Political systems throughout the world and throughout time have been dominated, and almost completely controlled, by men. Political rights as conceptualised by political science scholarsâmost of whom, not coincidentally, were menâwere seldom seen as extending to women. In the field of political theory, historically women were ignored and there was a pervasive, if unstated, idea of maleness as a precondition of political thought and action.
This norm of the political citizen as male has, of course, been challenged. In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman that âwomen ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed without any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of governmentâ. 1 In the nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill, in collaboration with his wife Harriet Taylor Mill, further developed the critique of the abuse of male power in the family and it became the basis for the claim that women could not rely on men to represent their interests and needed the vote for this purpose. 2 Millâs The Subjection of Women became the bible of the suffrage movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which won women the right to vote in most western democracies. Significant presence of women in national parliaments had to wait for the arrival of the next wave of the womenâs movement, becoming an international agenda item in the 1990s. While women are today still under-represented in almost all national parliaments, they are members of all but four, and at the end of 2017 there were 14 female heads of government. 3
The gains made by womenâs movements have been undeniable, both in winning political and social rights in domestic contexts and in entrenching womenâs rights within the international human rights framework. World leaders like Emmanuel Macron of France and Justin Trudeau of Canada and even the Dalai Lama now claim the label âfeministâ. BeyoncĂ© Knowles-Carter, arguably the most high-profile pop star in the world at the time, performed at the 2014 Video Music Awards with âFEMINISTâ projected on the screen behind her.
Yet while gains have been made, progress has not been linear. There is still evidence of backlash, the phenomenon that Susan Faludi identified in 1981 whereby feminist gains are subject to resistance from the media and other sources. Enduring gender bias, even directed towards women who have risen to the highest echelons of political power, is obvious. The role of sexism in the 2016 US presidential election, which saw Hillary Clinton defeated by Donald Trump, has been well-scrutinised; certainly, studies have shown voter attitudes towards women leaders influenced the election result. 4 Female leaders globally still face overt sexist attacks, and disproportionate scrutiny and criticism of their family lives. Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard was called âdeliberately barrenâ by a political opponent, while during the 2017 New Zealand general election campaign Labour leader Jacinda Ardern was questioned about her plans for having children by a radio host who asked âis it ok for a PM to take maternity leave while in office?â
The unfinished nature of progress towards political equality is evident, but so too is the fact that in the last decade of the twentieth century a major shift occurred in global norms concerning the relationship between democracy and the participation of women. This shift took place with the support of feminist political scientists, who had been mobilising since the 1970s to promote this kind of change both within politics and within the discipline. This book surveys the contribution of their scholarship to new norms and knowledge in diverse areas of political science and related political practice. It provides new evidence of the breadth of this contribution and the strategies to which it gave rise.
The volume stems from a project that for the first time compares the gender innovation that has taken place across a range of social science disciplines, exploring why feminist knowledge has been more readily integrated into some disciplines than others. 5 The comparative background to this project makes this study unique. In this volume, we focus on the discipline of political science, where the contributions of feminist scholars have often only been absorbed at the margins. In political science, research on gender from a feminist perspective has contributed new knowledge to the discipline as well as new ways of thinking. Feminist scholars have introduced broad and multifaceted understandings of power and how it is wielded; reconceptualised political institutions, both formal and informal; and redefined political networks, among other advances. Building on the feminist slogan âthe personal is politicalâ, feminist research expanded the bounds of conventional political science. But, to borrow a phrase from historical institutionalism, how âstickyâ are these new norms? Despite some advances, political science as a discipline remains resistant to gender innovation.
The aim is not to provide yet another account of the problem of gender inequality in the discipline or in politics; rather, it is to introduce readers to the positive contribution of gender innovation in the study of politics and power. Contributors to the volume were asked to analyse the way that feminist scholarship has sharpened the focus of the discipline in different subfields, and the policy impact that followed. The emphasis is on conceptual innovation and its policy implications rather than a âstate of the artâ survey of gender and politics scholarship, of which there are now a number. Nonetheless, this study has been able to build on existing surveys of gender and politics scholarship, which are referenced in the following chapters. An outstanding example is the 2013 Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics edited by Georgina Waylen, Karen Celis, Johanna Kantola and S. Laurel Weldon. âCritical Perspectivesâ have appeared regularly in the specialist journal Politics & Gender, providing invaluable analysis of developments in different political science subfields, while other leading political science journals have published special âgenderâ issues. One important study that has looked both at the feminising of politics and of political science is Joni Lovenduskiâs 2015 book Gendering Politics, Feminising Political Science.
In terms of political theory, the authors who contributed to this volume are drawing on a breadth of scholarship from feminist political theorists. While no chapter is explicitly devoted to gender innovation in this subfield, political theory is woven into the analysis throughout. Feminist political theorists have worked to reimagine the political in a way that foregrounds gender inequalities and highlights the male-centred bias of the field. The role of political theorists in interrogating the concepts of gender difference and equality has been crucial to our understanding of the gendering of power relations and the patriarchal nature of the enforcement of a public/private divide. Carol Pateman (1988) set out what she called âWollstonecraftâs dilemmaââthat women can be accepted as equal citizens and political actors only insofar as they act like men. 6 Seeking to adapt political spaces to recognise different perspectives, lived experiences and socio-economic characteristics of women is used as evidence of difference and therefore unsuitability for political environments. The paradox of attempting to engage in the public sphere on equal terms, where the male norm is still entrenched as the ideal, is further elaborated on in the work of other prominent scholars including Nancy Fraser. 7 This enduring dilemma is examined in this volume in chapters on electoral studies and on the study of social science itself which mirrors the power relations of the male-centric political domain.
Other scholars have further grappled with the idea of gender difference in political representation, ideas picked up in the chapters on the study of electoral systems, political institutions and legislatures. Anne Phillips has argued that the lived experiences of women create gender-specific, albeit not easily defined, interests that only women can represent within politics; Iris Marion Young, on the other hand, rejects the idea that as broad a group as women can be defined through interests, but claims there is a shared social status, due to structural inequalities, that necessitates the presence of women in legislatures. 8 While these scholars approach the issue from different perspectives, they agree that female legislators are in a unique position to represent women. Nancy Fraser and Jane Mansbridge have also argued for the descriptive representation of disadvantaged groups, including women, stressing the importance of substantive representation, symbolism and justice. 9 The important distinction made by Fraser between the politics of redistribution and the politics of rec...