# The World of Political Science— The development of the discipline

# Book series edited by Michael Stein and John Trent

Professors **Michael B. Stein** and **John E. Trent** are the co-editors of the book series "The World of Political Science". The former is visiting professor of Political Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada and Emeritus Professor, McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The latter is a Fellow in the Center of Governance of the University of Ottawa, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and a former professor in its Department of Political Science.

Jane H. Bayes (ed.)

# Gender and Politics The State of the Discipline

Barbara Budrich Publishers Opladen • Berlin • Toronto 2012

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Jacket illustration by Bettina Lehfeldt, Kleinmachnow, Germany – www.lehfeldtgraphic.de Picture credits: www.istock.com Editing: Alison Romer, Lancaster, UK Typesetting: Ulrike Weingärtner, Gründau, Germany – info@textakzente.de This book is dedicated to all those women whose voices are not heard.

# Acknowledgments

At the invitation of John Trent and Michael Stein, this book began in 2003 at an International Politics Science Association meeting in Durban, South Africa. As a group of long time gender and politics scholars, we thought that this project would be a relatively straightforward exercise in summarizing the literature in the field. Yet in a team effort such as this, what happens to one of us impacts us all. Delays due to serious illness have challenged the project at several points, but in some ways have strengthened it as we have acquired new members, come together to update our work and evolved in our thinking over the years. Our sincere thanks go to John Trent and Michael Stein for their patience, guidance and encouragement in helping to bring this project to completion.

# Table of Contents



# Foreword

What a pleasure it is to see Jane Bayes and her team of authors terminate a long odyssey to bring this fine volume on *Gender and Politics* to fruition. Jane deserves great credit for her determination and persistence in bringing together this truly international, comparative evaluation of the development of the field of study of gender and politics.

As general editors of the Book Series, *The World of Political Science*, Michael Stein and I are truly pleased to see the agility with which Prof. Bayes has attained all the goals we have set for the editors of the volumes in the series. Not only does she present a very thorough, comparative overview of the field of gender and politics within the political science discipline, but she also manages to evaluate it, analyse and explain its development, and present a critique of its current status.

Readers will find that this volume pretty much covers the world with rich new analyses of gender and politics in Latin America, Africa and South Asia as well as new surveys of the field in the United States and Europe. But the book goes beyond regional studies to consider the theory, concepts and practice of gender and politics at both the national and international levels.

Perhaps of greatest interest is the challenge that this book poses to the "malestream" discipline of political science. A number of the chapters demonstrate how global power structures, cultural determinations and gender biases have, and still do, influence political science. Neither the discipline nor even gender and politics have been able to fully meet the challenge of genuinely internationalizing political studies and not simply imposing Western (or Northern) conceptions. This book also challenges the discipline to go much further in its efforts to represent the diversity of the world by including the intersectionalities of race, class and gender as well as ability, age and sexual identities. Finally, Jane Bayes and her colleagues also show how their field has been leading the way by introducing new political science concepts and broadening their scope of research through borrowings from other disciplines.

Once again, we want to take this opportunity to sincerely thank Barbara Budrich Publishers for a level of collaboration well beyond the call of duty and to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for providing us with the research grant (no. 820-1999-1022) that launched this book series.

*John E. Trent*, Fellow, Centre on Governance, former professor, University of Ottawa.

*Michael B. Stein*, Visiting Professor, University of Toronto, and Professor Emeritus, McMaster University.

# Chapter 1 Introduction Situating the Field of Gender and Politics

*Jane H. Bayes<sup>1</sup>*

# Discipline and Field Issues

This book concerns a new body of knowledge and an emerging set of questions that has accompanied national, cross national and international global political movements aimed at trying to understand and to improve the situation of women by eliminating gender inequities and injustices. To the extent that these bodies of knowledge, concepts and questions have become recognized, recorded, institutionalized and legitimized, they may be considered a field of study or, more formally, a discipline. Often, because of their grassroots origins and continuing links to specific communities and cultures, these ideas are dynamic and diverse. Although they remain united by their common interest in gender and power or gender and the political, different scholars in the same country as well as scholars in different countries and from different cultures have different views concerning what the field encompasses. Just as commentators on the discipline of political science as a whole have noted that major differences exist between the discipline of political science as practiced in the United States as opposed to Europe due to different intellectual traditions2 and to varying degrees of professionalization <sup>3</sup> (Norris 1997), differences among gender and politics scholars occur not only along these lines but also are defined by a varied recognition of the political significance of social relationships and hierarchies that are not considered to be "public" or related to the state by mainstream political scientists. The chapters in this collection

 1 Jane Bayes is grateful to Marian Simms for her very helpful comments and suggestions with regard to this chapter.

<sup>2</sup> Political scientists in the United States, for example, tend to be heavily influenced by assumptions of classical liberalism with a heavy emphasis on individualism both in theory and in method (rational choice). In contrast, European political science is quite diverse but places more emphasis on institutional analyses (Norris 1997, 22).

<sup>3</sup> Professionalization refers to "…the recruitment, training and certification by recognized standards (usually a doctorate) that individuals are qualified in that body of knowledge; the full-time employment of these scholars as teachers and researchers in the field; the promotion of individuals according to professional standards (recognized publications and awards) by an internal process of peer review; and the formal organization of the discipline into learned societies, in order to defend the interests of its members and advance the status of the discipline (*ibid*.)."

reflect a field that is emerging as a discipline, one that is working within the established constraints and assumptions of a variety of political conditions around the world and one that is only beginning to be professionalized in selected nations in response to political and social movements both national and global.

### Four Major Themes

Previous surveys of the gender and politics field have identified particular themes that characterize the research and the questions being asked. This volume is organized around four major themes or approaches. The first offers a different and perhaps more fundamental perspective drawn from the point of view of scholars from Latin America and Africa who argue that the creation of knowledge about gender is deeply linked to global hierarchies of political, economic and linguistic power and show how this is manifest in their regions. A second major theme concerns the exclusion of women from democratic political institutions (legislatures, political parties, public bureaucracies, courts) and from political processes such as elections. The assumption of this approach is that the primary agenda is to improve the political representation and participation of women in political institutions – what Anne Phillips (1989) has called "the politics of presence." The third theme involves approaches that include but also go beyond the traditional public/private boundaries of state-centric political science and instead, draw on theories, concepts and institutions more often addressed in the fields of sociology, philosophy, economics, psychology, anthropology, geography, women's studies and history in addition to the discipline of political science. The fourth theme that characterizes the field of gender and politics focuses on evaluating and critiquing mainstream concepts, theories and discourse to show how these concepts and theories are gender biased, how they exclude women and gender from consideration, how they disempower and silence women and how they may be reconstructed.

The chapters in this volume loosely correspond to these four themes although some chapters include more than one theme or approach. The chapters on Latin America and Africa (chapters two and three) draw our attention to the first theme, namely the ways in which knowledge production or discipline creation is related to power. This refers to power not only within political institutions, but power in terms of economic, military, cultural and linguistic dominance. Because this is a new perspective not often discussed in disciplinary reviews, these two chapters set the stage for this collection. They remind us that knowledge production requires power and that social move-

ments can be a source of such political support. In countries where states may be weak and/or undemocratic, where universities may be few in number and/or may exclude women, where political science as a discipline is not well established, excludes women or may be banned altogether, gender and politics knowledge production continues but under different circumstances. Nongovernmental organizations often are the centers of such knowledge production. Global networks are extremely important. These chapters are particularly significant to this review because they offer a valuable critique of the Eurocentricism of the political science discipline4 and of much of the work in gender and politics that focuses on women's political representation in democratic nation-states. They suggest that because gender and politics scholars and practitioners are not so wedded to the dominant paradigm, yet forced to operate at least somewhat within it, they can be a source of innovation and creative new approaches. They can expand the perspective of the field of gender and politics and of political science as well. For these reasons, the chapters on Latin America and Africa lead this collection and are crucial to defining and understanding the state of the field.

The chapters on Latin America and Africa also make us acutely aware that the nature of the state, the economy, the openness of the society and the government, culture, religion and the prevalence and role of universities are all factors that shape the nature of inquiry in various parts of the world and consequently condition the study of gender and politics. Military dictatorships, whether in Africa, Asia, the Americas or Europe generally have a dramatic impact not only on what occurs at universities but also on what can happen in civil society – an impact that varies with the conditions of each country and region. In China, for example, the formation of the People's Republic of China in 1949 established a strong centralized government which has taken the lead in improving the well-being of women as part of its quest to liberate labor, a model considerably different from conditions impacting gender and politics in other parts of the world (Han 1997). National indebtedness has had a great influence not only on universities but also on the lives of women. Countries in civil conflict have created situations where women have served as revolutionary activists, as peacemakers or as peacekeepers. In these situations, the generation of knowledge about women and politics or gender and politics may occur primarily in grassroots and indigenous women's movements, in non-governmental organizations, in networks of women activists and/or among scholars who communicate with one another within and across geographic boundaries.

<sup>4</sup> See John Trent's review essay which documents this Eurocentric focus of most political science research (Trent 2009).

The second theme – in contrast with the perspective of the chapters on Latin America and Africa – assumes the existence of democratic nation-states or of emerging democratic nation-states with representative political institutions. The chapters on South Asia, Europe and the United States (chapters four, five and six) fall broadly into this category. The approach in these chapters concerns the exclusion of women from democratic political institutions (legislatures, political parties, public bureaucracies, courts), and from political processes such as elections. They seek to identify the mechanisms and causes of these forms of exclusion as well as policies that can improve the situation. The assumption of this approach is that the primary agenda is to improve the political representation and participation of women in these institutions.

The third theme can be found in studies that go beyond the traditional public/private boundaries of political science and instead draw on theories, concepts and institutions more often addressed in the fields of sociology, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, geography, women's studies and history rather than in the discipline of political science. This theme is found in several of the chapters in the other three categories. As illustrated in the chapters on Latin America and Africa (chapters one and two), the field of gender and politics has developed largely out of interdisciplinary work drawing on other social science disciplines and methods. The chapter on gender and politics in South Asia while focusing on women's representation in political institutions, stresses the importance of family and kinship to this process in South Asia. The discussion of gender and globalization, and of gender and political economy in the chapter on the United States and the chapter on international relations (chapters six and seven respectively) illustrate how gender and politics scholars draw on other disciplines and intellectual approaches including economics, anthropology, history, geography and sociology. Feminist theory also is informed by a wide range of philosophical and historical knowledge in its creation of new concepts and new explanations.

A fourth approach to the study of gender and politics places more emphasis and importance on the way mainstream concepts and policies structure thought and discourse to exclude women and gender from consideration, a practice that disempowers and silences women and leads to gender-biased conclusions and policies. The agenda is to disrupt the mainstream "normal," to explain and challenge its gender bias and to develop new concepts to rectify this situation. This is a primary focus for feminist theory as explained in chapter eight. Because the field of international relations is heavily involved with public policy discourse, gender and politics scholars have also been particularly active in challenging the gender biased concepts of those in the established and professionalized ranks of international relations within the discipline of political science as illustrated in chapter seven.

In summary, the chapters in this volume written by authors from a wide variety of regions in the world reflect all four of these approaches with some chapters representing more than one approach. The chapters on Latin America and Africa show how the field of gender and politics expands the concept of the political beyond the confines of the nation-state to include the impact of international power hierarchies and show that the locus of knowledge production is not necessarily confined to universities and established professionalized academic disciplines. The chapters on South Asia, Europe and the United States review a rich literature that focuses on the representation of women in democratic political institutions within the nation state. Several chapters including those on Latin America, Africa, South Asia, the United States, international relations and feminist theory in whole or in part illustrate the ways in which the field of gender and politics has moved beyond the public/private dichotomy that characterizes much of political science research to draw on the insights and methods of other social science disciplines. Finally, the chapters on international relations and feminist theory review some of the many ways that the field of gender and politics has challenged mainstream concepts that shape and propagate gender bias and how the field has developed new theories and new ways of viewing the world that promote social justice, gender equality and women's well-being.

### Three Streams of Analysis

Many factors have shaped the field of gender and politics as it exists today in the discipline of political science. The development of the field cannot be separated from 1) the changes in capitalism – specifically changes in labor markets – or from 2) the emergence of women's movements globally during the 20th and 21st centuries. Insofar as this project concerns the development of gender and politics within the discipline of political science, neither can the project be separated from 3) the state of political science as a discipline globally, especially as it is represented in the International Political Science Association. Each of these three influences help explain the emergence and development of the relatively new field of gender and politics and provide a framework within which to situate the variety of approaches represented by the subsequent chapters in this book.

### Gender and Politics and Changes in Capitalism and in Labor Markets

Changes in global capitalism and subsequent changes in the gendered division of labor during the second half of the 20th century have altered the political position of women, albeit quite differently in different parts of the world. This in turn has impacted the development of the field of gender and politics. Prior to World War II, in most parts of the industrialized world – with some exceptions – industrial manufacturing was organized around the male wage earner. Some women worked for wages as domestics, nannies, prostitutes, schoolteachers, nurses, clerical and retail workers. Some women worked in textile and other factories. Almost all women were expected to do unpaid work in the home or on the farm, to bear and raise children and to care for the sick and elderly. For countries with social services, these services were organized either around the workplace (pensions, health insurance) or the state (welfare programs, social security). This model of production treated men and women as separate groups defined by law and by custom to have different responsibilities and different roles. To the extent that women were allowed to work in the waged economy, they were largely crowded into low paying gendered occupations such as clerical, retail, nursing, teaching, child care and/or domestic service. In industrialized and semi-industrialized countries, a few worked in low paying manufacturing jobs such as sewing, textiles, cigarette making. In non-industrialized countries, women worked in agriculture, in the market, and/or in the home, usually confined by law and custom to subordinate roles under male supervision and control. The changes brought on by World War II in the United States whereby women were brought into the waged labor force for the war effort was a harbinger of what was to occur globally in the late 1960s, the 1970s and the 1980s, as off-shore production proved to enhance profits and contribute to what some called "the deindustrialization of America (Bluestone 1982)." In the United States, manufacturing plants organized under the Fordist mode of production (with strong unions, stable employment, manual or craft-based employment and paying family wages to long time male employees) moved abroad where they established factories employing large numbers of women. As men lost their jobs in the United States, family incomes fell and more and more women joined the waged labor force to supplement their family incomes. In 1989, Guy Standing wrote his famous article, "Global Feminization through Flexible Labour," showing that the feminization of the workforce was a global phenomenon. As Standing noted, his term, "feminization of the labor force," referred not only to the increased number of women in the global waged labor force, but also to the changes in the structure of the jobs that were available (Standing 1989). Instead of steady life time jobs for primarily male waged workers, the global manufacturing structure had changed to one of flexible production – what has since been labeled "commodity chain production" (Gereffi and Korzeniewicz 1994). Flexible production refers to off-shore global production where factories (often with primarily male workers) move at will to sources of ever cheaper labor and where primarily women are recruited to take low waged manufacturing jobs often in export zones set aside for foreign direct investment in developing countries. These jobs are generally low paid, insecure and irregular. In 1999, Standing updated his 1989 article to conclude that the global trends he noted in 1989 were accelerating and that around the world, women not only were being recruited into these unstable, low paid, part time jobs, but that these were primarily the kinds of jobs available to men as well under this system of post-Fordist production (Standing 1999).

In the 1980s, many women in middle income developing countries moved out of agriculture and into white collar occupations such as teaching, nursing, sales, clerical and services. In general, more women participated in agriculture in Asia than in Latin America (Horton 1999, 576). Goldin has shown that in the United States, the shift of women out of the home and into the waged labor force occurred in stages beginning in the late nineteenth century and evolving through three evolutionary phases to a revolutionary phase beginning in 1970 (Goldin 2006, 2). Early phases of the process saw young single women entering the labor force. As industrialization progressed and more white collar jobs became available and women obtained higher levels of education, larger numbers of married women entered the labor force for longer periods of time. The revolutionary phase was marked not by any particularly dramatic increase in numbers of women in the labor force, but rather by a more highly educated female labor pool. This correlated also with a change in women's self reported life expectations, social norms concerning family and work and individual identity (Goldin 2006). Beginning in the early 1980s, 80 percent of young women in the United States expected to work when they were thirty five years of age. Women were getting more education, getting married later, getting divorced more often, and spending less of their lives in married status. They expressed an interest in employment as part of a long term career which had equal importance to that of their husbands (Goldin 2006, 10-12).

Another important change with regard to global capitalism in the last half of the 20th century that impacted women as well as the discipline of political science has been a major shift from state centered economies based on Keynesian beliefs to a neo-liberal philosophy articulated by Frederik von Hayek and Milton Friedman. The neo-liberal view holds that the role of the state in the economy should be limited to maintaining a stable supply of money in proportion to the rate of growth in the economy. Capital, goods, services and (in theory even labor) should be allowed to flow both within and between states with as little state regulation as possible.

With the oil crisis of 1973 when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) raised the price of their oil three and then four times in one year, many oil importing developing countries had to borrow funds from international lenders to pay for the increased cost. For many of these countries, this was the beginning of a debt burden that forced them to restructure their economies towards export production. The extra monies accumulated by the OPEC countries made their way into western banks which in turn lent them at high rates of interest to developing countries. With the demise of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank served as the gatekeepers to global capital by requiring those countries in need of international loans to implement neo-liberal policies as a condition for obtaining a loan. In exchange for loans from these institutions and ultimately from private lenders, countries had to agree to neo-liberal structural adjustment policies (SAPs) that usually called for cutting state spending on domestic consumption and services (especially services to women and children) in favor of investing in the extraction of raw resources and/or production of commodities that could be sold for foreign exchange to repay the foreign debts. These neo-liberal policies had a profound impact on many women in developing countries as they experienced cuts in education, health care, water distribution, energy, welfare and food subsidies for the purpose of servicing foreign loans. In many cases, state funded public services such as piped water or electricity were privatized and marketed. University curricula around the globe were impacted as neo-liberalism, also known as "The Washington Consensus," became the new mantra. For many women in industrializing and poor countries, these neo-liberal changes were mobilizing factors, ones that brought the inequity of the global order into sharp focus. This ideological change also impacted the industrialized countries of Europe and North America as welfare systems were reduced and state services were eliminated or privatized.

# The Emergence of Women's Movements and their Differences

The 1960s, a time of state organized (Keynesian) as opposed to globalized or neo-liberal capitalism, marked the beginning of what is sometimes called "second wave" feminism in the United States and Europe (as opposed to "first wave" feminism which refers to the suffrage movement). In this period, states used Keynesian economic policies to organize and direct investment, devise industrial policy, regulate business and use taxation to redistribute wealth (Fraser 2009). Gender relations were expected to be (and for many were) those of the waged or salaried male worker and the house keeping, childrearing woman. Authority structures and decision-making tended to be hierarchical and dominated by males. Feminists of the 1960s and 1970s in the United States chafed against the gender inequities of this era. They mobilized to help pass the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 making discrimination on the basis of sex illegal. They campaigned to enable women to control their bodies through legalized contraception and abortion. With momentum building in the civil rights movement and more women in the waged labor force, unraveling and exposing patriarchal practices, campaigning for equal treatment by the state and other institutions, consciousness raising, and trying to pass legislation were some of the main activities. These second wave feminists eschewed authoritarian structures, challenged traditional hierarchical authorities and attempted to build horizontal democratic participatory organizations.

Some elements of second wave feminism (radical and socialist feminist) challenged liberal conceptions of the public and the private to argue that gender power was located not only in the public arena involving the state and its institutions, but also in all perceived relationships between men and women, be they in the accepted norms of the society, symbols, institutions (both public and private), and in identities- both individual and group (Scott 1986). This understanding considerably broadened the study of gender and politics and constitutes a major contribution of gender and politics as a field to the discipline of political science (Hawkesworth 2006)

As Nancy Fraser has noted, the second wave feminist struggle in the United States against the constrictions of post World War II state organized (Keynesian) capitalism and the gendered bias of institutions (such as the barriers to women in the waged working force, the expectation that girls should be wives and mothers first, if not exclusively, the barriers to women in higher education, in the professions, and in the public and political arena) ironically coincided with the transformation of state organized capitalism into neoliberal capitalism as it developed in the 1970s and 1980s (Fraser 2009).

Neo-liberal capitalism brought with it a cry for the deregulation of business and a reduction of government spending including welfare payments and state services, but it also was associated with a reorganization of many businesses into networked rather than hierarchical structures with off-shore production bringing women of all ethnicities and nationalities into the waged workforce. It generated dramatic changes in the family as the two-earner family and the double or triple shift became the norm for women. Single parent families increased with most being female headed households. Many second wave feminists celebrated the economic independence, increased education and increased public awareness that women gained from employment outside the home, while at the same time struggling with the recognition that unwaged care work was vital and necessary and had to be valued and significantly rewarded as waged work. Most second wave feminists sought help from the state in this enterprise calling for public childcare programs, mandatory pregnancy leave policies, parental leave policies and more responsibility by males for care work. Meanwhile, neo-liberalism's emphasis on the individual and individual self-sufficiency encouraged women to assume an individual identity rather than a family identity. Second wave feminist scholars developing the gender and politics field were caught up in these debates and movements.

While elements of the second wave feminist movement wished to have women recognized as different from men and therefore to be treated differently by the state, most feminists in the United States during this era were concerned with how the patriarchy treated all women as a class in a systemic way to maintain women's inferiority and subordination. They sought to obliterate the differences between men and women by seeking recognition and representation in public and private forums. Differentiating among women according to race, class, or ethnicity was a high priority for only a few.

### Women Organizing Internationally

Globally in the 1960s and the 1970s, the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (created in 1946) was moving beyond its early legal emphasis on obtaining equal citizenship rights for women who married internationally to emphasize social and economic rights for women in the world. In 1975, the United Nations held its First World Conference on Women in Mexico, a meeting that some Mexican feminists boycotted in a move that highlighted their anti-imperialist resentment against the West. This reflected the negative sentiments that developing and colonized countries often have had for the imposition of what they have considered a western imperialist feminism that they did not feel they had had a fair opportunity to shape or direct. In spite of these reactions, subsequent United Nations World Conferences on Women in 1980, 1985 and 1995 mobilized large numbers of women in many countries in local, national and regional meetings to discuss women's issues in preparation for these world conferences. The early meetings were characterized by splits between the Eastern Soviet bloc countries and the West. The differences between North and South continued in all these conferences. Conflicts among Middle Eastern delegates characterized the 1985 conference in Nairobi, while Catholic and Muslim delegates opposed key provisions of the agenda proposed for the 1995 conference (Bayes and Tohidi 2001). As improved communications, especially the telephone, fax machine and ultimately the internet evolved, transnational women's non-governmental organizations became more numerous.

