study of gendered institutional change and has been of empirical interest and global debate. Using the feminist institutionalism approach to the analysis, this study offers new insights to the Swedish case and provides a new analytical framework for micro-level analysis of institutional change that addresses the struggle for meaning, institutionalization of new gendered ideas, and the (strategic) actions of feminist actors.
This book reflects on the centennial of women's suffrage in the Nordic region and beyond, by exploring its relevance to political gender equality today and the conditions for feminist institutional change. The book brings together historians and political scientists to provide a long-term historical perspective that lays the groundwork for theoretical development. In this regard, the book makes two key contributions: it furthers our understanding of different types of gendered institutional constraints on women’s political inclusion and elaborates feminist institutional strategies to counter these constraints.
Historically, men have been more likely to be appointed to governing cabinets, but gendered patterns of appointment vary cross-nationally, and women's inclusion in cabinets has grown significantly over time. This book breaks new theoretical ground by conceiving of cabinet formation as a gendered, iterative process governed by rules that empower and constrain presidents and prime ministers in the criteria they use to make appointments. Political actors use their agency to interpret and exploit ambiguity in rules to deviate from past practices of appointing mostly men. When they do so, they create different opportunities for men and women to be selected, explaining why some democracies have ap...
Counting Matters examines the ways in which the rise of gender equality measurement contributes to, but falls short of, effective gender equality policy implementation. As technocrats adopt often contextless indices, questions of the theoretical and practical limitations of measurement arise, especially as they pertain to social and cultural relations. The indicators being produced influence the allocation of resources as political decisions but are themselves part of a power regime based on the collection and analysis of data, a regime that obfuscates biases and the agendas behind the statistics. The book’s contributors pose critical questions of the ways in which measurement culture manifests within the field of gender equality, asking how it is measured in different policy areas, how we might improve existing practices, and what is revealed through the examination and critique of the “technical turn” in policies that purport to promote gender equality.
Defending the Status Quo explores political elites' resistance against electoral gender quota reforms, a widespread reform aimed at improving women's political representation. The book introduces The Resistance Stage Framework, a theoretical model rooted in feminist institutionalism, which outlines how politicians try to block or slow down gender-equitable change throughout the policy process. Through a detailed analysis of Uruguay's 30-year struggle to adopt and implement electoral gender quotas, the book reveals the adaptive nature of resistance among powerful status quo defenders. Drawing on interviews and legislative debates, the book shows how resistance strategies vary over the policy process and across political parties in response to changing institutional and ideational constraints.
Prostitution, Harm and Gender Inequality brings together international research exploring the range of gendered harms to women involved in prostitution and the consequences of growth of the sex industry for global gender relations. While there is an increasing amount of research and academic output on prostitution, the current focus is often on discussion and critique of policy frameworks, and contemporary debates over harm are largely limited to sex trafficking and sexual exploitation of children. Less attention is paid to questions of how the sex industry perpetuates notions of objectification and male entitlement with respect to sexual access to women's bodies, despite being key feminist ...
This book draws on recent deconstructions around the idea of ‘femininity’ as a social, racial and class construct and explores the diversity of spaces that may be defined as educational that range from institutional contexts to family, to professional outlooks, to racial identity, to defining community and religious groupings. It explores how notions of femininity change across time and place, and within individual lives. Such changes take place at the interface of external forces and individual agency. The application of the notion of ‘femininity’ that assumes a consistent definition of the term is interrogated by the authors, leading to a discussion of the rich possibilities for new directions in research into women’s lives across time, place, and individual life histories.
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This edited collection explores how party politics impacts the implementation of gender quotas in political representation across Europe. Contributors identify actors, institutions, and cultural legacies shape how quotas are put into practice. The volume’s subtitle, Resisting Institutions, points to the myriad ways in which parties and other institutions in Europe over time have resisted the inclusion of women into politics. As voluntary party quotas and legislative quotas gained prominence, so did strategies to undermine them. At the same time, Resisting Institutions also indicates that gender equality actors have developed ways to counter such blockages and advance the cause of parity in their legislatures. 17 country cases explore the current state of quota implementation and the effects of confronting androcentric institutions.