Prior to 1995, United States foundations and many northern European governments funded projects for women in developing countries. In many cases in developing countries, this favored a class of educated, internationally oriented women who established organizations that addressed issues that appealed to western funding agencies such as domestic violence and reproduction. In contrast, local grassroots women's movement organizations were concerned with survival issues such as poverty, education, health, children, the environment and working conditions. In some countries, still a third sometimes overlapping group of women emerged to run for public office.

### Changes in the 1980s

Another development significantly impacting the field came to light in the 1980s and may also be associated with the transition from state capitalism based on the bounded nation state to a more transnational neo-liberal order. This involved the publication of works by feminists of color which brought attention to the fact that racial, class, and imperialist colonial attitudes and structures divide women in the women's movement (Mohantry 1984; Spivak 1988; hooks 1981; Hurtado 1989). Since the 1990s, this recognition has resulted in a concern for domestic and global "intersectional" analysis to disentangle the perspectives of women from many different geographic, social, economic, religious, and political contexts. This development calls for a recognition of the differences among women, of the unique contexts that do not unite women as sisters but rather show that race, nationality, ethnicity, class and intersectionality require recognition and representation.

As Fraser notes, women's movements and feminism have had a paradoxical relationship with neo-liberalism. Second wave feminism emerged at about the same time as neo-liberalism, drew on neo-liberal ideas of individual rights to mobilize against the gendered strictures of state organized capitalism and in many ways made gains for women's equality and political recognition. As state organized capitalism has begun to erode due to neoliberal globalization, deregulation, off-shore production, rapid capital mobility, the growth of "too big to fail" corporations and the reduction or privatization of public services, second wave feminist claims for political rights and political recognition have been joined and sometimes criticized by women's grassroots movements' claims for economic redistribution to address the enormous inequalities that the global neo-liberal order has generated. This debate and conflict is reflected in the field.

### The Discipline of Political Science and its Development

Whereas the study of politics is as old as the study of social discourse and philosophy, the field or discipline of *political science* is of more recent vintage, emerging in the latter part of the 19th century. The founding of the American Political Science Association (APSA) in 1903 serves as a marker. The International Political Science Association (IPSA) was founded as a part of UNESCO in 1949 after World War II. Originally it was an association of national political science associations. Reflecting the global political hierarchy of the world at that time, most of the founding members of IPSA were from North American, European or British Commonwealth countries. The founding members included the American, Canadian, French and Indian political science associations. In the 1950s, most Western European nations (Sweden, the United Kingdom, Austria, Belgium, Greece, Finland, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland) joined; two Eastern Europe national associations became members (Poland and Yugoslavia), and two Middle Eastern organizations joined – (Israel, Lebanon). Finally, the Soviet Union; two additional Asian countries – (Japan, Ceylon); and two Latin American associations (Brazil and Mexico) were members by 1960.

Not all of these associations have remained as IPSA members. Just as global politics influenced the creation of the IPSA, so too, global politics have continued to shape the organization ever since. Today, the organization has 48 national associations as active members – 16 are from Western Europe; 9 are from Eastern Europe; 6 are from Asia (China-Taipei, India, Japan, Korea, Nepal, and Singapore); 4 are former Soviet Union countries (Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan); 4 are from Latin America – (Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina); 3 are from the Middle East – (Israel, Lebanon, Turkey); 3 from Africa – All Africa, Cameroon, South Africa; 2 are from North America – (US and Canada); and one from Oceana – Australasia. (Since 1952, IP-SA has also been open to individual membership and now has over 1500 individual members.)

John Trent notes in his summary of findings from the first seven books in the IPSA World of Political Science book series, of which this volume is a part, that political science as a discipline has been "Western dominated" (Trent 2009, 4, 14) and mainly "male and white" (*ibid.,* 14). Trent reports that globally, barely a third of political scientists are female (*ibid.,* 13). Furthermore, political science as a discipline has flourished in democratic regimes with an "open educational system, prosperity, foreign exchanges, returning exiles, research models and theories, leading scholars and educators, professional associations, and above all, relatively independent universities and stable sources of funding" (*ibid.*, 8). Because political science has traditionally had a state-centric frame and because women have generally been excluded from the state and its activities, scholars in political science departments have tended to ignore gender.

The essays in this volume confirm and elaborate on these findings with regard to the study of gender and politics.

# Gender and Politics within the Discipline of Political Science

Until recently, political science has been a male dominated discipline even in Western industrialized nations. Establishing the field of "women and politics," which has subsequently become "gender and politics," as a "field" in the discipline has been a struggle supported by and dependent upon women's movements outside the academy primarily in the last part of the 20th century. The women's movements, in turn, have in part been responses to major changes in capitalism in the last part of the twentieth century as increasing numbers of the world's women have had an opportunity to be educated and/or have moved from unpaid work to positions in the waged economy.

Now, at the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, the field of gender and politics, like the global economy, is undergoing major changes associated with globalization. Globalization has brought more women from different parts of the globe together and generated a myriad of transnational women's networks and organizations that generate and transmit knowledge about gender and politics. As illustrated in this volume, attempts to reach across borders combined with critiques of western Eurocentrism have made many aware of and more sensitive to the western, Eurocentric bias of political science as a discipline and of the biases of western feminism in relation to the field of gender and politics in political science.

Within the International Political Science Association, the IPSA Research Committee on Sex Roles and Politics was first created as a study group in 1976 at the IPSA meetings in Scotland and made a permanent Research Committee in 1979. The objectives of those involved in the creation of the research committee at the time were to address "a broad array of issues involving gender and politics focusing on the political participation of women; women and public policy in comparative perspective; women in public administration; women and politics in third world countries; women, religion and politics; the role of legislation and the status of women; women and the transition to democracy; strategies for the empowerment of women; feminist theory; women and nationalism; eco-feminism; and the global women's movement and international relations" (www.ipsa.ca). To provide a separate forum for the issues important to women in developing countries, in 1988, a group of IPSA RC 19 members created the IPSA Research Group on Women, Politics, and Developing Nations. In 1992, IPSA recognized this group as a Research Committee (RC 7). While many of the topics considered by RC 7 were not different from those considered by RC 19, some topics such as women and development, women and religion, women and the environment, women and nationalism, women, debt and structural adjustment were new or given a greater emphasis reflecting the priorities of developing countries. Both committees considered many of the same original topics of RC19 such as women and public policy in comparative perspective, political participation of women, women in public administration, women in legislatures, electoral politics, strategies for the empowerment of women, women and ethnic conflict, women's human rights, and women and democratization. In 2000, a group of IPSA members – most were members of RC19 and/or RC 7 – decided to create a new Research Committee on Gender, Globalization and Democratization (RC52) to study the new realities of globalization and its gendered consequences. This research committee focuses on 1) the various understandings of globalization in different parts of the world and the differential impact that these processes have on women in different contexts; 2) the changes in gender relationships created by economic globalization processes such as: a) migration and gender; b) the changing patterns of production and modes of production, privatization, deregulation, structural adjustment policies, trade agreements, and gender; c) the rampant growth of sex trafficking; d) transnational organizations and gender politics; and e) transnational feminism. A third theme concerns the impact of globalization processes on the prospects for democratization in the world, especially a kind of democratization that includes women. Education for women – especially gender training, grassroots organizing, political activity in transnational organizations and leadership training for women around the world are part of the agenda.

Another way that the organizational history of gender and politics in the International Political Science Association suggests the nature of the field and its development is that membership in RC 19, RC 7 and RC 52 have included scholars primarily from Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Latin America, Israel, Bangladesh, the Philippines and India with very few from Africa, Japan, Korea, China, Central Asia, Vietnam and other parts of Asia, the Caribbean, or the Arab Middle East. In part this reflects the hegemony of the English language (French is also an official language of IPSA but most sessions are conducted in English). It also reflects the educational systems in various countries, the status of women in those countries, the wealth of countries that are able or not able to send scholars to international meetings, the kind and source of foreign aid available to the country, the status of the discipline of political science in the educational systems of various countries and the extent to which women are recruited into the discipline in various countries. All of these are factors which shape this review of the status of gender and politics at the end of the first decade of the 21st century.

### The Essays in the Volume

The essays in this volume do not follow a uniform pattern in structure or content but do all illustrate commonalities with others in that they exhibit one or more of the four major approaches or themes described above. We have learned as a group of authors that although we all are interested in studying gender and politics, we do not necessarily think alike and we do not always have similar assumptions. We are representatives of our regions, but not of all aspects of the field in our regions. The same can be said for the chapters in this book. Furthermore, while the regions of Latin America, Africa, Europe, South Asia and the United States are discussed here, the Old Commonwealth countries (Australia, New Zealand, Canada), the Middle East, the Caribbean, Russia, and many countries in Asia including Japan and China are not represented. Yet, in spite of its chapter asymmetry with regard to approach and its limited sampling of the world's regions, this book as a whole offers a picture of the subfield of gender and politics as it exists in the first part of the 21st century, its contributions, its questions, its debates and the kind of knowledge it generates. As a review of the field, it differs from previous reviews in that it raises the issue of the relationship between knowledge production, knowledge transfer and geopolitical power. The chapters about Latin America and Africa in this collection support the insights articulated by India area specialist Susanne Rudolph in her 2005 presidential address to the American Political Science Association entitled "The Imperialism of Categories: Situating Knowledge in a Globalizing World." In this address, Rudolph calls attention to the tendency of those in a dominant culture or society to do cultural violence by imposing their own categories developed through their own particular history, culture and place on an alien culture in a different location with a different history. Those in the dominated alien culture absorb the imposed categories and ideas to a degree but not fully. Their view of the world or their knowledge is therefore inherently different and needs to be understood, embraced and respected (Rudolph 2005).

The field of gender and politics has intellectual roots in 19th century Western liberal, socialist and Marxist thought. Its emergence as a field of study and policy making has been strengthened by changes in the global capitalist economy in the late 20th century that have disrupted many patriarchal structures and brought women all over the world into the waged labor force, and also by the global emergence of women's movements in the 20th century. The chapters on Latin America and Africa (chapters two and three) offer perhaps the most important "finding" or new perspective of this book which is that knowledge production is power based and that knowledge about both political science and gender and politics is conditioned by the global distribution of power. Countries and regions in the periphery often have difficulty escaping the ideological hegemony of core countries. Western Eurocentric assumptions about the "normality" of knowledge production in universities, about the functioning of political science as an academic discipline in universities and about the relationship of gender and politics as a subfield of political science do not apply or apply differently in many non-western countries in the world. Chapters four, five and six in this book document the emphasis and importance given by many gender and politics scholars in India, Europe and the United States to the idea of increasing women's representation at all levels in liberal forms of democratic government as the heart of the field. Chapters seven and eight on international relations and feminist theory discuss still another dimension of the field of gender and politics which involves the element of the field that seeks to challenge "male-stream" political science concepts, assumptions and theories within the discipline that make women invisible, powerless, voiceless.

In organizing essays for this volume, we have come to understand that knowledge creation is linked to power configurations in the world, that the west is not the center of the universe for all, and that the discipline of political science has been and continues to be primarily western and Eurocentric in its orientation. Authors Breny Mendoza, from Latin America and Amanda Gouws, from Africa, challenge the assumption that the study of gender and politics takes place principally within the discipline of political science or even in universities in their regions. The continents of Africa, Asia and Latin America have very different and varied histories with regard to the existence, history and role of universities, not to mention the existence and/or development of specific disciplines in those universities. As both Mendoza and Gouws note in this volume, the existence, status, funding, and control of universities in Latin America and in Africa have in many cases not been conducive to nurturing political science as a discipline. These same forces have shaped the discipline where it does exist to be unwelcoming to the study of gender and politics as a sub-field.

Furthermore, Breny Mendoza observes that in Latin America and other colonized or post-colonial countries, political science as a discipline is situated differently than it is in North American and European countries. In Latin America, political science interacts with North American and European political science by "mirroring and contesting" it, and in turn interacts with what she calls a "shadow dialogue" constructed by western scholars to present themselves as knowledgeable and others as incapable of knowledge. This shadow dialogue is unique and ever present, although often invisible and ignored. Knowledge paradigms and public policies imposed on Latin America by Europe and North America have conditioned, contained and often silenced knowledge production in Latin America, especially ideas and literatures written in Spanish or indigenous languages. Where political science departments do exist, for the most part they do not include gender and politics as a part of the discipline. Latin American feminists who study gender and politics tend to be in other disciplines such as sociology, law, literature, anthropology, communications, economics, economic development, women's studies and/or psychology (Archina, Donoso 2009; Valdéz 2009, Vargas 2009, Richard 2008). This does not mean that neither Africa nor Latin America produces knowledge about gender and politics. Rather it means that such knowledge is produced in some other venue by feminist and women scholars – some working in universities in academic departments and many in independent non-governmental organizations often supported by indigenous or foreign funders. Mendoza calls attention to an "epistemological decolonial revolution" occurring in many parts of Latin America in support of the "shift to the left" in opposition to neoliberal ideas and practices. This revolution draws upon the histories, cultures and knowledge bases of indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples to construct their own centers of knowledge.

Amanda Gouws echoes Mendoza's observations and criticisms in her survey of gender and politics in Africa. Gouws foregrounds the sad condition of tertiary education in Africa, a condition which means that although African feminist scholars attempt to generate their own indigenous theoretical models to explain African politics, they must compete in this endeavor with scholars from Europe and North America who operate from more well funded and established university bases. Feminist scholars in Africa also must contend with the donor driven agendas of funders from the North and with the male dominated nature of most African academic departments. Gouws notes that feminist scholarship in the academy in Africa has grown out of a critique of women in development (WID) that dealt with symptoms rather than the causes of women's inequality. Gender studies started outside of the academy and moved in, although it is still not fully accepted. Feminists still tend to teach gender courses in addition to their normal responsibilities. As in Latin America, Gouws notes that feminists in Africa have formed a variety of non governmental organizations that have had an important role in increasing gender scholarship in Africa and also have established Gender and Women's Studies departments and other multidisciplinary venues to promote African feminist analysis. However, many institutional and cultural barriers persist, including creeping authoritarianism and global donor involvement in African agenda setting.

Coming from India, the largest democratic nation in Asia with a British colonial history and a well established university system, Ranjana Kumari in chapter four finds western ideas of democracy and representation to be central in the field of gender and politics. She reviews the literature concerning gender and governance in South Asia to argue that the greatest obstacles to women's political participation in this part of the world lie in family structures and the social valuation of women. She notes that some of this literature is devoted to arguments concerning why women should participate in the political process and why they are needed. In a region with one strong democracy (India) and several democratizing nations (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and the Maldives), South Asia has one of the lowest levels of women in parliaments of any region in the world, including East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Kumari notes that family structure is not only a negative but also a positive factor in encouraging women to enter politics. Asia has had an unusually large number of powerful female leaders as heads of government primarily because family is often seen as more important than gender in Asian societies. Women who are daughters, wives or widows of powerful politicians often ascend into politics in South Asia to extend the family dynasty. At the lower levels of Indian politics, quota systems and reserved seats have had considerable success in populating the local government councils; however, Kumari reports a dearth of women politicians between those at the highest level and those at the lowest local level.

The final part of Kumari's chapter summarizes the findings of studies of the many ways that South Asian societies socialize women and men to exclude women from political participation and of other barriers that mitigate against women assuming an equal role in South Asian political life. She also discusses the impact that quotas have had in improving women's political situation in South Asia.

Writing from their positions in Western Europe and the United States, Monique Leyenaar (chapter five) and Jane Bayes (chapter six) do not question the position or role of universities or the discipline of political science in their societies. While the field of gender and politics does not have a presence in all political science departments, most departments offer gender and politics courses and many universities in North America and Europe have Gender and/or Women's Studies departments as well. (As Breny Mendoza notes, this is increasingly the case in Latin America.) In the American Political Science Association, the Canadian Political Science Association, the European Political Science Consortium, and the International Political Science Association, the field of gender and politics has an accepted and institutionalized place. This may not necessarily mean that the struggles to have women in positions of political authority, to have gender as a significant and serious part of the curriculum in political science or to have barriers to women's equality with men removed have been successful, but the political situation is different from that in Africa, Latin America, and Asia – not to mention the Middle East. This observation may downplay the problems that exist here. What exactly does it mean to have gender and politics institutionalized? Does it mean more advanced feminist political thinking and action? Does it reflect more political power and participation for women?

Monique Leyenaar in chapter five, writes about the field of women in politics in Europe by presenting a comprehensive account of scholarly studies concerning the rise in women's participation in European parliaments over fifty years from 1955-2005. While she recognizes that European gender scholars have been active in producing and advocating feminist theory, feminist methodologies and gender policies, have studied women's movements and engaged in comparative and interdisciplinary research involving gender and politics, her chapter illustrates the concern and success that European women have had in studying and improving the political representation of women in European parliaments – institutions which are not only public (as opposed to institutions such as the family) but institutions that are explicitly and traditionally understood as political in western political theory. Her approach, unlike that of Mendoza or Gouws, does not contest or question the relevance of traditional Eurocentric political science, but rather brilliantly illustrates how this kind of analysis can explain and promote the representation of women in politics. Her chapter focuses on 25 countries of the European Union where she finds that states can be grouped from high to low levels of women's parliamentary representation. She then examines voting, recruitment, selection, election and representation in each to explain the chances of women becoming elected to parliament. This approach requires an extensive examination and comparison of political parties in each country as well as their gender policies such as quotas.

In chapter six, Bayes surveys the types of questions raised at different times by those developing the field of gender and politics in the United States. She does this by summarizing and comparing six different surveys of the field that include primarily United States authors: in 1983, 1993, 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2010. The body of literature covered by these surveys generally covers the development of feminist theory and addresses questions related to gender and participation, gender and representation and gender and public policy. Bayes adds to this a survey of globalization in the gender and politics field to show how these trends have drawn on contributions from other disciplines to become almost separate subfields in the literature – gender and development; gender and post-colonial studies, globalization and gender, and gender and democratization.

The chapter by Elizabeth Prügl discusses the developments in the field of gender and international relations, noting that feminists have focused on and made some limited gains in their gendered critiques of mainstream international relations. She surveys developments in the literature in security studies, gender and war, gender and peacekeeping, international political economy and global economic governance. This field and its many subparts have grown exponentially as globalization trends of the last thirty years have expanded the field of gender and politics to include topics much more varied and far reaching than the struggle to include women in the electoral and governance processes within nation-states.

Mary Hawkesworth's survey of western feminist political theory literature in chapter eight rounds out the volume by noting that feminist theory from the beginning has had to develop strategies to overcome the Aristotelian assumption of mainstream Western philosophy that injustice cannot exist without being tied to specific historical events. Hawkesworth argues that feminist theorists have faced the challenge of how to develop concepts and analytic strategies to show that gender injustice is present in the on-going "natural," legal social relations of most societies. The theoretical project has involved making these injustices visible, questioning them, bringing them into the light of day for reworking and re-examination. These efforts occurred as a part of the liberal and socialist movements in the 18th and 19th centuries with liberals targeting the state and its laws and socialists focusing more on the exploitative gendered divisions of labor brought on by capitalist industrial production. Hawkesworth then presents and evaluates some of the ways that a rich variety of feminist theories have been classified in the last part of the 20th century – the "hyphenation model," the "equality-difference" debate, postmodern feminism, socialist/Marxist feminism and difference feminism. Using specific works to illustrate her points, she provides a brief survey of ways that feminist political theorists have explored androcentric bias in the Western tradition of political theory and summarizes western feminist theorists' efforts to learn from and rectify their mistakes as they have attempted to break away from imperialist thinking in their search for social justice.

To conclude, Marian Simms and Jane Bayes note that this volume has contributions from scholars from five different regions in the world, each bringing their own perspectives and approaches to bear on the topic and in so doing, shedding new light on what has gone before and on some broad differences among regions. We are reminded that political science as a discipline is associated heavily with western, democratic, prosperous capitalist societies, ones with well-funded, independent universities. Yet other countries and regions without these attributes also have women, women's movements, and the production of knowledge about gender and women, knowledge that circulates in often unconnected worlds separated by hegemonic structures of language, custom and institutions. The field of gender and politics consequently has much to offer the discipline of political science as it pushes it to expand beyond its current disciplinary boundaries. As Marian Simms and Marian Sawer observed in 1984, the discipline of political science with its traditional focus on the nation state, continues to guide its followers into studies of women's representation in political institutions, an approach that is well represented in this volume. Simms and Sawer also noted in 1984 that the discipline of political science because of its focus on the nation state tends to direct its followers away from questions of gender. Other social science disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, geography, and psychology have been less gendered-biased. Feminists concerned with the political have consequently borrowed from many of these other disciplines to redefine and expand their concepts and methodologies in ways that include women and gender. This is another area where gender and politics has contributed to the discipline of political science. Finally, the field of gender and politics has made important and innovative conceptual, theoretical and linguistic contributions to the discipline of political science and to the knowledge base of the world as a whole as it seeks to delegitimize gender biased concepts and consciousness and to reconceptualize new avenues towards social justice.

#### References


# Chapter 2 The Geopolitics of Political Science and Gender Studies in Latin America

*Breny Mendoza* 

# Preamble

The original purpose of this paper was to write the chapter on the state of the subdiscipline of "Women and Politics" in Latin America. Painfully aware that such a subdiscipline was largely absent from Political Science Departments in Latin America, I decided to change the subject. That is, knowing that feminist movements in the region had by and large made great strides in women and politics, comparable and even superior to their counterparts in the North, yet had failed to translate this experience into a political scientific language, I decided a better approach to the topic would be to analyze political science in conjunction with gender studies programs in the region. In this manner, I thought to arrive at some Latin American version of women and politics. But also, uncomfortable with the underlying assumption that these programmatic developments were to measure up against developments of these disciplines in the North or were some form of inferior copy of them, I chose to address the overarching issue of knowledge production under the rubric of the coloniality of power developed by the Peruvian sociologist, Anibal Quijano which has become indispensable to the rethinking of Latin America's relationship to knowledge and understanding of her locus of enunciation. This term refers to the technologies of power developed in the context of the Western European and later US American colonial designs and empire projects wherein the non-west was conceptualized as a region populated by peoples without histories, external to the grand accomplishments of modernity and its concomitant constitution of modern sciences. Deriving from the notion of the coloniality of power, I use the term the coloniality of knowledge to elucidate the ways in which both political science and gender studies programs in Latin America negotiate the encroaching interventions of outside influences in universities as well as to elucidate the alternative knowledges that flourish in the basement of Latin American societies, namely the knowledges of women, particularly poor women, indigenous and Afro-descendent peoples.1 These knowledges seek

 1 The concept of the coloniality of knowledge is developed by several authors in *La colonialidad del saber: eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales. Perspectivas latinoamericanas,* edited by Edgardo Lander. (See Lander 2000).

a reformulation not only of self-knowledge, the nation, the state, and so on, but knowledge itself as we know it. These alternative knowledges represent a veritable epistemological revolution that universities and their political science and gender studies programs cannot provide in their actual configuration. What follows is thus just an approximation of what could constitute a women and politics episteme in the subcontinent in the future.

The chapter presents political science and gender studies separately as two disjointed disciplines that are connected by their relationship to the coloniality of knowledge. This textual strategy allows me to illustrate and discuss in depth the separate paths that both disciplines have taken in the context of the Latin American university. A reflection on the historical role of the university in subjugating local knowledges throughout the text helps to highlight how the institution of the university as a privileged site of the coloniality of power/knowledge distorted and restricted the development of political science and gender studies and how the institution served since its inception to prevent the development of local knowledges within its own boundaries. To gain a deeper understanding of the coloniality of knowledge, I use the metaphor of the shadow dialogue of the anthropologist Vincent Crapranzano in section one to reveal the hidden presence of the female and non-western subject in western, but also creole-mestizo masculinist epistemologies. Notions of the Anglo and Hispanosphere are brought up in section two to mark the points in which European, Euro-American, and Latin American masculinist and racist epistemologies are coterminous with each other and/or deviate from each other to violate the epistemic rights of women and indigenous and afro-descendent peoples. This part is followed by section three that analyzes the interiorities of political science departments in the region and the burden that neoliberal policies and outside influences place on the development of a critical political science. At this point it should become clear that the present configuration of political science departments is counterproductive to the development of a women and politics subdiscipline in Latin America. However, as discussed in this section, the eruption of the "subaltern other" in the process of knowledge production constitutes an epistemological revolution that not only begins the process of the decolonization of political theory in Latin America, but also the process that takes us from the notion of university as the producer of the only valid knowledge to the notion of "pluriversity,"2 or the idea that knowledge and theory can be produced outside of the boundaries of the university. The last section gives an account of the state of the disci-

<sup>2</sup> The concept of pluriversity is introduced by Boaventura de Sousa Santos in "La Universidad Popular del Siglo XXI" (De Sousa Santos 2000) and Walter D. Mignolo in *The Idea of Latin America* (Mignolo 2005). For an English version of De Sousa Santos' article, see "The University in the Twenty-First Century." Eurozine 2010-07-01 at http://www.eurozine. com/articles/2010-07-01-santos-en.html

pline of gender studies today and its own implications for the coloniality of knowledge and the possible ways out of it.

# The Case of Political Science

What is the point of political science in Latin America? When Wendy Brown asked a similar question in her article "At the Edge" with regard to what defines political theory she felt the need to ask also: Where? "In the Anglo-American intellectual world? In Western Europe or its eastern step-siblings? Outside the metropoles (*sic*) of modernity? In the academy? In the streets? (whose streets?) (Brown 2002, 558)." Perhaps her attempt was to remind the western reader of political theory's connection to the coloniality of knowledge, which irrevocably places the locus of political theory, in fact, all theory in the west. In these terms, if the west is defined by its unique theory building capacities, from a western epistemological standpoint, the so-called non-west must be the constitutive outside of theory, something like the Other of theory and the thinking mind. Thus, although Latin America is the historical region that allowed the west to constitute itself as a geopolitical cultural knowable and knowing entity and has identified itself at least partially as western has no place in the west's political or epistemological imaginaries as a knowing subject. The region much to the chagrin of many Latin Americans still occupies an outsider position vis-à-vis the west and its relationship to theory. To ask about the point of political science in Latin America is then already a loaded question. The question does not imply what defines Latin America political theory *per se*, because that would be impossible from Theory's point of view. From this perspective one would preferably ask: What or whose interests does political science serve in Latin America? What does it stand for? Whose project is it? How does it measure up against western political science, and in particular, US political science? What can be done with it? How can "we" help develop it? Alternative questions could be: How can political theory be decolonized? By whom? Is another political theory possible within the confines of political science departments today?

To the extent that Latin American political science and/or political theory appears in the coloniality of knowledge and in the west's self-understanding as a contradiction in terms, like say Latin American philosophy or such extravagant ideas as a Nahuatl philosophy (Mignolo 2000, 80) or patriotic epistemologies of a Spanish Enlightenment, these questions make a lot of sense (Cañizares-Esguerra 2001). This is an ironic turn of events considering that it was in Latin America where some of the oldest universities of the west were founded during the first phase of modern/colonial times. The Dominican Republic (1536), Peru (1551) and Mexico (1551), to name just a few, had universities that were producing a vast body of scholarship that was not limited to "mirroring or contesting European ideas," as many westerners like to say about Latin American scholarship. Scholars of the time were embarked on the difficult task of deciphering the Amerindian world after its tragic destruction by the Spanish conquest and understanding the deep effects of the colonial encounter between the "European Man" and the Amerindian societies, even if often this effort was intended primarily to construct a geopolitical identity and a place in the history of knowledge of the west. A significant number of Spanish Americans, and most importantly indigenous scholars, were committed to the construction of alternative narratives to those developed in Europe, narratives that did not define Amerindians as "degenerate and effete" peoples (*ibid.,* 4). Yet in spite of these heartening attempts of intellectual rebellion against Eurocentric epistemic violence, the institution of the university remained inextricably linked to the coloniality of power that had been installed by the conquest. In Latin America as with everything else in its social history, the university has been an important piece of the imperial/global designs of its changing masters since its inception as a colonized region. The early foundation of universities in the region as well as the legaltheological debates in Spanish universities about "the rights of the people" early on in the colonial enterprise speak volumes about the central function of the university as an institution of colonial governance. In postcolonial times, the university continued to be fundamental for the formation of the mestizo/ creole elites and its organic intellectuals in the nation building process. The university has been successful until today in reproducing the colonial character of Latin American societies in what is known as internal colonialism. In the process of internal colonization, the Amerindians, Afro-descendants, and poor mestizos remained for a long time defined in Spanish American theoretical discourses as impossible participants in the university and in the labor of theory. The creoles and their mestizo allies, in a sort of mimicry of the same white male symbolic order of the west that excluded them from theory, history, and power, constructed their own male symbolic order in their internal dominion that ended, erasing once again the cultural contributions of indigenous and Afro-descendants and of women in general in the region. In this manner, the Amerindian and Afro-descendent peoples and women suffered a double erasure at the hands of the coloniality of power/knowledge through both its external and internal colonial folds (Mendoza 2001).

The submerged voices of the Amerindian and the Afro-descendant, however, dwell in the body and the margins of the texts of the coloniality of knowledge. They appear as the excess that hides in the interstices and gaps of the conversations among western high theorists, in very much the same form as women and the feminine disappear in phallogocentric, masculinist discourse. This is, however, seldom acknowledged. Western "high theory" is usually led as a dialogue between two persons – usually male, but not always. Western white feminist theorists do something similar – Western theorists are aware of their historical situation and have come to an understanding of each other as equal partners, sharing prejudices and pre-understandings that are in principle open to the interlocutors' questions and claims, but never to those who stand outside the dialogue. Ultimately, western theorists' dialogue works like a pact between two gentlemen (white women must enter this pact in a mannish way to gain their own voice) that artfully evades anything or anybody that emerges as other, new or different from the parameters of the conversations that they themselves set (Crapanzano 1990, 272). I say artfully, because the voices of the non-Western Others actually inhabit the dialogue in the form of the shadow dialogue that Crapranzano claims western anthropologists lead with their western colleagues in their ethnographies about nonwesterners but that I invert here: the western theorist silently carries out a shadow dialogue with non-western Others, even when those Others are not present in the primary dialogue. The non-Western Others in the shadow dialogue are the unacknowledged interlocutors in the primary dialogue among Western theorists (*ibid.,* 275). In the same manner that anthropologists submerge their shadow dialogues with their colleagues in the west in their ethnographic renditions of their conversations with non-western Others, we find the same process taking place in western high theory conversations, only in reversed order. The westerner defines his (or her) epistemic position and representation in opposition to the non-westerner by a negating and making invisible their epistemic difference, taking what Castro Gomez (2005) calls "the point zero position," or what others deem (the "God's eye view") or (the view from nowhere, able to be neutral, objective, free of any bias based on gender, class, history etc.) that is similar to what western feminists had observed when speaking about gender in masculinist epistemologies (Bordo 1990, 142), but remain unaware of in their own discourses about women of color. Not surprisingly, in both orders, the voices of the non-western invisible Others – women and men – are bypassed. The dialogue is never between the westerner and the non-westerner. The non-westerner, so to speak, lives in the dark shadows of western epistemologies whereas dialogue led in full light is reserved to the masters of western academic knowledge: western "enlightened" academics. What is really unavoidable is that any study of a particular knowledge form or discipline in the metropolises or the colonies cannot be carried out in isolation ignoring the shadow dialogue present in the coloniality of knowledge. We must pay attention to its historical trajectories and mutual interactions, even when they take place in the shadows. In other words, to inquire about Latin American political science or its political theory (and gender studies for that matter) is to inquire about its co-procreation with the coloniality of knowledge, how it interacts with North American or European political science and political theory, and of course, how these in turn interact with Latin American political science and theory.

In the present, there is more than ever an increasing awareness of the shadow presence of the non-westerner in the theory building process in the west. Postmodern and postcolonial theorists dwell on this sufficiently as do Latin American decolonial theorists. Wendy Brown indicates how political theory has lost its hypostasized purity by political theory's "traditional outcasts" such as – economics, culture, nature, the bodily, the domestic, the social, the civic and the local – and interestingly she adds, the last century's massive migration of the colonials to the metropolises who have "irreversibly undone the conceit of (pure) European Man." My above ruminations confirm this. If the non-westerner has lived his or her "shady" existence inside the European Man's thinking and speaking mind at least since 1492 (continued by white women's takeover of a Eurocentric position), we can say that there never was a pure European Man or a pure political theory – in the modern/ colonial times since Europeans became Eurocentric. Political theory grounded as it is in the coloniality of power can possibly come undone because of recent migrations of colonials to the metropolises. Yet the colonial or the subaltern has been present in its absence and in its unspoken Other-knowledge in the shadow dialogue, the problem is that it is "unheard of." The colonial was and is always integral to political theory in the shadow dialogue. What seems to matter more in matters of disciplinary knowledge ultimately is where we stand in the colonial divide or our own locus of enunciation in the colonial and imperial difference. The colonial difference in many ways trumps the gender difference as white women opt to position themselves with the "European Man" in their own expositions of gender and the political. However, the colonial subject that does not emancipate her or himself from Eurocentrism will only be a doppelgänger in his or her own endeavor of producing knowledge, as may be the case of contemporary political science and gender studies in Latin America. As Wendy Brown herself says alluding to the role capitalism plays in the constitution of political theory today, to deny the coloniality of knowledge would be not to know the constitutive conditions of one's object of analysis. (Brown 2002).

### About the Hispanosphere and the Anglosphere

David Altman, a prominent Chilean political scientist recently expressed his surprise at the omission of Latin America in the publication of *PS: Political Science & Politics* which included articles about the state of the discipline in several regions of the world, but none about Latin America. To fill the void, Altman published an article in English giving a detailed account of the state of the discipline in Latin America based on the research done for a special issue celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Chilean political science journal, *Revista de Ciencia Politica* in 2005 (Altman 2005). The results of this research were later reported in his article in English: "From Fukuoka to Santiago: Institutionalization of Political Science in Latin America (Altman 2006)." In this article, Altman finds most intriguing the omission of Latin America in the US publication, although the region had "nourished" US political science with outstanding theorists that had made remarkable contributions to the field, and "for better of for worse" Latin America is considered the "backyard" of the US (*ibid*., 20, 196). So the omission was more than unpardonable given that Latin America has an "insider position" or somehow is part of US political science. Certainly, Altman did not mean this in terms of the shadow dialogue that I referred to above, but for all my purposes it serves to exemplify a type of shadow dialogue that takes place between Latin American and US political scientists.

To be sure, the metaphor of the shadow dialogue, in which Latin America lies at the heart of US knowledge, appears to go against the grain of most theoretical and cultural discourses of the US. Most US theorists embedded in Anglo traditions of knowledge draw a thick line between the US and Latin America to create the difference between the Anglo and the "Hispanic," making sure we find no point of intersection but plenty of asymmetries between them. For instance, Darrin M. McMahon claimed recently the existence of a Hispanosphere (Spain and Latin America) that stands in direct opposition to an Anglosphere (England, the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand). To make his argument, McMahon utilized Samuel Huntington's definition of Latin America as a separate civilization that though closely affiliated to the West was dubiously belonging to it. To this effect then, the US was defined as a subcivilization of the West that represented its best values of freedom, capitalism, and democracy. Language, religion, law, and politics were the essences that separated both spheres. Remarkably, McMahon uses the Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, a neoliberal Creole intellectual to justify his claim of the abyss that separates both spheres and to prove his most important point that culturally Latin America is not fit for democracy and thus cannot develop an adaptive, energetic, and inventive economy and polity like that of the Anglosphere – unless it willingly assumes its subordinate role to the US (McMahon 2004, 662).

The Anglo/"Hispanic" differentiation is prevalent in US cultural discourses and self-understanding. Cervantes-Rodriguez and Lutz affirm that the term "Hispanic" actually evokes a geosocial border that arose as Spain lost its global hegemony and the US gained increasingly regional power towards the end of the nineteenth century (Cervantes-Rodriguez & Lutz 2003, 526). Following Mignolo's arguments, they point to the English-Spanish asymmetry that emerges at this point in history in which the Spanish language lost its "right" to constitute knowledge. The linkage of language/power and power/ knowledge becomes clear here. The decline of the Spanish empire and the emergence of new imperial powers had epistemological consequences that determined which languages could become languages of scholarship. In the context of shifting imperial powers, the Spanish language suffered a demotion that brought it closer to the inferiorized languages of the non-west that have a longstanding status of possessing no cognitive qualities, whereas English, French, and German became the privileged languages of knowledge. In this politics of language, fluency and literacy in English denote cognitive capacities while Spanish expresses cognitive limitations (ibid., 529). The epistemological implications of the politics of language have other political consequences, for instance, the idea that English is synonymous with progress, modernization, and good citizenship.

Vargas Llosa, the prototype of the Latin American internal colonizer, echoes this connection between cognitive capacities and democratic inclinations, arguing that Latin American "…*mentalidades* are far from democratic. They remain populist and oligarchic, or absolutist, collectivist, or dogmatic, flawed by social and racial prejudices, immensely intolerant with respect to political adversaries, and devoted to the worst monopoly, that of the truth" (McMahon 2004, 662). The point made here is simple: Latin America is incapable of incarnating good citizenship and democracy and lacks access to rational and pluralistic thinking, something that is necessary to develop cognitive capacities. In this sense, all McMahon needs is to concur with the internal colonizer of Latin America to construct his arguments of the differentiation of the Anglosphere and Hispanosphere. Needless to say, the belief in the separation of the Anglo and Hispanic spheres runs deep in both cultural identifications in the so-called Americas, particularly amongst its lettered elites. Although, strangely enough, Latin American elites must do without the Englishness that provides cultural superiority and a privileged access to knowledge, while retaining Spanish – now a marginalized language in western cosmology – as their imperial/colonial link to the West. Not surprisingly, Latin American elites like Vargas Llosa prefer to exude their Spanishness in the belle-lettres or at most with the "knowledge of the novel," and rather profusely expose their distaste for a decolonial political thinking that would reveal and undo the internal colonialism they profess.

The division of the Anglo/Hispanic spheres in the Americas is actually a fairly recent phenomenon. As Spanish historian from Oxford University, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto reminds us, European commentators of colonial times derided the entire hemisphere as a "degenerate and degenerating place," not only Spanish America (Fernandez-Armijo 2003, 10). It is only with the invention of US exceptionalism towards the end of the nineteenth century, that a hemispheric disunity became the hegemonic discourse. The cultural differences between Protestantism and Catholicism have since then been exaggerated to establish sectarian historical traditions. Nonetheless, Puritans and Spanish Catholics both share their desire to exclude and/or convert dissidents, particularly those practicing non-western religions; yet Anglo/Hispanic differentiation could not always give the Anglo the upper hand. Anglo-America was before the nineteenth century a modest and precarious affair in comparison to the riches, the arts, and the knowledge that Spanish America generated using the knowledge, technology and slave labor of Africans and the indentured servitude of Amerindians under Spanish rule. In the end, both the Anglo and the Hispanosphere were "founded on usurpation, nurtured through conflict, developed in slavery, and expanded at its victims expense" (*ibid*., 162). Both spheres are at war with the Amerindian and the Afro-descendant in them. Yet while the Hispanosphere has negotiated mestizaje as a national ideology precisely to exclude Indianness and negritude in their internal dominion, the Anglosphere looks with horror at the possibility of miscegenation, which is viewed as mongrelization. But the massive migration of "Latinos" into the US that Brown alludes to and that many see as a countercolonization or a rehispanization of the US may mean that the thick line between the Anglo and the Hispanosphere is beginning to blur, while on the other side, the contemporary uprising of Amerindian and Afro-descendants in Latin America has begun to destabilize profoundly the mestizaje ideology that excludes them. Whether this turn of events will entail a rehomogenization of the continent or a downfall of mestizaje rule in Latin America remains unclear, yet it may force the end of the shadow dialogue and the beginning of an intercultural process that can promote an epistemological breakthrough that would decolonize knowledge and include a new culture of "enlightened" dialogue between the two spheres.

Decolonial thinking, however, is largely absent in US political science and theory as well as in Latin American political science (and largely also in gender studies as we will later see), as Altman's article and the research on which it is based demonstrates. In Latin America, decolonial political theory is mostly developed outside the confines of the institution of the university. It cannot be otherwise. An epistemic rupture with the coloniality of knowledge requires a decoupling from the modern/colonial episteme that invisibilizes the irrationality and violence that has pervaded the non-West for the last five hundred years and must recognize the epistemic rights of the non-westerner. And that entails also a decoupling from the university, which is be replaced by the pluri-versality and the interculturality promoted by contemporary indigenous and Afro-descendant intellectuals in the region. The multicultural neoliberal university that is the model of both the Anglo and "Hispanic" elites today must recede and break its commitment to the coloniality of power/ knowledge to end its doppelgänger status. There is reason enough to be skeptical about the transformation of the university into a place of decolonial thinking today. Nevertheless, the recent shift to the left of Latin America and the re-election of an indigenous president in Bolivia as well as the revival of indigenous and afro-descendant social movements which include indigenous and afro-descendent feminisms could set the precedent for an-other political foundation of a decolonial political and feminist theory that is rapidly emerging in the region.

# The State of the Discipline – The Coloniality of Knowledge and the Coloniality of Power in the Latin American University

Commentators on the state of the discipline in Latin America agree that political developments determine the degree of professionalization of political science in the region. Set against the standard of Western European and North American political science, for them, Latin American political science seems plagued by its tumultuous political history. Its opportunity to prosper depends on the consolidation of electoral democracy. Thus political science in most countries has regressed during periods of authoritarianism and experienced "progress" when democracy is given a chance, that is, liberal democracy. In this line of reasoning, political science and liberal democracy are coterminous much like neoclassical economy and neoliberal global capitalism are to economic departments today. In both disciplines, neoliberal global capitalism and western liberal democracy seem coextensive with one another and in fact, often are viewed as pre-requisites to accomplish one or the other and most importantly, are beyond any questioning. Thus, Dieter Nohlen, a German political scientist and a long time researcher of Latin American politics, considers that a crisis of democracy has broken out in Venezuela when Hugo Chavez was democratically elected in 1999 and a change in the priorities of Venezuelan political science had to be effected (Nohlen 2006). It appears that modern political science, at least since the end of World War II has been a US export supposedly destined to end authoritarianism and fascism in the world or for regime change – as we would say today – to facilitate capitalism and electoral-liberal democracy. This was my first lesson in my first political science class in the University of Heidelberg when the same Dieter Nohlen told us that Germans had Americans to thank for their democracy and their political science departments. In Germany, the installation of political science departments in universities had – so to speak – been part of the Marshall Plan, a device to rebuild the country's capitalist economy and to strengthen US hegemony.

In the case of Latin America, the history of political science departments is varied and the degree of development of the discipline is very uneven. While US influence is clearly notable throughout most of its history, in the past it had to compete with other European countries – which implies that the discipline was hardly ever a step away from Eurocentric epistemologies. Latin American critics divide political science history in the region into two phases: one that expanded in the 60s and a second that begins in the decade of the 80s. Both decades are significant: the 60s marked the time of the simulacrum of a Marshall Plan with the Alliance for Progress when the US under Kennedy proposed to help close the gap between the Anglo and Hispanosphere to stop the advance of "communism" in the Latin South; and the 80s, the "lost decade" when structural adjustment programs and neoliberal policies were enforced through US controlled international financial institutions, and an attempt to recolonize the whole region using neoliberalism as its token theory was initiated. The Alliance for Progress lasted less than a decade, it invested ludicrous amounts of money in comparison to the Marshall Plan, and was unable to restage the "German Miracle" nor understand the entrenched structures of internal colonialism of the region's creole-mestizo elites, even though during the same period, the US lived under Jim Crow laws and itself struggled with a civil rights movement that demanded full citizenship for its Afro-descendent population. So Latin America did not benefit from a Marshall Plan as Western Europe did. Instead it persisted with European Marxist and anti-imperialist trends which permeated oppositional politics and the discipline for a long time. Soon after, the Alliance for Progress was dropped by the Nixon administration and almost two decades of military dictatorships funded by the US replaced the hemispheric policy to end communism. This is the epoch of hiatus for political science in many countries, but the beginning of neoliberal capitalism in others, like Chile, which went from a democratically elected socialist president to a seventeen-year military dictatorship. Chile's case is paradigmatic in many ways: the first country in the world to experiment with the neoliberal monetarist theories of Milton Friedman and the University of Chicago and one of the most "developed" traditions of political science in the region. Nohlen notes that Chilean political scientists doubt that Chilean political science could have had such an advancement in the pre-authoritarian era due to the highly ideologically charged environment of the time, interestingly, as if Chile's Pinochet and Friedman's monetarism were free of ideology (Nohlen 2006).

Neoliberalism, in fact, created a boom of political science departments in the entire region, and with neoliberalism came neoliberal democracy and neoliberal global capitalism or vice versa, offering the same as the Alliance for Progress: modernization, freedom, prosperity *etc*. *etc.,* but with even worse results.

In the decade of the 80s, and for some well into the 90s, all Latin American countries had at least one political science undergraduate program. As of 2005, the region had 150 undergraduate programs, 100 master programs, and approximately, 30 doctoral programs in political science, mostly concentrated in countries like Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico (Altman 2005, 10). This sudden "obesity" of political science departments is often explained as the result of the return of electoral democracy, but to be fair it was also due to the pressure exerted by Latin American exiles mostly coming from Europe, and Latin American leftists who had survived the dictatorships by researching in the NGO sector and who were now searching for a niche in universities. Towards the 90s, neoliberalism, however, had thrown Latin American universities into one of its deepest crises. As de Sousa Santos recalls, Latin American universities had undergone three crises: the first was a crisis of hegemony that dealt with the contradiction between an elitist education based on European high culture atavisms and the need for a labor force educated in a more intermediate culture and instrumental knowledge for the industrial workplace. Later, a second crisis of legitimation came about through the conflict between a growing hierarchical specialization of distinct disciplines and the struggles of the working class and students' movements to democratize the universities. Neoliberalism created the third crisis, an institutional crisis resulting from the contradiction between preserving the autonomy of the university in defining its values and objectives in opposition to a business corporate model promoting efficiency and productivity (de Santos Souza 2006, 20).

As part of the "reform of the state" under a neoliberalism guided by the World Bank and the World Trade Organization in the 90s, universities in Latin America came under attack as the state itself was dismantled, its personnel laid off, its agencies eliminated, and its revenues slashed; public education ceased to be viewed as a prerogative of citizens in a state that was rapidly losing its financial base. The autonomy of the university became unsustainable and succumbed to the lack of public funding. Educational deregulation and a boom of private universities in which many of the new political science departments were housed followed the destruction of the public university. Private universities competed with public universities without necessarily improving the quality of education. The competition between them created a "market" demand for a supply of Ph.Ds that most of the time could not be educated locally. Those who could study abroad increasingly chose the US and were often absorbed by US universities after they completed their studies causing the classical brain drain, while others returned only to find a chilly climate from those who could not afford a US education (Altman 2005, 7). Yet all this is only one aspect of the transnationalization or neoliberal recolonization of higher education in Latin America. US citizens are very familiar with this process, as they too are experiencing a similar process in their public universities. As state funding dwindles, the public university becomes integrated into the process of capitalist accumulation. Universities need to generate their own funds largely through a reliance on transnational capital investments. The distinction between private and public universities is gradually being eliminated as universities increasingly are being managed like business enterprises, entities that not only produce for the market, but that also use a market logic to administer universities, curricula, diplomas, teacher professional formation, assessment of faculty and students (de Sousa Santos 2006, 26).

For many Latin American countries with few opportunities to attract funding from local businesses and the state, the neoliberal transnationalization of the university has meant a disinvestment in public higher education that has caused many universities to close their doors and to rely more and more on external funding. De Sousa Santos gives the example of Africa where the World Bank advised governments to fully disinvest in universities and focus only on elementary and secondary education. The World Bank's cost/benefit analysis of African higher education was that African universities were not profitable in relation to their output in the production of knowledge. Thus African research activities must be abandoned altogether or left to transnational organizations (*ibid.*, 28). As an example from Latin America, the one hundred and sixty year old public university of Honduras, my country of origin, with over 74,000 students, is on the verge of becoming privatized after decades of disinvestment and World Bank's advisory to concentrate on elementary and secondary education. This type of advisory has been given even to countries like Brazil. The implication of epistemic violence and the coloniality of power/knowledge should be obvious to the reader.

The foothold of the World Bank and the World Trade Organization on higher education in Latin America is extensive and the consequences for political science departments and political theory formation processes inside universities are truly detrimental. While some of the problems are not new, they have become aggravated by neoliberal intervention in education. At the most basic level, political science professors cannot live with the salary of a public or private institution and working class students cannot afford the high fees of public and private universities; most professors have multiple jobs or teach as part-timers in different universities and have little time for research and no access to research funding. Oftentimes, professors seek to complement their meek salaries by working as consultants for international organizations that promote the World Bank's model or become an expert in political opinion polls and hired by local media outlets that are perennially on the lookout for political commentary on current political affairs and electoral politics. Universities have little influence in setting their own research agendas; these are usually set by international agencies or local state agencies that implement neoliberal policies. Thus shallow daily political commentary is favored over serious research or research is funded only if it meets the development goals set by the neoliberal development apparatus. In addition, since increasing the number of students is linked to higher profits, teaching becomes the only focus of the university. The result is a style of work in universities that mostly obeys the rules of consultant work for international financial institutions and the predominance of theoretical-methodological models that serve and were created to respond to global capitalist needs and the model of liberal democracy it offers. US public universities that are undergoing a similar process should look at what has happened to Latin American universities.

One of the most damaging aspects of the neoliberalization of Latin American universities has been the destruction of the cutting edge quality of political theory that comes out of universities. It is truly ironic that as more political science departments have been created in the history of Latin America, Latin American political scientists seem to lose the traditional critical edge of political thinkers in the region. Commentators of political science in the region and outside of the region, celebrate the abandonment of Marxism or home-grown theories like Cepalism, theories developed within the Economic Commission for Latin America at the UN, or dependency theories which many view as not only reductionist and ideologically loaded, but incompatible with the goal of professionalizing the discipline. They see with eyes of approval that political scientists have abandoned their penchant for politics and have become more engaged in thinking how to consolidate liberal democracy as it corresponds to the western political imagination. Many seem to espouse the idea that it is political science departments that will indeed guarantee the success of a US style of liberal democracy. Approaching the US model of political science steeped in rational choice theory, behaviorism, and structural functionalism appears in many places to be the preferred route. Still others lament the lack of comparative political analyses, the focus on the national and the delinking with international research agendas, which they associate with the agenda of the American Political Science Association. The new political scientists in general see the political world with great suspicion and imagine for the future a political science that becomes selfreferential as in the US. Having US political science as the referent has created an image of a professionalized discipline that – as Wendy Brown well says – responds only to itself, whose minimal audience and judges are political scientists themselves and whose existence is justified by peer-reviewed journals, conferences etc. (Brown 2002, 565). This has led to a political theorization that is more preoccupied with electoral systems, political parties, governance, polls, and only marginally with political cultures and disenchantment with liberal democracy. Issues of gender, race, and sexuality are painfully absent from curricula. In fact, political science departments are staffed mainly by men and attended mainly by men. Only a few departments include a course or a concentration on gender issues. Thus the work of gender and race and the theorizing of political matters relevant to the polity has migrated either outside of the universities, to other disciplines, or simply outside of the region, in particular to the US. The result is that Latin American political science has severed its links to its tradition of critical thinking. As Argentinean political scientist, Atilio Boron, has said, our colonial condition and our vicinity to the US has endowed us with a vantage point that has made us one of the most creative regions in the world intellectually, culturally, aesthetically and musically speaking. In the field of the social sciences and humanities, no other region in the Third World – with the exception of India – has made comparable contributions to critical theory as has Latin America. (Boron 2005, 14). From Raul Prebisch's critical contribution to developmentalism, Theology of Liberation contributions to philosophy, the pedagogy of the oppressed of Paolo Freire, Latin American contributions to the debates of the state, imperialism and dependency theories, and today Enrique Dussel's, Anibal Quijano's and many others' contributions to decolonial theorizing, Latin America has been in the vanguard of critical political thinking. Yet the new political science that emerged in the era of neoliberalism and liberal democracy in the universities derailed from these traditions and has written instead a new chapter in the coloniality of knowledge/power.

# Rethinking the Political: From the University to Pluriversity

In spite of the encroachment of neoliberalism in the Latin American university and the persistence of the coloniality of knowledge, an epistemological decolonial revolution has begun in the region. As the Uruguayan sociologist, Raul Zibechi puts forward in his book, *Autonomias y Emancipaciones*, new alternative knowledges are emerging from the "basement" of Latin American societies (Zibechi 2007, 11). Like the shadow dialogue that I referred to above, absence has had its own existence all along in the swirl of alternative regimes of knowledge, political practices, and in the counterhegemonic life experiences of the excluded of neoliberal global capitalism. De Sousa Santos calls the practice of making explicit what hegemonic sociology (or for that matter political science, anthropology *etc*.) usually denies as existing, the sociology of absences or in other places, the epistemology of blindness (*ibid.,* 11). Decolonial theorists like Mignolo call it "border thinking" and Dussel calls it "the philosophy of liberation," taking its inspiration from the theology of liberation. Ironically, it has been the exclusion from neoliberal capitalism of large proportions of the population that has enabled the reemergence of alternative decolonial thinking as well as life styles that go beyond the civilization of western capitalism. These insurgent epistemologies that evolve from the activism and intellectual recovery of indigenous and Afro-descendent peoples, from peasant movements like "los sin tierra y sin techo," (those without land and roof over their heads), from the *piqueteros* (Argentinean workers that recovered abandoned factories after the economic collapse of 2001), from women and feminist activists and not from universities, have the potential of destabilizing the coloniality of knowledge as never before. The effervescence of this anti-racist epistemological revolution takes its impulse from other new social movements in Latin America such as the Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico, the indigenous inhabitants of the largest slum in La Paz, Bolivia, El Alto, the settlements of the Movement of those without land of Brazil, the Chilean and Venezuelan urban marginal movements, Afro-descendent movements of Honduras, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Brazil, as well as the internal wars in Colombia, and the indigenous movements across the region, particularly in Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador as well as counterhegemonic currents of the feminist movement. The movement towards this epistemological breakthrough extends to the diasporic communities of the Chican@s3 and Central American migrants in the US. These movements in Latin America have already thrown out of power several presidents in Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, Brazil, or overturned corrupt or incompetent neoliberal regimes in Venezuela, Peru, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Chile, or destabilized countries like Honduras after the coup of 2009, creating the so-called shift to the left of Latin America. According to Zibechi, these movements share many characteristics: their externality to neoliberal capitalist lifeworlds, their struggle for the recognition of their culture, their affirmation of their ethnic and gender identities as well as the capacity to produce their own intellectuals – which is the most relevant for our purposes (*ibid*., 24). After decades of struggle for access to elementary and secondary education, the indigenous and Afro-descendent peoples have joined the impoverished, educated, middle-class to form a layer of indigenous and middle-class intellectuals that has constructed its own centers of knowledge separate from the conventional institution of the public and private university.

<sup>3</sup> Chican@s is a more concise way of saying "Chicanas and Chicanos."

Perhaps the best example is to be found in Ecuador, but it is widespread throughout the region. Ecuadorian indigenous peoples have founded the Intercultural University of Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities that recovers the experience of three thousand bilingual schools directed by Amerindians (Magnolo 2005, 122)4 . Their mission statement aims to construct a plurinational state and an intercultural society or in the words of the neozapatistas: "a world, in which many worlds can fit." The curricula of undergraduate and graduate studies has been carefully tailored to address environmental goals and anti-hierarchical forms of social organization based on their ancestral knowledge about the relationship of nature, humankind, and higher forms of consciousness – what they call the relationship between the *Pachamama* (mother earth) and *Runa* (human beings). The Intercultural University collects the "cultural energy" that has survived inside indigenous communities, even after centuries of cultural oppression. Indigenous communities have ironically been marginalized from neoliberal capitalist lifeworlds that have allowed them to persist culturally. This cultural energy is now translated into an educational project that is potentially decolonial, democratic and postcapitalist. The educational project is inspired by ancestral principles or elements they call the *yachay* (knowledge; recovering, recreating and revaluing ancestral knowledge), *munay* (love; the capacity to think with the heart as a precondition of intercultural co-existence), *ruray* (doing; producing, generating constructing, experimenting in dialogue with other cultures), *ushay* (power or energy, vitality, intercultural dialogue, conversation, debate, sustainability) and *kawsay* (the good life in reciprocity, humility, harmony, "let life live") (Amawtay Wasi website 2009). To accomplish the resurrection of ancestral knowledge for the present they envision three cycles of knowledge: a) the formation of ancestral sciences which is achieved through learning how to think with the community and to learn to learn b) the cycle of western sciences which evolves from learning to learn and entails learning to unlearn and re-learn c) and the cycle of interculturality that is part of learning to unlearn and re-learn, but that goes to another level – that of learning to do. These cycles of learning take place in five centers of knowledge-wisdom and/or in communities of learning, that are the same spaces where the life of the community unfolds: in the home, workplace, assemblies, etc. Ironically, the concept of intercultural education of the indigenous could be in some ways neoliberalism's dream, yet clearly with different purposes in mind: it does away with buildings, promotes oral speech, and is itinerant. It deinstitutionalizes the space of university and does not separate the educational proc-

 4 I have taken this example from Mignolo in *The idea of Latin America* and fron the webpage of the Intercultural University of Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities at http://www. amawtaywasi.edu.ec/

ess from the lifeworld. It does so not only by grasping onto traditional spaces of the community but also by using cyberspace in the learning process.

The decolonial knowledge or alter-knowledge that the indigenous Ecuadoreans propose and that is shared by many indigenous cultures and other social movements like the peasant movements of Brazil and by many women's movements throughout the region, represents not only a change of paradigm, but also a change of epoch. Perhaps the epoch of transmodernity that Dussel (1999) refers to as the moment when the non-westerner and westerner can realize their humanity together. Whatever the case may be, it does announce a post-neoliberal era in which the non-westerner has taken education into her own hands. Signs of this are visible not only in examples I have given here, but in many other initiatives that emerge everyday like the Latin American Program of Distance Education and the multiple feminist itinerant universities and research initiatives operating throughout the subcontinent. However, feminist knowledge in Latin America has run its own course of internal colonialism and become subjected to the coloniality of knowledge of western feminisms much in the same way I have described for political science. But here also feminist indigenous and afro-descendent movements and other counterhegemonic trends within the creole-mestiza dominated feminist movement are beginning to transform the bases of a colonized feminist knowledge. Let us see what occurs in this realm of knowledge.

### Gender Studies in Latin America

Gender studies in Latin America experienced a boom similar to the one we have noted in political science in the 80s and 90s, although a few programs were already in place in the 70s. Similar to their counterparts in the US, many of them were also the result of decades of feminist activism, particularly in the urban areas of the region. The Latin American feminist movement, like western feminism, has a history of waves with a difference of a few decades between them. The first wave of feminism during the first half of the twentieth century was mainly a suffragist movement and a movement that sought equal access to education, while the second wave emerging in most of South America and Mexico in the seventies and a decade later in Central America was a movement dominated by urban, educated, middle-class creole-mestiza women. The second wave feminist movement articulated in its early stage in the 70s, a left wing ideology (more a Marxist and Socialist feminism) mainly due to its origins in the left's struggle for the return of democracy and the end of military dictatorships. Without the underground work of these early feminists, the return to democracy would have been much more difficult in all parts of Latin America. Yet as often occurs, the return to electoral democracy did not reward feminists with a place within the electoral system at first. Nonetheless, feminists worked hard during the transition to democracy to build a strong feminist movement in alliance with poor working class and rural women's movements. The agenda was to construct a popular feminism that would include poor women using Marxist feminist and Freirean forms of popular education to transform the region's patriarchal political cultures. The encroachment of neoliberalism in the region distorted the initial impulse to democratize societies and detracted feminists from their early goals of popular feminism. The 80s, but more intensely the 90s, mark a process that has been coined as the "NGOization" of the feminist movement which transformed feminist organizations from being more or less independent collectives into non-governmental organizations highly dependent on external funding, mainly from the US and western Europe. Many local and regional meetings of women in preparation for the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 intensified this process and caused a profound division in the movement between the "institutionalized" and the "autonomous," that is, those who had strong ties to international organizations like United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Nations and those that maintained relative autonomy from external donors. Yet this division was largely a division amongst the urban, middle-class creole-mestizo movement. The women's movement of poor women in urban marginal and rural areas had not benefited from the generosity of the external donors. From being local partners in the feminist struggle, they became the objects of development goals set by international organizations that now dominated the agendas of feminist organizations. The feminist movement began a process of internal criticism and decline in numbers. However the cultural influence of feminism was felt in all areas of social life in the whole region.

As feminist activism dwindled at the grass-roots level, enormous energy was invested in participation in electoral politics and influencing public policy. Feminists have been somewhat successful in this field considering the great strides made in legal reforms that include mandatory quotas in electoral processes, increased representation in congress – in many countries higher than in the US – adequate gender balance in state agencies, creation of public institutions and laws that protect women from domestic violence, sexual harassment and a law codifying femicide in Mexico. The region has experienced an impressive increase in the education of girls in elementary and secondary schooling in all countries except Mexico, Guatemala, Peru and Bolivia where high proportions of the population are indigenous (Dureya *et al.* 2007), as well as parity in higher education in most countries, and in the presidency in countries like Chile, Argentina, and Brazil (Nicaragua and Panama also though we can hardly associate them with feminism). Another area in which feminists have been successful has been in the incorporation of women's studies programs in the universities. Unfortunately, there are few studies that give information on the state of the discipline of Women's Studies in the region as a whole.<sup>5</sup> Yet internet research shows that as in political science, at least one women's studies program exists in every country of Latin America. Often women's studies programs are one or two-year certificate programs called "Diplomados", or master's programs. There are doctoral programs in women's studies in the National University of Córdoba in Argentina and the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil, and some social and political science Ph.D. programs have gender as a specialization area as in the Rural Development Studies of the College of Graduate Studies in Mexico. Plans to open Ph.D. programs in gender studies exist in Colombia, Chile, and Uruguay. Courses on gender may also form part of the curriculum in several disciplines. Women's studies programs depend largely on international funding, mainly from the US (Ford Foundation) and the United Nations and have many of the same problems US women's studies programs have: low budgets, marginalization in the university, little impact on the structure of knowledge of other disciplines, a hostile environment et al. Most women's studies programs have a strong public policy and developmentalist orientation, even when issues of sexuality or diversity are approached. There is, however, increasing research activity in literary studies, art, and history, particularly in the Southern Cone as the study of Espinosa and Castelli of GLEFAS attest (GLEFAS 2012).

A United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) website lists at least 46 women's studies programs in Latin America that are largely devoted to gender mainstreaming, a gender and development fad that became very popular in the last decade. Many women's studies programs in the region, like political science departments, tailor their curricula in response to development goals set by international financial institutions that promote neoliberalism in the region. Their purpose is to form a cadre of gender experts that responds to the needs of the neoliberal state. US academic feminism (lately western feminist poststructuralism, in particular Judith Butler) is also very influential in Latin American women's studies programs, although Spanish and Italian feminism also have a considerable influence in Latin American feminist thinking. As in political science, western, Eurocentric epistemologies form the substratum of much of feminist research that takes place in universities, but also in many research centers operating in the non-profit sector. The last decades have produced a vast number of studies, reports on the status of women and on particular issues such as human rights, domestic violence,

<sup>5</sup> An ongoing study of the Grupo Latinoamericano de Estudio, Formación y Acción Feminista (GLEFAS) offers valuable information on gender studies programs of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile.

sexual harassment, incest, femicide, reproductive and sexual rights as well as citizenship. Although many of the research themes take cues from western feminism, Latin American feminists have made great contributions to the debates on femicide, women's rights as human rights, and citizenship under global neoliberal capitalism. There is a notable increasing interest in themes related to gender, race, and sexuality as Latin American Cultural Studies gain momentum and the political activism of women in indigenous and Afrodescendent communities grows exponentially. More recent work promises an epistemological breakthrough in these areas too.

Feminist scholars who are or have been activists in the feminist movement staff Women's Studies programs. Most of them come from the anthropology, sociology, political science, and a few come from Communication Studies, history, philosophy, and psychology. Women's Studies chairs and/or research directors have a Ph. D. usually obtained from European and US universities, and a few from Brazil. (Espinosa and Castelli 2011) These scholars with these backgrounds usually concentrate the resources and the prestige of academic feminism in the region and thus are able to set the research agenda in their own purviews. They are mostly white, urban, middle-class, and heterosexual women. (Espinosa and Castelli 2011)

However, the separation between scholar and activist is still very tenuous in comparison to US feminist academics, and perhaps also in contrast with political scientists in the region. The funding of feminist NGOs has declined substantially since the 90s and women's studies programs housed in public and private universities have endured the same financial difficulties as political science. I have no data to support the claim that women's studies faculty wages like those of their colleagues in political science are so low that they must maintain multiple jobs; similarly, I have no data to examine the differences in wages between female and male faculty. Nonetheless, several studies show that the high educational attainment of women has not necessarily translated into comparable worth when it comes to wages. In fact, there is evidence of a glass ceiling in many high wage professions and that the gender wage gap gets bigger in the highest percentiles of wage distribution. So it is probably accurate to assume that female faculty may be earning less than their male counterparts in political science and that they must remain linked to feminist organizations outside of the university to carry out research and obtain additional income or work as consultants for international development agencies.

Latin American women's studies programs and research centers have produced a vast number of publications and have many journals, but few to none have made it to the US dominated Social Science Index publications. Something similar can be said, of course, of political science departments who also have had little impact on international debates. A peer-reviewed system has also not been fully established in both disciplines. The absence of Latin American scholarship in indexed publications can largely be explained because of the lack of interest in the themes of the region in US academia, language barriers and the misrecognition of the epistemological value of Latin American scholarship. Nonetheless, a parallel world of publication and an increasingly active scholarship exchange takes place in the so-called Hispanosphere as well as in Portuguese, Italian and French that is gradually diminishing the dependence on Anglo feminist literature.

Western feminists are usually interested in Latin American women as objects of study, but seldom recognize them as equal partners in academic dialogues. Not only are western, particularly US feminists oblivious to feminist knowledge production in Latin America, they do not feel a need to incorporate Latin American views or the region for their own knowledge production. The stark contrast between the politics of translation of texts speaks volumes in this respect, as large numbers of English feminist texts are translated into Spanish, and minimally in reverse. This explains the enduring influence of western feminist theory in Latin American feminist scholarship, but also the difficulty feminists in Latin America have had until recently in constructing theories based on their own cultural geographical and historical contexts, theories that would reflect the region's particularity and singularity. The position of marginality of Latin American feminist academia within the coloniality of knowledge and the disproportionate influence of western feminist theory has worked as a dislocation of its knowledge from its geocultural location. For a long time, it did not allow for the mediation between the subject and the mediation of local codes, the local context and the discourse that will purportedly allow enunciating what is "proper" to the region. Paradoxically, this led often to the lack of knowledge of what is "truly" particular to gender relations and its intersectionality with race, class, and sexuality. This explains partially the tardiness in which the concept of intersectionality created by US black and indigenous that have also endured the epistemic violence of the coloniality of knowledge has been understood in the region. Perhaps this is why among feminist postcolonial debates, the voice of Latin American feminist intellectuals is seldom heard. This is also related to the politics of language and the asymmetry between English and Spanish I referred to at the beginning of this article, since postcolonial theory is mainly written in English and published in the US.

Interestingly, the Latin American diaspora in the US has begun to produce a transnational version of all things Latin American. Chicana literature, but also Puerto Rican, Cuban-American feminist theory and more recently Central American feminist scholarship in the US have shown their epistemic potential with their impulse to decolonize theory. Nonetheless, as I have said elsewhere, Latin American diasporic literature reflects back an image of Latin America that is dubbed and subtitled. Written in English that is not only interspaced but also codified in Spanish and even Nahuatl, diasporic Latin American theories interweave the indigenous, the peasant, the immigrant and "lo latinoamericano" in their experience of the Anglosphere, a sphere that ironically was already tainted with "lo latinoamericano," the indigenous, the peasant from an previous history of what is today US territory.

Diasporic knowledge is border thinking or a border crossing in between the Anglo and Hispanosphere, and in so doing it transmutes the meaning of "lo latinoamericano." This leakage of what is Latin American to the US cannot replace, however, the Latin American experience in the region or if you will in the Hispanosphere. It cannot be the stand-in of Latin American feminist theory. Languages and cultures are not transparent to each other; there is always a residual left without saying. The Latin American difference, as the French-Chilean feminist Nelly Richard says, needs to be made explicit as a "difference that differentiates." For this to happen, Latin American feminists, particularly the middle-class, creole-mestiza intellectuals that predominate in women's studies programs, must initiate a process of decolonization of theory that begins by questioning internal colonialism and the coloniality of knowledge. Mestizaje needs to be destabilized from a feminist perspective, and the dialogue with indigenous and Afro-descendent women must be led in the form of intercultural communication that the Ecuadorean indigenous intellectuals are proposing. We must learn to learn, learn to unlearn and relearn in a dialogue that no longer presupposes the cultural dominant interlocutor and the subaltern interlocutor. Indigenous and Afro-descendant women have begun this already in the alter-knowledge of their pluriversities and in their own social movements. Fortunately, serious attempts of decolonizing feminist knowledge from western feminism has already begun in more recent research centers that are located outside universities. Newly founded research centers such as the Latin American Group for the Feminist Study, Education, and Action (GLEFAS) that aim to create a feminist conceptual apparatus that departs from the historical and geopolitical location of Latin America are encouraging. The work of feminists like Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui of Bolivia, Yuderkys Espinosa, and Ochy Curiel of the Dominican Republic, and the Argentinean Maria Lugones disrupt the canon and are steps toward a decolonial feminist theory based in Latin America. All these efforts promise a discipline of women and politics of a different kind in the future, a future I hope includes an intercultural dialogue with Western feminists, particularly those of the Anglosphere.

### References


# Chapter 3: Gender and The State of Political Science in Africa

*Amanda Gouws* 

# Introduction

The state of gender analysis in the discipline of political science in Africa needs to be viewed within the broader context of the crisis of tertiary education on the continent and the impact of globalization on social science subjects in general. While many social scientists, including political scientists, attempt to develop indigenous theoretical models to explain political behavior in Africa, they often have to do so against the imposition of theories, analyses and explanatory models developed in the North.1 (See Perreira 2010 and Arnfred and Ampofu 2010.) Feminist scholars in general, and feminist political scientists in particular, also attempt to develop indigenous feminist scholarship in the face of donor driven agendas (most of them from the North) and the absence of the incorporation of feminist knowledge into mainstream subjects.

The male dominated nature of political science that has its origins in the focus on the public sphere as the only space where politics happens, to the exclusion of the private sphere, has ignored gender as an important variable of study. This has been well documented in the North and in South Africa (see Gouws 1993). Another consequence of the male dominated nature of the subject is the domination of academic departments by men all over the continent. In South Africa, for example, women political scientists who do research on and teach gender have only entered political science in the last two decades and are fairly young. Their commitment and their efforts are the major reasons gender is addressed in the discipline at all.

Where feminist scholarship in the academy in the North has been viewed as closely linked to the women's movement and the institutionalization of "the second wave" of feminism, feminist scholarship in Africa developed out of a critique of the "women in development" (WID) paradigm that attempted to rectify gender inequality by treating the symptoms rather than the causes

 1 In this regard see for example Chege, M. "Political Science as an Obstacle to Understanding the Problem of the State and Political Violence in Africa." *African Review of Books*, October 2004.

of inequality. Women became an "add on" in these analyses often connected to the technocratic type of feminism of global organizations such as the United Nations (UN). Feminist scholars also attempted to capture the experiences of gender inequality on the continent using indigenous knowledge to counter knowledge that was generated elsewhere. In the African context, Gender Studies started outside the academy and migrated in (Mama 2004, 10).

The multi-disciplinary nature of gender research (and gender studies) very often makes it difficult for women to fit their teaching and research into existing mainstream (malestream) subjects, such as political science. Some women committed to the teaching of gender opted to work in Gender and Women's Studies programs (also a fairly recent development on the continent) where multi-disciplinary work is the norm, leaving mainstream subjects untouched by the impact of gender. When women did get appointments in mainstream fields, their attempts to teach gender often were criticized or they were met with a "chilly climate." (See Lundreng and Prah 2010). Because curriculum transformation is slow and introducing gender into mainstream subjects without women becoming an "add on" is difficult, gender scholars often teach gender courses separately on top of everything else they have to teach (African Gender Institute Newsletter 2004).

A consciousness of gendering social science subjects developed in professional intellectual networks such as the Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD) and the Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and not in the disciplines themselves. Both are important international institutional sites where gender scholarship is produced. Since its inception in 1977, AAWORD has attempted to set an agenda for feminist research and held workshops on methodology, women and rural development, reproduction *etc*. (Pereira 2002, 10). Its influence has declined due to the difficult economic and political climate in which women's organizations operate on the continent.

CODESRIA attempted to integrate gender into their analyses by holding a workshop on gender in 1991 in Dakar, Senegal on "Gender Analysis and Social Science," culminating in a publication titled *Engendering Social Science in Africa,* edited by Ayesah Imam, Amina Mama and Fatow Sow (1997). This text is still viewed as one of the landmark publications on gender on the continent. In 1996, CODESRIA set up a Gender Task Force and in 2000, a multi-national working group on "Gender and National Politics in Africa" was started. Another workshop was held in 2002 on "African Gender Research in the New Millennium: Perspectives, Directions and Challenges" in Cairo (Arnfred 2003, 6). But as Pereira (2002, 11) notes, many of the publications produced by CODESRIA remain gender blind because their gender analysis runs parallel to mainstream intellectual activities rather than being integrated with them.

In 2007, CODESRIA together with SIDA/SAREC2 organized a planning meeting in Dakar, Senegal, bringing together gender scholars from all over Africa as well as Regional and Pan-African Institutions with a track record in gender research. The aim of the meeting was to develop a proposal for a Pan-African Gender Research Support Program in order to enable more women scholars to do gender research across the continent. While the discussions were fruitful, it did not end in the envisaged support program because of differences in research histories between Anglophone and Francophone countries and a lack of consensus among scholars from these language regions on how funding that might support the institutional basis of research should be distributed.

From 16-17 February 2009 a follow-up meeting was held, again in Dakar with some of the previous participants but also some new participants. This meeting was more focused on getting a proposal in place and on getting on with the task at hand. It was clear that SIDA was prepared to fund the institutional basis of gender research in Africa because of a dearth of solo authored publications (most publications were anthologies). Support would also go to individual researchers but those who received funding would have the responsibility to mentor younger scholars. Scholars present at this meeting were concerned with the tension between scholarship and activism, as well as the isolation within which they work and the impact of donors on research agendas in Africa. Furthermore, there was a consensus that research should be empirical as well as theoretical, and that it should create a basis for comparison across the continent.

One of the discussion documents at the 2009 meeting was "Women's and Gender Studies in English-speaking Sub-Saharan Africa – A Review of Research in the Social Sciences" written by Akosua Ampofo, Josephine Beoku-Betts, Wairimu Njambi and Mary Osirim and published in *Gender and Society* (2004). This article is a very comprehensive overview of gender scholarship in Anglophone countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and includes discussions of the following fields: health, gender based violence, sexuality, same-sex relationships, education, work and globalization and politics, the state and non-governmental organizations. While this is a comprehensive overview it was my opinion that the last section on the state and non governmental organizations (NGOs) did not fully cover the work done by feminist political scientists in South Africa, since it excluded much of the scholarship that was being produced in South Africa. After a discussion with the authors (at the time of the appearance of the article) it was decided to write a comprehensive overview of gender studies in Africa, including my concerns

 2 Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA)/Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with Developing Countries (SAREC).

about Southern Africa. The research conducted for this overview was published as a special issue of *African and Asian Studies* (Lumumba-Kasongo 2008).

In the Introduction to the special issue, Tukumbi Lumumba-Kasongo (the editor) wrote the following:

This special issue of the *African and Asian Studies* on the topic of "Researching African Women and Gender Studies: New Social Science Perspectives" is a major intellectual and theoretical contribution to the disciplines of feminist, women and gender studies and their related subfields. This is an important referential work that is examined and approached from both interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives as the contributors analyze various aspects of the complexity of African women and gender studies. With these referential synthetical studies, the authors, who are well-versed scholars in their respective fields and have made their valuable specific contributions to this broad topic, have produced a significant critical body of knowledge to challenge and clarify the existing theories, assumptions and explanations on the African Women and Gender Studies (*ibid.*, 323).

The general introduction by Ampofu, Beoku-Betts and Osirim deals with new social science perspectives on African women and gender studies and analyzes themes important to women in Africa. Their analysis is an important contribution to feminist scholarship in Africa. Other contributions dealt with Lusophone Africa, North Africa, specific countries such as Ghana, Senegal, Sierra Leone and issues of transnationalism, masculinities and domestic violence. My own contribution was an overview of feminist research on women and representation, quotas, state feminism and transnational feminism in the context of countries in Southern Africa (Gouws 2008).

# The Impact of Globalization on Tertiary Education and its Consequences for Women

Directly after decolonization, tertiary education was used as part of the project of the development of the nation state and nation building (with a later shift to developmentalism). In this project, women were not viewed as autonomous political agents but as "mothers of the nation" in order to reproduce the nation. After independence, many African nations established tertiary institutions. The sector grew to over 300 universities in 54 countries. Student numbers have grown from a few thousand in the 1960s to nearly 5 million by 2005. Yet, Africa still has the weakest higher education system in the world. The enrollment rate was the lowest in the world in 2004, at just below three percent (Mama 2004, 4).

In the 1980s, this shifted to an emphasis on primary rather than tertiary education to be in line with the perception of international financial institutions that Africa does not need universities because the return on their investment in tertiary education is not worthwhile. What followed was a greater move to the privatization of universities with an emphasis on relevance and diversification, but as Mama (2004, 9) observes, these requirements have been redefined to articulate the interests of more powerful stakeholders and to open up access to would be service providers. In the nineties, the World Bank revised its views and reinvested in tertiary education but continues with a market instrumentalist logic that means that students had to be trained "for a job," overlooking the intrinsic value of education and rather favoring it as a means to a goal (Olukoshi and Zelesa 2003, 3).

Women's contributions to African political, cultural and intellectual institutions have been denied or marginalized and the political discourses have been dominated by the interests and aspirations of African men. Okeke confirms this subordinate position of women in the public sphere when she argues that

[w]hether reinforced by tradition or the legacy of colonial sexisms, women's political representation in Africa reflects the narrow niche carved out for them in contemporary society where they are expected to harness their efforts towards family subsistence, registering their presence in the public sphere only to the extent that it does not challenge their subordinate status beside men as brothers, fathers, husbands and leaders who hold the fort and chart the path (2004, 484).

As Ampofo (2010, 36) points out, research and teaching for African women in universities in Africa is bedeviled by a host of challenges, such as low statistical visibility (low in number) and unequal power relations with men. Very few women occupy policy making positions in universities. She argues that those with high visibility view those with low visibility as weak, unimportant and lacking in status. This affects the confidence and self esteem of those with low visibility. Women academics have access to fewer resources and lack support structures.

The progress of African women in the modern economy has been strongly linked to their traditional status as daughters, sisters, wives, mothers and mothers-in law, something that reinforces existing expectations, placing considerable limits on women's advancement, while men are viewed as the real political subjects (Okeke 2004, 485).

With greater globalization and the impact of structural adjustment programs that lead to a decline of government subsidies to universities, the dependence of universities on donor funding led to a situation where nation building took a backseat to the agendas of donors. The impact of the structural adjustment programs of the World Bank has contributed to the qualitative deterioration of African universities in a situation where the World Bank's agenda serves the Washington consensus more than the needs of millions of disempowered Africans (Mama 2003, 103). Rapid technological change, the weakened capacity of the African state, and two decades of economic upheaval have also taken their toll. During this period, universities also experienced major shifts in the composition and orientation of their student bodies, changes in their courses and systems of instruction, as well as a systematic brain drain of talented academics (Olukoshi and Zeleza 2004, 1- 2). Relevance was redefined to mean market compatibility. The social sciences, arts and humanities were deemed "market unfriendly," irrelevant and not worth supporting. This development contradicted the need of social science to build social responsibility in Africa. With the greater corporatization of universities and the accompanying managerialism, the question is how to balance equity and efficiency, representation and responsibility, internationalization and indigenization, privatization and the public good (Olukoshi and Zaleza 2004, 3). Corporatization leads to universities adopting a discourse of accountability, entrepreneurship and technology, embedded in a neo-liberal discourse of market driven services.

The growing privatization and diversification of higher education programs affect women negatively. Restricted access to private universities (some of dubious quality) will further prevent women from getting into higher education as women do not have the means to pay the fees set by private universities. This situation will have dire consequences for social equity (Okeke 2000, 489). The lack of education as a priority for women shows in literacy statistics with 64 percent of women being illiterate on the continent compared to 40 percent of men. It also shows in the ratios of women to men in the social sciences such as political science 1:15, sociology 1:18 and law 1:12. As Tamale and Oloka-Onyango (2000, 7) argue, these inequitable proportions are not accidental but they reflect the deep rooted social and cultural norms which are embedded in the educational system beginning at the elementary level. The low priority of women's education is also visible in the low representation of women in paid employment compared to other developing countries (Okeke 2004, 484). Research has shown that gender neutral formal procedures for selection, recruitment and promotion at the tertiary level often have gendered outcomes that are seldom acknowledged because of hegemonic assumptions that institutions are rational and egalitarian in their functions (Mama 2003, 16). After three decades of independence only 3 percent of Africa's professors and only 25 percent of those enrolled in universities are women (Mama 2003, 109).

Apart from gender neutral recruitment, women's entry into the academy is hampered by women's sexual and reproductive responsibilities, making it hard for women to compete with men. Women carry out the informal and invisible work of institutional maintenance since the care economy rests with them (Mama 2003, 120). To compound the problem, higher education institutions are sites for the production and reproduction of contemporary gender identities and sexual practices (Mama 2003, 117).3

Since the formation of AAWORD and WIN (Women in Nigeria), gender scholarship has increased on the continent as African feminists have attempted to get an institutional foothold (Mama 1996, 6). These feminists use many different theoretical frameworks and analytical perspectives dealing with a range of topics such as "the gender division of labor," "domestic work," "development," "the household" and "care work" but with the aim of interrogating and critiquing existing paradigms inherited from the West. Not only did this scholarship attempt to address gender inequality and male dominance, but it also sought to transform existing perceptions of gender and create gender consciousness where none existed (Pereira 2002, 11). Mama gives an overview of the different subjects that have come under scrutiny by feminists such as women and the state (governance, politics, nationalism, liberation movements and political structures); culture, religion, sexuality and identity; work and the economy such as urban and rural, formal and informal, domestic labor and sex work (Mama 1996). By asking different questions, feminist analyses challenged inequalities in households, such as consumption patterns, health care and education patterns where the outcomes favored men (Pereira 2002, 11). Feminist scholarship also highlighted bias in the employment sector showing how women were concentrated in certain job categories that are usually low paid, and in the informal sector.

Some of the most important contributions of feminist scholarship document the destructive effects on women of militarization and war in Africa and of structural adjustment programs enforced by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Feminist scholarship in Africa aims to transform the ways in which African realities are understood and advance social change. But gains cannot be taken for granted as men are resistant to using feminist analysis and feminists should expect continued resistance to their work by male scholars, even progressive ones. The domination of scholarship by men in Africa does not produce knowledge that is transformative of institutions and society toward gender equality (Pereira 2002, 29).

<sup>3</sup> See in this regard issues 8 (2007) and 9 (2007) of *Feminist Africa* on the theme of "Rethinking Universities". Both issues give a cutting edge analysis of the difficulties and obstacles women experience in African universities. It also laments the disappearance of the gender agenda.

### The Emergence of Women's Studies in Africa

Women's Studies (later called Gender and Women's Studies) emerged during the 1980s in Africa. Today, some 30 universities have some kind of Gender Studies program. These programs are often funded by donor funding that sets the agenda through processes where Western expertise plays an important role in obtaining resources (Arnfred 2003, 6). In spite of this, African gender scholars struggle to develop indigenous gender knowledge and to be critical of Western impositions.

Prior to the 1980s (and the formation of AAWORD in 1977), Western scholars, especially anthropologists, conducted studies about women's lives. While the rise of the women's movement internationally stimulated the formation of Women's Studies programs, other factors such as the development industry, national and sub-regional conditions, the crisis in African education as well as the emergence of state feminism also contributed (Mama 1996, 3- 4). The development industry did not really challenge patriarchy in Africa but by integrating women into development (or WID), it created a space for women around a vaguely defined development agenda, bolstered by national gender machineries4 co-opted by the state. This provided support to Women's Studies. In addition, Women's Studies drew on gender activism on the continent organized around issues of reproductive labor and the dual role of women as academics caring for children and having an obligation towards households, child care and care for the elderly. These obligations put women at a structural disadvantage and led to mobilization around these issues (Bennett 2002, 40).

Feminism, women sensitive agendas and the struggle for gender equality continue to meet resistance and resentment both inside and out of academia. (Tamale and Oloka-Onyango 2000, 1). Gender bias has compromised the academic freedom of women through a lack of access to institutions of learning, through a restricted choice of subjects and through limits on what women can research. The numbers of women are also small in higher management positions and senior ranks (Sall 2000, x; Zelesa 2004, 62-63).

Because the study of gender is controversial, self-censorship leads many feminist scholars to concentrate on subjects that most likely will be sponsored by funding agencies, or to steer clear of controversial topics of research altogether. This often has a depoliticizing effect on activism (Mama 1996, 82). National networks are crucial - all of which suffer from financial and infrastructural weaknesses that hinder academic production and rely on a great

<sup>4</sup> National gender machineries form part of the concept of "state feminism". It refers to structures placed in the state to enhance gender equality, such as an Office of the Status of Women or a Commission of Gender Equality *etc.*

deal of voluntarism from committed scholars. Mama (1996, 82) emphasizes the key role African academic and research institutions play in the struggle for the Africanization of Gender and Women's Studies, while cautioning against the drain of quality scholars into WID consultancy work rather than into independent intellectual production.

The impact of donor funding on the study of gender should not be underestimated. Tamale and Oloka-Onyaong call the impact of donor driven agendas that prevent women and gender sensitive academics in Africa from implementing their liberative agendas, the "third stage of colonialism" (2000, 10). When gender becomes the "flavor of the month," gender scholars who accept funding need to adhere to the agendas of the donors.

Liberating agendas are further compromised by the impact of violence. Because of the prevalence of gender based violence on the continent, tertiary education does not escape the impact of sexual harassment. Tamale and Oloka-Onyango argue that sexual harassment is so common, women perceive it as normal (2000, 11). In the absence of active women's students' organizations and of mechanisms in university administrations for dealing effectively with the issue, sexual harassment has a particularly debilitating impact on gender equality in universities. Bennett discusses the importance of more and more tertiary institutions addressing sexual violence and attempting to link their findings with educational outreach and campus-policy based initiatives (2002, 50). Sexual harassment takes different forms on campuses ranging from *quid pro quo* behavior, where women are offered desperately needed resources for sexual favors, to stalking and rape. Whatever form it takes, it has devastating effects on women's well-being and turns campuses into hostile environments for women. A path breaking study of sexual harassment in tertiary institutions, titled *Killing a Virus with Stones,* has shown that sexual harassment takes on different forms at the University of Stellenbosch, the University of the Western Cape in South Africa and the University of Botswana, and has dire consequences for women (Bennett 2005; see also *Agenda* 2009).

Overall, in Africa, political science as a discipline has had to develop its analytical frameworks and approaches in the context of development debates, creeping authoritarianism by African states and donor involvement by global funding agencies that undermine indigenous African thought. Younger women scholars have attempted to bring gender into the discipline, but face many institutional and cultural barriers. We now turn to the state of Political Science in Africa.

### The State of Political Science in Africa

After independence, most equatorial African countries acquired a university to symbolize their independence (Mamdani 1998, 2). The autonomy of these universities has, however, to be viewed in relation to the state. A subject like political science always risked being too critical of the state, thereby having whatever autonomy that existed for its practitioners threatened. A good example of this tension is Idi Amin's banning of political science as a subject of study in Uganda in the early 1970s in a more general assault against democratic rights and freedom of expression (Tamale and Oloka-Onyango 2000, 5).

Authoritarian regimes were threatened by educated populations, resulting in a clampdown on universities to the extent that they were unable to be sites of critical perspectives and the production of independent intellectual views (Mamdani 1998, 3). The continental networks that were deliberately multidisciplinary and multi-national like CODESRIA and the Association of African Political Studies (AAPS) were really the only guarantee for an autonomous intellectual space. According to Mamdani, these multi-national networks and not the country based universities were the real locus of intellectual production (1998).

In North America and Europe, the study of Africa is considered an "area" study but on the African continent, political scientists find this type of "ghettoization" of Africa an indication of a colonial mentality5 . This means that scholars must resist the "view from the North" in their analytical approaches and frameworks. In political science after decolonization, the main methodological commitment was to political economy. The hegemony of this method and its focus on the interaction between market and the state was supreme (Mamdani 1998, 4). This method influenced interdisciplinary and comparative approaches to the study of politics as well. Only toward the 1980s and 1990s did a shift to the study of political action such as participation and voting behavior occur. While issues of development remained important, since development was the most highly institutionalized field on the continent, the debates also shifted to the study of structural adjustment policies and the impact of donor funding on democracy and civil society. Sall also observes that the boundaries between disciplines are often not as clear cut and that many developments take place in the margins of academic activities (2003, 40). In the past decade, interdisciplinary studies broadened the horizons of political studies such as gender studies, cultural studies, human rights studies and child studies. As a consequence, disciplinary boundaries become less clear.

<sup>5</sup> See in this regard the debate in *Afrika Spectrum* 40: 3 (2005), "Special Issue: African Studies".

Another shift occurred at the turn of the twentieth century with some scholars – such as Achille Mbembe – starting to theorize African politics from a post-colonial and post-modern perspective. Mbembe's work has raised the issue of whether Africa is ready for this type of theorizing or whether this is an anti-nationalist position whose use is premature for Africa. Lively debates have ensued about this issue, leading to a growing divide between a younger generation of post-modern scholars and older African intellectuals who prefer an anti-colonial and nationalist analysis (See *Codesria Bulletin* no 1& 2, 2004).

The dominant themes at present in political science and international relations on the continent are conflict, conflict prevention, political sociology (dominated by work on political violence), corruption in the state and the consequences of structural adjustment (Sall 2003, 42). The shift indicates a more widespread range of themes and a movement away from state, development and nation building. These topics include social movements, globalization, citizenship, refugees, reproductive health and HIV/AIDS. African scholars have attempted to indigenize the teaching of social science in Africa with the widespread use of commissioned research and consultancy on policy relevance, linked to the policy agenda of the state and more recently to market relevance. Sall argues that the biggest problem is often the sustainability of research in the face of the lack of broader more integrated research programs, with the exception of CODESRIA and the Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa (OSSREA) (2003, 46).

In 1990, an important book by Tanzanian feminist political scientist, Ruth Meena appeared on gender, titled *Gender in Southern Africa: Conceptual and Theoretical Issues* (Harare: SAPES Books), charting the way for gender research in political science in Africa. This book is widely used by feminist scholars for teaching purposes, yet it has not found its way into mainstream political science. Since 2000, important books on women's politics co-written or co-edited by American and African women political scientists and gender studies scholars have appeared. These are *The Women's Movement in Uganda* written by Ali Mari Tripp (University of Wisconsin Madison) and Joy Kwesiga (Makerere University, Uganda) (2002) and *African Women's Movements – Changing Political Landscapes* written by Ali Mari Tripp, Isabel Casimiro (Eduard Modlane University, Mozambique), Joy Kwesiga and Alice Mungwa (African Union Observer Mission to the UN) (2009). Another important book has been written by Gisela Geisler, at the time a senior researcher at the Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway, *Women and the Remaking of Politics in Southern Africa* (2004).

### The State of Political Science in South Africa

The development of Political Science in South Africa has been different from the rest of the continent due to apartheid. In South Africa, universities under apartheid were segregated by race and were state subsidized. Historically, black universities received fewer resources, yet trained some of the very best African intellectuals such as Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko. Where political economy was the panacea for the rest of the continent, political scientists in South Africa studied political behavior using surveys for empirical research, Marxism, institutionalism, comparative politics, international relations and African studies as an area study. A 1998 review of the discipline showed fields of research to include affirmative action (and gender), political economy and security, South African politics, political behavior, and democratization and development (Booysen and van Nieuwkerk).

Political science as a fairly young field of study (having its origins in the 1960s) became politicized because of apartheid, as most social science subjects did. Some political science departments paid lip-service to apartheid and gave legitimacy to its policies through research and teaching, while others vehemently opposed it. The isolation of South African political science from international developments throughout the apartheid period encouraged South African scholars to place a greater emphasis on South African politics with limited attention to the continent. In the mid 1990s, the international community rescinded the academic boycotts. This, combined with the greater availability of personal computers and the greater acceptability of big surveys connected political science in South Africa with international developments in the field.

A new generation of political science research has developed since 1994. Most of this research has been concerned with the analysis of key social phenomena such as poverty, crime, social attitudes and voting intentions. Only at the end of the 1990s did a second generation of social scientific research that is not solely policy oriented emerge. Characterized by an engagement with the international literature, methodological innovation, and the use of a much wider range of statistical techniques, political science in South Africa began to become more quantitative.6 Some of the most important research now considered cutting edge empirical research using large samples and huge data sets have produced two books through international collaboration, one dealing with tolerance in South Africa and another one that is a comparative public opinion study of 12 countries in Africa (Afrobarometer) – the first ever large scale opinion surveys done in political science in Africa (Gibson and

<sup>6</sup> See Seekings 2002. for a history of the uneven development of quantitative social science in South Africa.

Gouws 2004; Bratton, Mattes and Gyimah-Boadi 2005). Both studies used innovative methodological approaches and advanced statistical procedures. This shift toward the use of quantitative methodology, however, has not opened the discipline to the study of gender, as gender analyses traditionally rely more on qualitative methodology. While gender politics and feminist theory did enter the arena of political science (mainly through feminist scholars who studied in the North), it did not become a major sub-field in the discipline.

In 1998, *Politikon,* the official journal of the South African Association of Political Studies (SAAPS)7 , dedicated a whole issue to gender in political science. This was a milestone since this had never been done before. The guest editor for that issue, Shireen Hassim, argued at the time that it "reflects the new editor's commitment to represent debates in the wider sphere of the discipline, and to bring those debates – often marginal, excluded and even silenced within the mainstream of the discipline- into the pages of the journal (1998, 3)." She was correct to attribute this development to the commitment of the editor and not to the discipline itself because since the end of the term of the then editor, very few articles have appeared on gender issues. The "radical deafness" about gender issues that characterizes South African political science and its journal continues (Hassim 1998, 6).

As my 1993 review of the discipline demonstrates, political science has an androcentric bias. The discipline treats the citizen as male and the maledomination of the discipline reproduces and reinforces unconsciously and uncritically the marginalization of women as political subjects (Hassim 1998, 3). While women are still under-represented as lecturers in the discipline, the profile is slowly changing with new entrants into tenure track positions being women. These women, however, do not necessarily have an interest in gender analysis.<sup>8</sup> In 1993, women lecturers were in fairly junior positions. Those with an interest in gender analysis were even fewer in number. They have now moved into mid-career positions. A few have established themselves as important gender scholars in South Africa and also on the continent in both political science and international relations.

The main topics of research addressed by these scholars have been the institutionalization of gender through the National Gender Machineries, the representation of women in terms of the bigger debate about special mecha-

<sup>7</sup> In 1992 Shireen Hassim and Amanda Gouws started a gender caucus in SAAPS that lasted for about four years before it was disbanded due to a lack of interest by women political scientists. SAAPS, however, have had women presidents in the past and in 2008 the elected President and Vice-President of SAAPS were women and I was elected President in 2010.

<sup>8</sup> The University of Stellenbosch is now in the position where five of its eight tenure track members are women.

nisms, quotas, policy issues, law reform, HIV/AIDS, issues of culture as well as the important issue of citizenship. Social welfare policy and its link with the ethics of care has also been scrutinized. Most of these studies have been interdisciplinary in nature.

A few very important books produced by South African political scientists who are gender experts (in some cases in conjunction with gender scholars from the USA and Europe) have appeared in the past seven years dealing with issues of transformation, representation, the electoral system, citizenship and women's movements. They are: Goetz, A. and S. Hassim (2003) *No Shortcuts to Power* London: Zed; Gouws, A. ed. (2005*) (Un)Thinking Citizenship: Feminist Debates in Contemporary South Africa*. UK: Ashgate Publisher (Cape Town: Juta.) , Hassim, S. (2005) *Contested Authority: Women's Organizations and Democracy in South Africa*. University of KwaZulu Natal Press, (2006) (University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), and Britton, H, J. Fish and S. Meintjes (eds) (2009) *Women's Activism in South Africa – Working across Divides.* University of KwaZulu Natal Press. These scholars draw on Western models that are applied to South Africa but at the same time, they modify, critique and develop new theoretical insights for the local context.

The review of the discipline by Booysen and van Nieuwkerk (1998) shows no listing for gender courses except where they are embedded in political theory. It, however, does show that gender is emerging as an area of research. In the recent past, more papers on gender have been presented at the annual conferences of the South African Association of Political Studies (SAAPS). A successful gender panel was also organized by South African women political scientists at the conference of the International Political Science Association in Durban, South Africa in 2003. But women as subjects and agents of politics are still not considered an important area of study by male political scientists.

Women political scientists who have a specialization in gender tend to work interdisciplinarily and some are also involved in activist work around gender or act as consultants for non-governmental organizations that work in gender related areas, such as the Gender Advocacy Program (GAP), the Gender Education and Training Network (GETNET), or in advisory capacities on gender to the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA). Political scientists with an interest in gender are also involved in Women's Net, an electronic website on gender issues.

Involvement with the African Gender Institute (AGI), an interdisciplinary teaching and research institute at the University of Cape Town, is mutually beneficial to political scientists who are gender scholars and to the institute as well. As one of its visions of developing gender studies on the continent, the AGI started the GWS (Gender and Women's Studies) Network, an electronic network that links gender scholars on the continent with each other and through which important gender issues are debated on a regular basis.9 Implicit in many of the conversations on the GWS Network is a gender analysis of areas of concern for the continent, such as sexuality, the impact of culture and religion10 on gender related issues, homophobia, gender based violence, the impact of the HIV/Aids pandemic and the problems of women in higher education institutions, as well as sexualities.

In 2003, the AGI launched an online journal titled *Feminist Africa* that now also comes out in hard copy to provide gender scholars with a journal that deals with gender in the African context. This journal has been highly successful and has dealt with issues of women's writing, sexualities and national politics. Yet, resources to keep the journal going have been a problem all along. *Feminist Africa* and *Agenda* are now the two feminist journals in South Africa in which gender specialists, including political scientists, publish rather than publishing in the disciplinary journal, *Politikon*. This contributes to a situation where the gender research by women political scientists is not made visible to and/or read by other political scientists. Unfortunately, most interdisciplinary activity takes place outside the mainstream of political science and the research of gender scholars has not led to curriculum reform in political science. A narrow definition of politics as related only to the public sphere is still used as *the* definition of politics. In 1993 (p. 21), I argued that a period of self-reflection, a critique of sexist institutions and the transformation of curricula and existing knowledge are necessary to change a situation of only adding women and perpetuating bad science rather than transforming political science. This transformation is slow in coming. For gender specialists, this often means carrying on research in mainstream political science areas as well as doing gender research at the same time. Furthermore, women political scientists who work in gender related areas work at the intersections of knowledge production and activism since many of them believe that gender scholarship should have policy relevance, especially in this period of transition to democracy. They attempt to strike a balance between theorizing and policy relevance, a task that can be quite daunting and time consuming.

<sup>9</sup> See "Strengthening Gender and Women's Studies in African Contexts." AGI Workshop Report. 22-23 January 2002 for more information.

<sup>10</sup> There has been a vigorous debate on this network about the possible stoning to death of Amina Lawal, under Sharia law in Nigeria.

# Conclusion

What this overview of the state of the discipline of political science in Africa shows is that scholarship in the social sciences cannot be disconnected from the plight of tertiary education on the continent, something that is strongly influenced by globalization and donor funding. As long as gender scholarship runs parallel to mainstream analysis in political science, the discipline will remain gender blind while a few committed feminist scholars will continue to do research, at the same time shifting their attention to multi-disciplinary programs. Keeping a balance between developing indigenous knowledge on the continent and interacting with the international community is important. Gender scholars in political science have to deal with a double burden – that of being marginalized in the discipline and that of being involved in knowledge production on a marginalized continent. While most of the topics dealt with in political science such as structural adjustment, poverty, violence, and HIV/AIDS profoundly influence the lives of women, the study of women is not integrated into mainstream political science in Africa. If research findings and policy recommendations are to be realistic, feminists and their allies need to find new and different ways to continue advancing the integration of gender into the study of political science in Africa.

### References

African Gender Institute Newsletter. 2004. vol 12.

*Agenda,* 2009. "Gender Violence in Education." vol 80.


# Chapter 4 Creating Political Space for Women in South Asia

*Ranjana Kumari* 

"The very essence of democracy is that every person represents all the varied interests which compose the nation."

*Mahatma Gandhi* 

### Introduction

The 21st century has inherited the unfinished agenda of achieving inclusive democracy. Many have a feeling of unease about the ultimate meaning of representative and meaningful democracy due to the tendency of democracies across the world to exclude or marginalize half of their citizens from the systems of political representation and decision-making. Mechanisms of exclusion may take the overt form of constitutional or legislative barriers, or may be embedded within the social, religious and cultural constructions of gender relations.

This chapter aims to give an overview of the contemporary situation facing women in South Asia with regard to their political participation, their empowerment and their role in the realization of development and democratization. It will also highlight two important areas where the region has contributed very interesting questions to the study of gender and politics: the prominence of some female political leaders in male-dominated societies and some of the institutional measures that can be undertaken to achieve greater political gender equality.

The notion that women are second class citizens, subordinates whose political participation is both devalued and undesirable is very apparent in the South Asian context. The exclusion of the region's women from the political arena in terms of their physical presence within decision-making structures is surpassed only by some nations of the Middle East. However, in recent years some significant constitutional and legislative changes at local and national levels of governance have attempted to increase women's participation in political processes. This chapter presents the findings of recent literature concerning gender and governance in South Asia. The aim is to identify the most important questions, issues and challenges that are defining gender politics in South Asia, as well as to assess women's progress towards political empowerment and the overall goal of equity for women. In particular this chapter analyzes whether the changes that have been introduced are ornamental or if they have made genuine headway towards reaching substantive equality for women (Sridharan and Rodić 2003).**<sup>1</sup>**

In brief, this chapter outlines the nature of the current political space that women occupy; how women might redefine this space; what prevents them from occupying a larger space; and the strategies that have been implemented to address the absence of women in the long term. The chapter begins by discussing the usage of the terms "political participation" and "empowerment" and the consequences that differing interpretations of the terms have for the relevant debates. This is followed by a summary of arguments commonly used to justify why more women are needed in politics.

The next section highlights significant disparities of inclusiveness within South Asia. Through an analysis of the constraints women face, it becomes clear that the greatest obstacles to women's political participation exist in family structures and the social valuation of women. The chapter then looks at the strategies that aim to address gender discrimination and facilitate women's participation in the political sphere, in particular quotas or "reservations of seats"2 for women. Quota politics raise a number of theoretical and political questions: How can political structures and actors be truly representative of the population that elected them? What gender biases lie within electoral systems and how influential are the political parties in terms of selecting the candidates who are then democratically elected?

The chapter will then address the issue of why women are so excluded from the political space in South Asia, and will include a discussion of the various factors that work together to keep women from participating within political decision-making bodies. It will conclude by examining what can be achieved if we are able to overcome these forces of exclusion and how we can create the enabling environment needed to foster a more representative form of democratic politics*.* 

<sup>1</sup> Given that India's population constitutes approximately 75 percent of the South Asian population, the majority of texts and examples referred to here concern India. As Sridharan and Rodić observed, despite variations in the degree of gender disparities present within South Asian countries, the type of disparities themselves are very similar throughout. The countries to be examined under the umbrella term "South Asia" are Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

<sup>2</sup> For the purpose of this paper, the term reservations and quotas shall be used synonymously, as they are essentially used to refer to the same concept within the literature on this topic.

# Political Participation of Women

Before progressing further, the term "political participation" needs clarification as do the definitions and connotations of words associated with this issue such as "power," "empowerment" and "representation." The general usage of these words influences expectations concerning how women will gain entry into the political sphere, the social paradigms women are working within, and what is achievable once women have gained entry. This chapter uses "political participation" to refer to the involvement of women in the various different layers of governance. At the most basic level, the right to vote is the most common way that women participate politically. In addition, this chapter focuses on the literature regarding women as active participants in local, regional and national layers of governance, the diversity of roles which they occupy within these structures and the positions of decision-making seniority they possess.

For scholars such as Evelin Hurst, framing the idea of the political empowerment of women in terms of women's proportionate representation in governance – an assumption which is implicit in much of the discussion about gender-based quotas – neglects the complexity of the situation on the ground. She, therefore, calls for a thorough examination of exactly what is meant in development discourses by empowerment. In particular, how the "power" element within "empowerment" is being defined, and the implications this has for the expectations of what political empowerment will yield in terms of improving the overall situation of women (2004, 43).

### Discourses of Empowerment

Citing Rowlands (1998), Hurst argues that supporters of the "women in development" discourse advocate that women should be given "the chance to occupy positions of 'power' in terms of political and economic decisionmaking… . The difficulty with this view of 'empowerment' is that if it can be bestowed, it can just as easily be taken away. In other words, it does not involve a structural change in the power relations (Hurst 2004)."

This approach stems from the view that power is finite in supply and therefore a zero-sum game of redistribution. According to this model, power is valued as a scarce resource and is fought for as such. Hurst suggests that to counter this fear and fierce competition we should seek a new understanding of power. For example, power can be defined as generative through which it has the ability to create something new and to instigate change which does not deprive others of this capacity (Hartsock 1985, 223).

Michel Foucault (1980) argued for a relational view of power, which also goes against the notion of power as a finite entity. In Foucault's conceptualization, power cannot be held, but it can be exerted through the web of social relations in which each individual is enmeshed. However, the degree of agency that individuals have is contested. According to Foucault, individuals internalize oppressive social norms to become self-limiting and selfdisciplining. People are therefore socialized subjects who are constrained in their actions by the overarching social paradigm. In relation to this discussion of the political sphere, the dominant paradigm is patriarchal and therefore women can only operate within the parameters of this framework. This has substantial repercussions for the idea of "power" particularly in relation to "women's empowerment." The frameworks within which women must act inherently favor men, as the value system that underlies the structures is based on male characteristics. This prevents women from being able to act as equals within the political sphere.

Spike Peterson and Anne Sisson Runyan argue that political power usually refers to "power-over," which is the ability of one person to make someone do something they previously had no intention of doing. "This definition of power is masculinist to the extent that it presupposes androcentric notions of strength, competition, aggression, and coercion and because it understands power only in terms of public-sphere activities that are dominated by men (Peterson and Runyon 1999, 69).

Given to the complex nature of power, questions emerge concerning what the reality of women's empowerment might be, and if to be empowered women must adopt the characteristics commonly associated with men. When political participation is considered to be empowerment, this questioning of the power concept is essential to framing the entire discourse on participation.

Rowlands favors a combination of definitions to capture the meaning of the word "power." She suggests that "… empowerment, can involve the development of power to, with and from within." To get into positions of power is one step but attaining other forms of power is very important also. The notion of achieving political equality without also restructuring social relations in general is impossible (Hurst 2004, 48)." Therefore Hurst concludes that bringing women into formal positions of power could be one path leading to empowerment, but it is by no means a guarantee of it. In this way reservations or quotas can be seen as an enabling condition for empowerment only (Hurst 2004, 49).

This brief discussion paints a bleak picture of the task ahead if true equality is it to be reached for women. However, the progress being made by women should not be disregarded just because it is taking place within a patriarchal ideology and it subscribes to challenge the predominant models of power. Increasing the number of women in decision-making positions has many real effects such as the development of women friendly policies was well as raising women's awareness of the different roles women can play in society (Chattopadhyay and Duflo 2004, 1424). Chandra (1997, 395) describes empowerment as the process as well as the goal of changing the structure of oppression. This definition of empowerment seems to encapsulate the way the term is employed in much of the South Asian literature.

### The Need for Women in Politics

Increasing the political space for women is generally promoted as being central to the achievement of social justice and gender equity. However recently, central to the debate has been whether or not the presence of women within decision-making structures actually affects the policy decisions made and the issues being prioritized. A study conducted in India by Chattopadhyay and Duflo (2004, 1431) shows that the reservation of seats for women does affect policy choices and leads to the development of policies that better reflect women's preferences (*ibid.,* 1409). These results demonstrate that a politician's gender influences policy decisions.

To base an argument for the increased inclusion of women in politics on the subjective notion that they will be "better" politicians than men is not advisable (Hurst 2004, 41). Yet the contribution which women can make to political life should not be underestimated. Dollar, Fisman and Gatti (1999, 3) investigated whether increased female participation leads to more honest governance – something which has previously been assumed but rarely justified with data. Their hypothesis arose from the findings of behavioral studies of women which indicate that women are more honest, less selfish, have greater integrity and are more generous in their economic decisions than men (*ibid.,* 1). Overall, these studies conclude that at the country level, higher rates of female participation in government are associated with lower levels of corruption (*ibid.*, 6).

Chattopadhyay and Duflo proffer an alternative reading of these findings, and question whether the lower levels of corruption can be attributed to the participation of women in decision-making bodies or whether the "countries that are less corrupt are also more likely to elect women to parliament (2004, 1410)?" Still, increasing women's participation in South Asian politics has the potential of affecting substantial positive change at all levels of society. Chattopadhyay and Duflo's study showed that in the Indian regions of West Bengal and Rajasthan where they conducted their research, the gender of the Pradhan (the head of the local government bodies at the village level – the "Gram Panchayat") affects the provision of public goods. Their research found that "(i)n both places, there are significantly more investments in drinking water in GPs reserved for women."3 From a development perspective then, in terms of delivering change on the ground, the inclusion of women in local government looks like a definite step in the right direction.

Drude Dahlerup (1988, 295)remarks that although it is difficult to isolate the effect of growth in women's political representation from the overall social development of a nation, certain identifiable trends can be associated with the increase in women's political representation. These include a lessening of the stereotyping of women and the creation of new role models for women in public life. Having women as role models makes a big difference in terms of encouraging more women to enter the political sphere and increasing women's confidence in political structures. Dahlerup also notes that women's political participation can lead to the removal of open resistance against women politicians and a change in some social conventions. However, in Scandinavia, despite the increase of women in politics, the political culture remains essentially unchanged.

In other areas, a lack of women's participation is perhaps one explanation for the failure of efforts to develop more stable democratic governance. The absence of women in peace keeping and security councils is a global problem (Quintos-Deles 2006). In 2005, of the 61 senior UN officials and deputies in charge of running peacemaking, peace building, or peacekeeping missions, or acting as envoys in situations of conflict and post conflict, only four were women. "Women are everywhere in the peace process, except at the negotiating table and decision-making posts (*ibid*.)." The contribution women have to offer in this realm of decision-making is great. An example of this can be seen in the role of Sri Lankan women in the peace process where a women's committee was established specifically to examine gender issues in the peace process.

### The South Asian Context: Disparity of Inclusiveness

The experience of South Asian countries has been varied in terms of their approaches to negotiating political space for women, especially given the different historical frameworks in which democratization is taking place and concerns about this discourse in the Islamic countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives. An overarching patriarchal paradigm is present in all

<sup>3</sup> They point out, however, that individual women are "…not particularly more responsive to the needs of women and men in their communities. Rather, it is because their own preferences are more aligned to the preferences of women that they end up serving them better."

South Asian countries. Traditional patriarchal structures persist in blocking the proportional representation of women at all levels, although some significant progress at the levels of local governance has been made. Indeed many agree, "The introduction of quotas has initiated a 'silent revolution' in South Asia (Sridharen and Rodić 2004, 7)." Yet notwithstanding the progress made by some individual states, in South Asia as a region, the average membership rate of women in parliaments is one of the lowest in the world – lower even than that of East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (Khawar 2005).

Disparities between how women are included in politics exist between countries but also within countries themselves. For example, as well as participating at local levels, some South Asian women have occupied prominent positions of power at the national level, and with a frequency which is rarely seen elsewhere. Given the general nature of patriarchy and the fact that none of the governments are regarded as being particularly "woman friendly" (Fleschenberg 2005, 2), this trend is very intriguing. With the exception of Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives, all of the South Asian countries have known female Prime Ministers or Presidents and women currently lead some of the prominent political parties in the region. Swarna Jayaweera views this kind of political empowerment of individual women as transitory (Jayaweera 1997, 421). Some see this phenomenon as the sporadic mass mobilization of women at times of crisis and nationalistic fervor. The absence of a continuous wave of women vying for the top political positions would suggest that these fleeting glimpses of female political power are not an indication of the overall empowerment of women.

Current and past female political leaders in South Asia, such as Chandrika Kumaratunga of Sri Lanka and Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, benefited greatly from influential families in their ascent to power. These women leadres are daughters or widows of former government/opposition leaders, and sometimes they are already the second female leader in line (Derichs and Thompson 2003). Indira Gandhi entered politics as the daughter of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru; Sonia Gandhi, the daughter in-law of Indira Gandhi and the widow of Rajiv Gandhi, benefits greatly from the family dynasty, whilst the Congress party also benefits from her position as a member of the Nehru/Gandhi family.

Family as a social institution is very strong and influential in South Asian society and is no less pertinent in political life, as the aforementioned dynastic trends demonstrate. Family status can be so powerful that to an extent it can override the normal disparity between the genders in politics. This "political inheritance syndrome" leads to the overriding factor in the assessment of whether or not a person is deemed an able politician in South Asia. Nevertheless, the manner in which their gender no longer being an actions are interpreted, and the personal agency with which they are credited are undeniably influenced by their gender.

In Asia, rather than blocking women's rise to leadership, gender stereotyping can prove to be a political advantage. The success of these women as leaders, Mark Thompson claims, is because of the fact that as the widows, wives and daughters of male martyrs, these women symbolized the nation's suffering while appearing non-partisan. Belonging to the "weaker sex," they stressed non-violence. They were also less threatening to potential rivals, making it easier to unite the opposition. Ironically, the same qualities that enabled women to lead democratic revolutions also contributed to the difficulties of democratic consolidation. In the case of Indira Gandhi, her political ascendancy was marred or arguably enabled by her being labeled a "dumb doll" by the colleagues of her father. Their efforts to seek justice for martyred fathers or husbands prompted accusations that they were wreaking revenge. Furthermore, once praised for leading a moral struggle against tyranny, these women leaders were accused (not always unfairly) of governing in the interests of their family dynasties (Thompson 2002, 535-555). However, the political actions of men within these dynasties may be similarly prescribed.

#### Strategies to break down barriers

In recent decades there has been a "recognition within South Asia that women can play an effective role in actualizing grassroots democracy" (Sridharen and Rodić 2004, 85), although exactly who has recognized this, is not always clear. Constitutional, legislative, and electoral system changes in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and India have created critical space for women to increase their political participation at the local government level through the introduction of quotas or "reserved seats". In Pakistan, changes have also been made at the national level (*ibid.*). The introduction of and debate surrounding quotas for women within democratic parliaments raises important questions in relation to gender and politics. The issue is also of enormous interest in political science more generally due to the various areas it affects.

The most well documented and monitored policy change was the 73rd constitutional amendment in India (24 April, 1993), which saw the reservation of seats for women in the local and regional councils in the "Panchayati Raj" system.4 Many spectators agree that this system has allowed rural women to become "the real motors of progress and social change in the subcontinent (Sridharen and Rodić 2004, 6)." Rural women are therefore the focus of much academic research into the current political participation of women.

<sup>4</sup> This amendment received the consent of the President of India on April 23, 1993 and was notified on April 24, 1993. This reservation accompanied increasing decentralization and the move towards greater regional autonomy of Indian states which enables rural areas, in theory at least, to have a greater degree of self-governance.

The devaluation of women as political actors is widespread in South Asia. With the exception of Pakistan, all of the states in the region have a representation of women in national parliaments of lower than 10 percent (Interparliamentary Union website). Attempts to introduce reservations for women at the national level in Sri Lanka and India have been dismissed repeatedly. Women have been active participants in instigating democracy, and are seen as mobilizing forces at times of political tension, yet they have only a minor presence in political parties and decision-making positions. However, while the participation of women often legitimizes movements, this does not necessarily result in their political visibility or in representative parity for them (Rai 2000, 60).

What is perhaps most startling in the example of India is the divide which exists between the female politicians in the highest political echelons and female representatives in the Panchayati Raj. Female politicians who try to navigate this divide are nearly all unsuccessful. Without the support of a prominent family, even for those who have gained a position of relative power, female politicians cannot hope to emulate the profile of those who have family connections.

The absence of women at intermediate decision-making levels is also a troubling phenomenon (Fleschenberg 2005, 7).5 Suggested explanations for this pattern shed light on the interplay of the many forces which determine power relations in politics and South Asian cultures, and also reveal the extent of the restructuring that is needed to redress the gender balance in South Asia. Governments and political parties have made some inroads through constitutional, legislative, and internal party reforms changes. However, their desire and commitment to reach the target of 30 percent reservations for women laid out by the Beijing Declaration remains questionable. Sridharan and Rodić give various examples from South Asia of the lack of will amongst politicians for the promotion of women's political participation. They point out that sizeable quotas have so far been limited to local levels of governance, with the exception of Pakistan – although even here, a "lack of will on the part of the Federal Government has been a major factor in the delay in setting up of several key local government institutions such as Citizen's Community Boards (2004, 89)." In India, the Women's Rights Bill has been repeatedly dismissed despite it now being fourteen years since the 73rd Amendment in India was passed to provide quotas at the local level. Simi-

<sup>5</sup> Jahan (1987) cited in Fleschenberg 2005, 7. Jahan notes that coming from a well known family acts as a relative safeguard from the sexual harassment and other forms of stigma/ attempts to dishonor which can occur when a woman wishes to run for political office. These are often regarded as cultural constraints that inhibit a woman from participating, although here again, it seems that in the hierarchy of cultural discourses family status trumps female gender.

larly in Sri Lanka, efforts have been made in vain to introduce quotas despite the presence of a strong women's movement. Sri Lanka has a constitutional provision for equality which is legally enforceable, but this avenue is not pursued. The women's wings of the political parties, *Kantha Samithis*, contain women who are actively campaigning for their parties, yet very few of them "find a place on the nomination list of their parties, as the male leadership and party mechanisms are not pro-women (*ibid.*, 90)."

The overall approach to women taken by a government, as the literature concerning gender and development discusses, has a significant impact on the way women are incorporated into decision-making processes. Shaheen Sardar Ali describes how taking a "welfarist" approach towards women's needs implicitly disempowers women, as they are defined as needing to be "looked after (2000, 60)." A wilful attitudinal change amongst those in power is therefore necessary to expand the discourse surrounding the relationship between political structures, the impact they can have in women's lives and women's involvement in them.

### Correcting the Gender Imbalance in Political Space

There is a strong recognition amongst international and domestic organizations that in South Asia women are being restricted from entering the political sphere, and that change is necessary for future political stability. International and domestic organizations and women's rights NGOs are now calling in particular for quotas as a means of correcting historical imbalances in power and giving space for women to air their opinions. India has used reservations as an affirmative action strategy to increase the participation and representation of marginalized groups since independence. Initially quotas were perceived as a transitory measure, "in order to rectify a historically unjust and unbalanced distribution of power, which might lead to political instability (Hurst 2004, 29)." Therefore, Indians are considered to be more accepting of this kind of social engineering as legitimate policy, and generally, it could be argued that at least philosophically the concept of quotas is less politically divisive in India than in the West (*ibid*.).6 The introduction of women's reservations at the local level through the Panchayati Raj can be seen as a logical extension of the initial case for reservation. However, attemps to have the 33 percent for women replicated at the national level have

<sup>6</sup> Equally it should be noted that the recent protests against the proposed increase in the reservation of places for Untouchables, Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in Higher Education from 22.5 percent to 50 percent may indicate that this strategy is not as acceptable as Hurst assumes.

given rise once again to deeply ingrained prejudices against women. Many critics of the reservation system within India argue that women are incapable political actors and hold that positive discrimination will only increase the gulf between the genders.

Dahlerup identifies quotas or reservations as taking two distinct forms; legal quotas and voluntary party quotas. These can be introduced at local, regional or national levels of politics (2006, 21).7 In 2005, forty countries around the world had introduced legal gender quotas for parliamentary elections through constitutional and electoral law changes and additionally, quotas for public election have become a part of the statutes of around 50 major political parties.8 The success of these quotas varies from country to country and in relation to the kind of electoral system used.

The introduction of gender based quotas by national parliaments and political parties around the world has been highly contentious. For some commentators, quotas are seen as a positive discrimination which contravenes the basic liberal democratic principal of equality of opportunity or "competitive equality." Others consider quotas as necessary compensation for structural barriers that prevent fair competition. This perspective represents a dramatic departure from traditional discourses on democracy and illustrates the trend towards seeking "real" equality of results. Hanna Beate Schöpp-Schilling reiterates this sentiment by making reference to the CEDAW international agreement (2004, 4)9 . According to Article 4 of CEDAW, action to achieve substantive equality for women "allows for non-identical treatment of women (as compared to men) both for reasons of protection (maternity functions) and correction (acceleration of the achievement of de facto equality)." According to this statement, quotas are not considered to be discriminatory as they are justified by arguments concerning distributive and compensatory justice (*ibid*.).

In support of this idea, Vasanthi Raman cites the following argument made by Sarkar and Mazumdar; "When one applies the principle of democracy to a society characterized by tremendous inequalities, such special protections are only spearheads to pierce through the barriers of inequality. An unattainable goal is as meaningless as a right that cannot be exercised … the application of the theoretical principle of equality in the context of unequal situations only intensifies inequalities (2002, 3)." One major concern is that gender-based electoral quotas will simply reinforce the inequality and stereotyping which emerge from singling out a group for special treatment (Dahle-

<sup>7</sup> See also www.quotaproject.org.

<sup>8</sup> www.quotaproject.org. data correct as of 26 June 2006

<sup>9</sup> CEDAW is the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women adopted by the United Nations in 1979.

rup and Freidenvall 2005, 31).10 Treating womankind as a homogenous group in this manner, might at least theoretically be a step backwards. Enforcing quotas legally could be a disempowering move, precisely because if women are to be truly respected and act as equal to men, they must set their own individual terms and negotiate structures within which they can be on a par with men. The problem that women do not act only as "women" but also as individuals is one of the major contradictions that lies within pro-quota arguments. The kind of empowerment envisaged through the use of quotas as discussed earlier, is somewhat ambiguous, and the actual empowerment feminist activists, political scientists, and politicians themselves expect to be achieved by quotas may be unrealistic.

Another controversy relating to quotas involves whether implementing them would bring about a reduction in the quality of governance, and deny those men who have exhibited political potential the opportunity to contest seats. As Schöpp-Schilling elaborates, opponents of quota systems point to the factors of "qualification" and "merit" as obstacles to the application of preferential treatment for individuals or groups (2004, 4). Yet in response to this, the CEDAW Committee requested reviews into possible gender biases in the (culturally specific) definitions of "qualification" and "merit" (*ibid*.). Furthermore the CEDAW Committee also requested that "factors other than 'qualification' and 'merit', including the application of principles of democratic fairness and electoral choice" must be considerations during the appointment or election of individuals to, or their selection for, public and political office (*ibid*.). As mentioned previously, Hurst questioned exactly what the qualifications for being an Indian politician were, and concluded that they were very hard to specify but that shortcomings of male candidates were interpreted very differently from those of female candidates (2004, 31).

Certainly it is arguable that the most valued qualities of politicians include gender specific traits. This begs the question whether using quotas can ever result in parity for women, and re-iterates the problem of whether the "equity" they might find is still inherently structured by a public sphere whose very foundations are masculine and whose terms they find they cannot meet. This is an extreme continuation of the argument that quotas will not work to achieve equality if women are simply "given" quotas rather than actively fighting for them, as power relations have not ultimately changed. Vasudha Dhagamwar raises this objection to women's reservations at a national level in India. He observes that if women want to be in national and state-level politics, they must fight their way up and as a first step they must

<sup>10</sup> The authors also note that this is the similar contradiction that lies at the heart of the feminist agenda, where by through demarcating women as a unified group, feminists are in fact constructing the barriers they wish to destroy.

fight for 33 percent seats for women in the respective political parties (Raman 2002, 7).

The Indian National Congress party has a diminutive 15 percent quota for women candidates, although the Assa People's Council has a more impressive 35 percent quota for women (Quota Project website 2006). However, this could be interpreted as an example of quotas being used as mere token gesture, a minor dispensation to indicate outwardly that progress is underway rather than a real commitment for change. Alternatively, even if women are initially given "power" (in as much as a political seat constitutes this) the longer they have to get used to holding positions of power, the more difficult it will be to deny them power again and the more they will renegotiate the power base (Hurst 2004, 43). That women have not been appeased by quotas is evident in the case of Pakistan, where women are actively voicing their discontent with the current 17.5 percent quota in the national parliament that was created in 2002.11

Some feared that women who gain entry by quotas may act as proxies for male relatives or influential male politicians. This denies women leaders the opportunity to participate as individuals and means that governance is unlikely to benefit from being more representative. However, as Neema Kudva (2003) reports, over time, women councillors acquire the confidence and skills to act independently. Kudva argues that this should allay fears that women will act only as surrogates for male relatives. Furthermore, Chattodophyay and Duflo concluded that the impact of proxies is negligible overall (2004). Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal (2001) discovered that quotas have increased the female representation in the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC), and also that that the number of women elected in non-reserved wards is now greater than it was prior to the implementation of reservations. This, she says, points to the positive effect of reservations on women's participation (2001).

The adoption of the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments in 1993 called for a reservation of 33 percent of seats for women in the local governing Panchayats (PRIs). This has already brought over a million Indian women into the political sphere, enabling their guaranteed access to decision-making forums and to the creation of policies which will affect them and their communities. Malene Lindenmayer observed that reservation was indeed the path that led almost all of the women representatives at the local level to participate politically: 97 percent of women in the PRIs were first-time representa-

<sup>11 &</sup>quot;Women's groups have argued that the government has ignored the request for a 30 percent reservation expressed in the national consultation by the Ministry of Women and Development in May 2001 and the National Campaign for Restoration of Women's Reserved Seats in 1998. Eleven political parties endorsed the 30 percent quota for women in the provincial and national assemblies" Source: www.quotaproject.org

tives and the majority of these women contested in the elections primarily due to the security of the reservations (2002). After the implementation of the 73rd and 74th Amendments, close to 14,000 women occupied seats in development councils in the state of Karnataka; 22,000 women were elected into the Panchayats in the state of Orissa; and women in the states of Kerala and Madhya Pradesh won seats over the number that was reserved. An optimistic picture seems to emerge in relation to the impact reservations have had on the self-confidence and self-esteem of women in rural areas (Tawa Lama-Rewal 2001). In India, as in all the South Asian countries, reservations for women are not as yet thought to be destabilizing patriarchal attitudes, although the general consensus appears to be that it is still too soon to tell if this could occur in the future (Buch 1999).

Recent literature agrees that if quotas are implemented properly they have a positive impact on the numbers of women represented in the political bodies globally. The European Commission document, "Women in political decisionmaking positions," states that: "Quota regulations are an important tool for giving women access to leading political positions (European Commission 2000, 17)." The United Nations Taskforce on Education and Equality shares this sentiment and actively encourage countries to consider if it is appropriate to use quotas and if so, to implement them effectively (UN Millennium Project Task Force on Education and Gender Equality 2005, 107).

In relation to South Asia, Dahlerup and Freidenvall comment that the introduction of a 33 percent quota in village councils of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh "represents a very important step towards empowering women in countries with massive female illiteracy and a strict patriarchal regime (2005, 33-34)." While evaluations of this experience have been diverse, scholars seem to be in agreement that "profound changes are taking place, but also that, without massive support and capacity-building, these new women politicians, many of whom are illiterate, tend to become tokens *(ibid*.)," as they lack constituency-based legitimacy (Chowdhury 2002; Raman 2002; Mohantry 2003).

Quotas are a step in the right direction for women's political empowerment; however, much work needs to be done both to improve the current implementation and to make further progress in introducing them at all levels of governance. In particular, the areas which need close attention and development include: the specification of quota provisions in relation to the electoral system in use; the absence of social welfare and how this limits the activities of women; the sanctions that exist for non-compliance; and the lack of detail as to how quotas should be implemented on the ground. Indeed Dahlerup and Freidenvall note that "passing quota regulations may be just a symbolic gesture" if these things are not rectified (2005, 37). Additionally adequate systems of monitoring, evaluation and reporting are needed to gauge the progress being made. As ever, the social context is the overwhelming constraining factor, as quotas cannot work to achieve the intended ends while the population, especially the men, are not convinced anything can be gained from women in politics. Fleschenberg concludes that "any kind of gender equality policies in the political sphere need to be threefold addressing countryspecific configurations of legislative, practical and normative institutions in mainstream politics (2005, 14)"

### Why are Women Excluded from Political Space?

What then is causing such gender disparities in political participation? Strong patriarchal traditions, coupled with religious and socio-cultural norms are the crucial factors holding women back from active participation in politics. Some of these constraining factors are very subtle and derive from deeply entrenched social relations, whilst others are overt, such as blatant discriminatory legislation. With inferior economic status, less education, little or no land rights, restricted mobility and rarely any financial independence, women are essentially dependent on men to help facilitate their entry into politics.

The role class and caste have to play in determining political participation should also not be underestimated although a clear picture of how these factors influence a woman's ability to participate politically has not yet been formed. In general, the movement of women in higher caste families is traditionally more restricted, and their seclusion from the public sphere greater so as to maintain caste boundaries. Amongst the lower castes and classes, women are attributed as having greater freedom of movement and expression. This is often linked to the perceived larger economic contribution they make to the family than women from higher castes and classes.

#### Pervasive Patriarchy

No discussion of women's political participation is complete without the acknowledgement of the overbearing culture of patriarchy in South Asia, for as Yasmin Tambiah notes, the political context reflects the social framework (Tambiah 2002, 7). Established opinion is that women's activities should be largely conducted within the private sphere of life, and their contribution to society is thus measured in terms of their actions as wives, mothers, sisters and daughters-in-law. As a result, women in this region face many social restrictions as well as a surfeit of expectations and assumptions, not to mention the devaluation of any economic activities outside the private sphere which they undertake (*ibid.*).

Expectations about the future of a child begin even before birth. The practice of female foeticide exemplifies the negative perception of women's contribution to society. Numerous social indicators highlight how disadvantaged girls are compared to boys and how undervalued their presence and contributions are in society. As mentioned previously, patriarchy functions so powerfully in South Asia and elsewhere in the world because of the deep internalization of patriarchal norms by men and women alike. It prevents a mass movement of women rising up to claim equal political power, and explains why those who criticize the systems of reservations stating that women are lacking in the desire to perform such political roles may outwardly at least seem to have a point. Political action is viewed as public in nature and is defined in terms of masculinity, as opposed to private space, which is considered feminine and secluded (*ibid.*). The existence of demarcated public and private spheres characterized by gendered activities, has had a great impact on the political structure of South Asia. It restricts the visibility and mobility of women and the authority attributed to them (Fleschenberg 2002, 6). Within an overarching patriarchal framework this public/private divide including the connotations about gender traits derived from it, is perhaps the hardest to broach for women as individuals in society today.

#### Public/Private Opposition

In a volume of essays commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme, Martha Nussbaum states that given the conceptual poverty of the public/private dichotomy "one could say that the only role the distinction has unequivocally served is to protect men's acts from scrutiny." The historical exclusion of the private sphere from governance and legislation has protected men who have committed crimes within the family. Nussbaum argues that rape outside the home is a crime in every nation (2003, 9). Yet, in many cases a similar offense within the family or private sphere goes unpunished. During colonial rule in India, the British were complicit in perpetuating the autonomy of the private sphere, and felt that "leaving the subject a sphere of selfrule was to their advantage (*ibid.*, 8)." Considering that arguably in modern societies the family is a political creation, an artifact delineated by law, the idea that family activities should escape legislation and reprimand is quite paradoxical (*ibid.*, 8, 9). This principle of non-interference contributed to the prolonged suffering of millions of women who have been affected by laws that went unexamined for years relating to the private sphere, such as the legal age of marriage and divorce laws. Nussbaum notes that even upholders of the separation of public and private as the cornerstone of modernity like Jurgen Habermas have conceded that if you consider the needs of the public sphere there is "strong reason to protect the human rights of women and girls within the family, for bodily integrity and good physical and mental health are crucial pre-requisites of women's political participation (1962)." Whilst this dichotomy is upheld, it is essential that discrimination at the family and household level is eliminated, and that women's rights are no longer abused within the insulated environment of the home.

Some women see past the patriarchal shadow and express a desire to become involved in politics. Unfortunately, a simple desire to take a part in decision-making and governance is not enough. Women have more than their own psychological barriers to confront. Reports from Sri Lanka highlight women's fear of "character assassination" if they enter the public realm (Sridharan and Rodić 2004, 92). Family members have to be persuaded to support the woman's decision and beyond the immediate family, there are extended family members, neighbors and entire communities to confront, all of whom hold some kind of stereotype or preconception about what is and what is not acceptable behavior for a woman. Even Mahatma Gandhi's call for women to become politically active during the independence movement was based on the idea that they could exercise their political rights from their homes (Legg 2003, 7).

#### Religious Constraints

The physical separation of men and women into public life and the domestic environment respectively, is not only a cultural tradition but also a religious requirement for many in South Asia.12 This complicates the process of empowering women politically as the obstacle of maintaining *purdah*, the seclusion of women from men, is very difficult in contemporary political systems. *Purdah* has two forms – the physical separation of men from women and the requirement that women cover all or parts of their bodies to conceal their form. Although *purdah* is observed in quite different ways throughout Hindu and Muslim countries in South Asia, it is widespread and cannot therefore be omitted from the discussion about barriers to full democratization in this part of the world.

The following examples from India and Bangladesh reveal the kind of negotiation taking place. Sridharan and Rodić note that in Bangladesh, the success of voter education programs in increasing the female turnout (which was greater than the male) during the 1997 Bangladesh Union Council elections was very surprising given the social and religious obstacles that women

<sup>12</sup> Fleschenberg, A. 2002; Hurst, E. 2004, 19. In Northwestern Hindi-Speaking belts, "many female representatives still remain in *purdah* and sign the registers at home." However to infer that this means they are reduced to mere proxies is not a fair representation.

face when voting, such as the level of interaction with male officials this entails, and the need to have their picture taken for voter ID cards (2004, 89). In India, Niraja Jayal (2006) explores how the experiences of women in *panchayats* demonstrate that the boundaries between the public and the private are being transgressed in understated, unseen ways as the following account of a woman *pradhan* (council head) in eastern Uttar Pradesh shows:

Manju and her husband usually discuss politics and the village women's concerns at night in bed. Because of gender segregation decreed by *purdah*, ideals like 'respect', 'honour' and 'decency', this is the only space where she can talk to her husband – thus rendering the most 'private' into a locus for village politics, i.e. the "public" (Jayal 2006).

Sridharan and Rodić (2004, 91) observed that the participation of women in the political sphere in Pakistan provoked some severe religious backlash in the local government elections of 2000–2001. In some districts of the North-West Frontier Province, organized terror campaigns against women's participation in local government elections were initiated by small religious fundamentalist groups (*ibid*.). Sometimes campaigns were in collusion with political parties and even local authorities. Fatwas were issued stating that women's participation contravened Islamic law. Clerics described the participation of women as a "great sin" and the threat was made that if women did not withdraw from the election, holy war, "jihad" would be launched against them. No action was taken to stamp this out, not even by the progressive political parties (*ibid.*).

Shaheen Sardar Ali (2000, 60-61) argues that a major problem within Pakistan is that the state is reluctant to address the issue of women's status within a secular framework, although this issue relates directly to what is arguably a secular domain. Ali explains that "once placed on the statute books no law adopted in the name of Islam can easily be repealed; both the women's movement and the government are aware of this. There are limits beyond which even the most progressive of Muslims will decline to support women's equal rights and status (*ibid*.)." In contrast to this, Ali notes that considerable latitude is given to financial and state institutions that "happily turn a blind eye to clearly un-Islamic practices." This double-standard poses a significant problem for women, as Ali states: "In Pakistan, civil society and the state appear to have shared a common ideology in so far as entrenching laws discriminatory to women are concerned." Ali's comments were made before the introduction of quotas to Pakistan at a national level; however, the barrier which she identified has by no means been broken.

In their study, Dollar and Gatti (1999, 3) conclude that the evidence that "religion variables systematically explain differences in gender inequality suggests that some societies have a preference for inequality and are willing to pay a price for it. Perhaps a more accurate statement would be to say that those who control resources in the society are willing to pay to maintain gender inequality *(ibid*.)." In South Asia, "affiliations to Muslim and Hindu religions are consistently associated with high gender inequality."13

### Education

The gender inequality prescribed during childhood shapes the future of the society and a woman's place within it. The disparity in education between girls and boys demonstrates how the upbringing of each child differs depending on gender (Jayaweera 1997, 17).14 For those who do receive education, the subject choices encouraged and curricula are inherently gender-biased. Similarly, perceptions of gender-acceptable occupations curb ambitions of boys and girls alike, though arguably the field is narrowed more for the latter.15

Social attitudes towards women are manifest in the preference given to a son's education in most South Asian countries, with the notable exceptions of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Many women in South Asia are discouraged or inhibited from pursuing the education necessary to perform high level political functions, although at a local level literacy is not a prerequisite to be a politician, and not infrequently male politicians in local governace are illiterate. Hurst questions whether men are always chosen on merit in India in reference to the debate that it is the inexperience and lack of education of women which means they are ill suited to possess political power. She concludes that given that men's lack of capabilities are seen in an entirely different light from women's, "nobody really knows what the qualifications of a politician are supposed to be (2004, 31)." A poor education will greatly hin-

 13 For a discussion of how the characteristics of Hindu female deities influence the cultural status of women in India, see Arya, A. "*Devi*: The Disempowered Goddess" in R. Bhattacharya (ed.) 2004. *Behind Closed Doors; Domestic Violence in India*. Sage. New Delhi. For example, in June 2005, the UN Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination and Violence against women raised their concerns that the Maldives still retained legislative provisions excluding women from the positions of President and Vice-President (CEDAW report – Maldives 2005). See also Richard Matland's (2006, 76) discussion "Selecting yourself" in *Women in Politics: Beyond Numbers. 2006 revised edition* available at www.idea.int.

<sup>14</sup> With the exception of Sri Lanka and the Maldives, there is still a significant difference between the number of boys and girls in education in South Asia at the primary level. At the secondary and higher levels, even in Sri Lanka and the Maldives the proportion of girls studying is much lower than boys. (Jayaweera 1997, 413)

<sup>15</sup> In particular this can be seen through the education system in terms of the subjects which men and women are encouraged to study, and also perceptions of gender-acceptable occupations (Jayaweera 1997, 417)

der a woman's chances of being respected within local level politics and will certainly create a giant obstacle at the national level.

That women are lagging behind men in terms of their experience and education level is undeniable amongst the rural population; however for Hurst, this only proves "the structural discrimination that has relegated women into the private realm and hindered them in developing the required skills (*ibid.*)." Moreover, the simple equation between increasing education and increasing political empowerment overlooks other constraining factors such as the fact that "merit" itself does not necessarily result in the election of men either. These social factors cannot be removed by improving women's education alone.

Jayaweera's comparative investigation concerning the relationship between education and empowerment revealed no clear correlation between the percentage of women in positions of authority and leadership and the educational level of women in each country. She argues that "impediments to access to education and to empowerment through education in all societies are caused by the interface of gender ideologies and social and economic structural constraints (1997, 414)." This is the case in Sri Lanka and the Maldives where the enrollment of women in education is high.16 Similarly in areas like Kerala where women have achieved almost universal literacy and are far more active in the labor force, their political presence in the legislative bodies is remarkably low. This difference, by itself, should give pause to arguments that seek to link women's education and employment to a place in public political life axiomatically (Chhibber 2003). Education, Jayaweera argues, has been seen more as an agent of mobility than as an instrument of equity (1997, 418). She agrees here with "conflict" theories that argue that education tends to "reproduce economic and social class structures and gender relations and to transfer 'cultural capital' through its socializing, legitimating and 'gate keeping' functions (*ibid.,* 416)."17 Therefore, the curricula must be revised to address gender disparities, especially the negative perceptions of women, and reduce gender-based occupational crowding which results from the narrowed fields which women are encouraged to pursue *(ibid*., 418). In the Maldives, they have begun to hold career guidance fairs aimed at reducing job stereotyping (CEDAW – Maldives (2005, 10).18 The effects of this are yet to be seen.

<sup>16</sup> However the number of girls in education declines substantially at secondary and tertiary stages of the education process (Jayaweera 1997, 413; CEDAW – Maldives 2005, 20)

<sup>17</sup> That education helps to enhance a woman's role in decision-making is also challenged by Jayaweera (1997, 22), as she notes the passive acceptance of gender inequality within the family and discriminatory practices even amongst university educated women in professional families.

<sup>18</sup> For example, in June 2005, the UN Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination and Violence against women raised their concerns that the Maldives still retained legislative

### Lack of Support Structures, Resources and Constituents

Aside from the socio-cultural, psychological and religious constraints, practical factors prevent women from participating in politics. A study carried out by Kamla Nath and Milly Chatterjee found that Indian women who participate in politics have to juggle multiple roles which often conflict with each other. As discussed earlier in relation to the practice of *purdah*, the norms and expectations associated with the female role in politics require women to play a civic and communal role in a highly public setting. which directly counters the expectations that are given to them by society (1996). Furthermore, adding political responsibilities to the existing household and financial responsibilities of women can mean that political duties become a burden, and therefore less attractive and feasible. Without the full support of family, balancing a triple workload19 and negotiating the stigma of being a woman active in the public sphere can be an exhausting, demeaning and financially draining experience.

In India, Sridharan and Rodić note that support structures such as transport services, travel allowances or childcare were not available for female members of local councils to facilitate their attendance at meeting (2004, 92). Without these, women's active participation is severely limited. Other inconveniences such as the time meetings are held restrict the ease with which women can participate. For example, if the meeting is late at night it might be unsafe for a woman to attend alone, or if a woman member has young children, this also makes it difficult to meet at night.

A lack of constituents is a considerable problem for many women who desire to be elected. Najma Chowdhury discusses this problem within the context of Bangladesh. She suggests that as a transitory member of her natal family, often a woman can neither nurture nor lay claim to either the constituency of her natal family or that which she then enters into at marriage (2002, 8). Fleschenberg also notes that in South Asia, "Women are restricted from establishing protégé – patron relationships, other than within family circles or kinship-related networks (2005, 6)." These problems have very real effects in limiting a female candidate's networking ability, in reducing the likelihood of her election and also in influencing her decision to run in the first place.

provisions excluding women from the positions of President and Vice-President (CEDAW report – Maldives 2005). See also Richard Matland's (2006, 76) discussion 'Selecting yourself' in *Women in Politics: Beyond Numbers. 2006 revised edition* available at www.idea.int.

<sup>19</sup> A triple workload includes economic occupation, household duties and political work. This was identified in D. Sridharan and V. Rodić (2004) as a problem for women in local governance who could not devote enough time to political duties as a result of their workload.

### Campaign Finance and Party Politics

Men dominate the political scene and define the rules and participation level for women. Men in party positions are responsible for evaluating potential candidates and they also set standards for leadership and leadership styles. Women are often ignored in the entire process and are denied tickets for important seats. Women often feel dejected when they fail to adapt to the existing male dominated framework and male-styled politics.

Running a good election campaign, particularly at state or national level politics, can make or break someone's candidature. A good election campaign can, however, be incredibly financially demanding. Funding is difficult for women for two reasons. The first is that political parties are more reluctant to support female candidates than male candidates, as the latter have a better chance of being elected in a patriarchal society. Nadezhda Shvedova describes "an old boys club" atmosphere, which is prejudiced against women and underestimates women's abilities as candidates (2002). Thus the party will pour more resources into supporting the stronger male candidates than it will for weaker female candidates. Secondly, female candidates who run as independents have to fund their own campaigns. If the woman is from an affluent political family which actively supports her candidacy, funding the electoral campaign may not be such a hardship. But if the woman is from a family which does not approve of her political aspirations, funding the process becomes much more difficult. Of course, men can also face these financial obstacles, but in general for a woman, the campaigning is potentially more exigent and support from family or party is less forthcoming than for a man. The gatekeepers to politics are the political parties, not only because they can distribute campaign funds, but because they control the nomination process.20 The role of the voters in elections is often not as decisive as one thinks. Who will get elected is also determined by the political parties' nominations committees because they select the candidates and place them in constituencies that give them good or bad chances of being elected.

### The Criminalization of Politics: A Violent World

The violence which has come to be associated with the election process, as well as the violence meted out against politicians occupying positions of power, is endemic within South Asia. Women report this as a major concern if they were to run for office. As well as their own safety, the safety of their

<sup>20</sup> However as Bhutan is governed by an absolute monarchy, there are no legally recognised political parties there. Therefore regulating their actions towards female candidates is not possible.

children and of their extended family is also at risk, especially in countries where women candidates provoke greater hostility than men, as was the case in the aforementioned 2000-2001 local elections in Pakistan (Sridharan and Rodić 2004, 91).

### The Problem of Representation

If measures that are implemented to allow more women to participate in political decision making are successful, the following questions arise: what do we expect to be achieved by having an increased number of women in parliament? To what extent do these female politicians have the freedom to act? And further still, how do they represent other women and does this lead to the often-mentioned ideal of "representative" democratic governance? As already discussed, many commentators have voiced concerns about women being reduced to mere male-operated puppets or as Nath and Chatterjee (1996) argue "proxies" at all levels of governance. At a local level, female councilors may be under pressure to represent their husbands' interests. At national levels, the strategies women must use may often involve submitting to dominant male ideas. Even at the highest levels, personal priorities for women (as is the case for most politicians) get displaced by party loyalties and the need to toe party lines (Hurst 2004, 39). In countries with weaker governments such as in India where the ruling parties and coalitions are fragile and unstable, politicians often must pander to the desires of their electorate. In India, beyond ethnic and religious divisions, men are perceived as the majority who should be accommodated, and their votes are most highly cultivated. Again this indicates how the agency with which women might act is viewed as curtailed, as for many, it is assumed that a woman will use their vote, if cast, in support of the party favored by her husband. Fleschenberg also argues that quotas were predominantly introduced in South Asia to avoid female candidates having to run electoral campaigns which might violate genderprescribed roles, which coincidently impedes the candidate's success in being able to set a highly personalized political agenda (2005, 13).

These factors all combine to limit the freedom which female politicians have to go against dominant attitudes about the role of women in a majoritarian democracy. To villanize all those women parliamentarians on the basis of their apparent inaction in relation to improving women's rights would be wrong, given the restrictions they face. The task at hand is great. A few courageous women politicians do object to the inadequate political representation of women. Kumud Sharma and Shirin Rai (2000, 163) relate how in 1997, one of the most respected women MPs in the Indian Parliament "appealed to boycott the parliamentary session on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of Indian Independence on the issue of the 81st Amendment" (which proposes reservations for women at the national level.) Sadly, she was only joined by 4 out of the 35 women who could have walked with her. As Sharma and Rai observed, the party whip can be a very strong discentive for women challenge the status quo (*ibid*.).

To think that women politicians will make decisions about diverse areas of policy whilst always having the interests of women at the forefront of their minds may be an unreasonable expectation. The idea that the politics practiced by women must be a "politics of care" is also being challenged. The expectation that women would have autonomy in their decision-making may be misplaced. Hurst also offers the interesting interpretation that arguably such autonomy and individualism may not hold for men either as it can be argued that this kind of autonomy doesn't really exist in India, as autonomy is a deeply western rooted construct (Hurst 2004, 40).

Regarding women as a unified category of people with uniform interests and priorities is very misleading, particularly when considering the process women have to undergo to become involved in politics (Hurst 2004, 40). Anne Phillips made quite an alarming though very logical assertion when she said that "the contrast between those who get involved in politics and those who do not is deeper than any gender difference between those who are elected (1995, 75)." In the context of the formative power of the masculine political system in which women have to act, this does not seem unreasonable (Hurst 2004, 31). This does however increase the pressure on whether increasing the number of women in government alone can really help to represent women better. Who can truly speak on behalf of another (*ibid.,* 33)? Indeed what is the nature of representation (Raman 2002, 6)? Would a large enough number of women be able to instigate a change in the way politics is done and what is valued? If so, how many women will it take to achieve a "critical mass" in the legislature?

The problem of the nature of representation is a problem for the current democratic model of governance as a whole. Like many modes of governance, democracy is still about compromise. The problem is no more severe when talking about the ability to represent different genders than it is for the ability to represent any socially constructed interest group. Nevertheless, the notion specifically that women as a whole can be represented successfully by simply increasing the number of women in government can become damaging, because women do not necessarily have the freedom to act independently, particularly if the action is in conflict with party policy. The objection that women's interests are not necessarily the same is also germane.

These objections to whether increasing the numbers of women in governance can create substantive improvement in the lives of women, though noteworthy for consideration are in a sense mostly academic objections. Phillips reasons that the variety of women's interests does not refute the claim that interests are gendered. (1995, 68). On the ground, the effects of women brought into positions of power by quotas are very evident. Chattodophyay and Duflo's research (2004, 1434) revealed that "Individual women are…not particularly more responsive to the needs of women and men in their communities. Rather, it is because their own preferences are more aligned to the preferences of women that they end up serving them better (Chattodophyay and Duflo 2004, 1434)."

That South Asian society is premised on patriarchy or that the public sphere is based upon the valuation of male-associated characteristics is beyond dispute, but this should not mean that women should quit trying to make an impact in this sphere, or that governance cannot change. Many commentators predict that when a critical mass of women exists women's combined impact will be significant.21 In his comments concerning why women's reservations have not been implemented at the high levels of governance in India, Sudhir Varma suggested that "It may be a lurking fear that women are not going to be mere puppets in the hands of powerful men politicians once they have 'critical mass' in the legislative bodies" and no coincidence therefore "that there seems to be a sudden development of cold feet by political parties on the reservation issue. The system was agreed to at the panchayat level as it was considered to be safe in the hands of 'proxy women' (1997, preface xv)."

Raman believes that the presence of a critical mass of women would heighten the sense of responsibility among women and this would ensure that women's interests would be adequately represented (2002, 3)." The positive repercussions of having more women as political role models are mentioned frequently, and it is undisputed that it is "easier to climb up if someone is on the other side to pull." Expectations are that having more women in political roles will greatly increase the self-confidence of those in these positions. During Hurst's research, women in Orissa mentioned that "it helped that they were not the sole woman but that more women are present in gram panchayats (Hurst 2004, 262)." This statement therefore strengthens the hypothesis that a critical mass of a "minority" helps women overcoming obstacles they face (*ibid*.). For proportionate representation in terms of gender parity, 50 percent of those who work in decision-making roles would have to be women. In South Asian countries afflicted with the problem of female infanticide, proportionate representation would be less than 50 percent. Exactly what this critical mass would be in terms of the percentage of women in positions is not clear, although it need not necessarily be as much as 50 percent.

 21 For a detailed discussion of a "politics of presence" see Phillips (1995) and Dhanda, (2000).

In South Asia "since independence, all of the countries with current or former female political leadership (except Pakistan 1990–2002) increased the share of female participation in real figures and in significant proportions despite a stagnating regional average (Fleschenberg 2005, 5)." Nevertheless, the situation is still bad in terms of the involvement of women in politics, especially at the highest levels of office, and particularly in those places where women have never yet occupied such positions. As Jayaweera reminds us, "doubts in public perceptions with regard to the 'capability' of women to perform leadership functions remain despite the fact that women in some of these countries are seen to face the challenges of political leadership with fortitude (1997, 421-422)." In South Asia, a picture emerges that bears many features of a vicious circle: if the political system does not deal with women's reality, women will not concern themselves with politics and, consequently, the system will not change. Attitudinal change is an essential pre-requisite for true empowerment, although the use of political and legislative mechanisms such as quotas can potentially accelerate the pace of social change if implemented properly. Carole Pateman sees the "democratization of everyday life" as a key to a changed relationship between the sexes (Wängnerud 2005).22 This is crucial to encouraging women to enter the political realm and to enhancing their capacity to act once there.

# The Creation of an Enabling Environment

Beyond quotas, various other forms of affirmative action can create a less hostile situation for women in politics. The United Nations Taskforce on Education and Gender Equality made the following observations: A lesson learnt from the social welfare states is that offering provisions of childcare and family support can aid women's the path to leadership. "Welfare states make women's gender roles less of an obstacle to participation in public life (United Nations Taskforce on Education and Gender Equality 2005, 109)." The greater the number of local governing bodies, the more opportunities become available for aspiring women leaders. In federal systems where power is devolved to the local level and local bodies are popularly elected, women have greater opportunities to gain access to political office (*ibid.,*109)." The presence of a strong women's political movement can also make a difference. For example, the women's movement, "REDE", in Timor Leste was so great

<sup>22</sup> Note that according to IPU only 2 seats in the Nepalese lower House were contestable, therefore 0.0 percent is not indicative of the general situation in Nepal. If Nepal is not taken into account the South Asian average percentage of women in the lower house is 11.8 percent. www.ipu.org. Source: www.quotaproject.org accessed on 26 June 2006.

that through media coverage and United Nations' support, women gained 27 percent of the parliamentary seats without needing to use a quota (*ibid*., 105). Awareness raising or making women conscious of their position by giving them the opportunity to acquire knowledge of their rights, is in the Foucauldian sense empowering them, as they are in a better position to renegotiate their status. Raising awareness is the point from which all empowerment can progress (Batliwala 1993). In terms of their applicability in the South Asian context, these recommendations may vary in their immediate utility, but remain very thought provoking observations.

### References


opment Community (SADC) Parliamentary Forum Conference. *The Implementation of Quotas: African Experiences.* Pretoria, South Africa. (11-12 November).


# Chapter 5: Taking Stock: 1955–2005 50 Years of Women's Political Representation in Europe

*Monique Leyenaar* 

"Women in Politics" has been and still is an important research object for – mainly women political scientists. When women started to enter the profession in greater numbers, first in the USA and then in European academia, they were able to redeem the neglect of women both in theories and in empirical research. For a long time the discipline was gendered not only because its practitioners were male, but also since it focused on the "public" which was the domain of men, while women were active in the private sphere. Women scholars in the 1970s and 1980s aimed to make women's political lives and political roles visible and "correct the distorted picture of women depicted in the earlier literature" (Tolleson-Rinehart and Carroll 2006, 510). At that time, both in the USA as well as in Europe, especially in the UK, several monographs were published on "women and politics."<sup>1</sup> Since then, academic interest in women's representation in politics has risen together with the number of women in the profession *and* the actual number of women politicians. The first country in Europe where women obtained the right to vote and the right to be elected was Finland. When the new parliament met in 1907, 11 of the 200 MPs (5 per cent) were women. Other European countries followed swiftly, but it took more than 75 years before women started to enter parliaments in greater numbers.

Contrary to some of the other chapters in this volume, this chapter does not discuss the development of political science with regard to gender politics, but instead it focuses on the historical development of women's political representation as one of the topics intensively studied by women political scientists. This does not mean that women's presence in politics has been the *only* interest of women political scientists. On the contrary, starting in the 1980s we witness an ever growing scholarly interest in feminist theory, femi-

<sup>1</sup> Early publications in Europe were, M. Currell, *Political Woman* in 1974; E. Vallance, *Women in the House. A Study of Women Members of Parliament* in 1979, M. Rendel *Women, Power and Political Systems* in 1981 and V. Randall *Women and Politics* in 1982; and in the USA, J. Kirkpatrick *Political Woman* and J. Jacquette*, Women and Politics* both in 1974.

nist research approaches and important themes such as gender policies and the women's movement. In the 1990s, women researchers started to work closely together and to set up academic networks enabling comparative research and the generating of theories. Examples are the RNGS Network (Research Network on Gender Politics and the State) that started in 1995, the QUING Network (Quality in Gender Equality Policies) that existed from 2007–2011 and the FIIN Network (Feminism and Institutionalism International Network) that was established in 2007. These academic networks have resulted in many publications and – together with the articles and books of individual scholars – have increased our knowledge about gender and politics tremendously.2 

This chapter reviews the scholarly work on gender and the increase of *women's political representation* together until 2005. Drawing on the many publications on "women and politics in Europe," it studies the rise in women's representation in European parliaments over 50 years: from 1955–2005. Why is it that in some countries the rate of increase of women's representation has been much slower than in other countries? In this period there were 25 Member States of the European Union. They make up the focus of this study. For the detailed and comparative analysis, I have used an analytical framework consisting of institutional and individual factors that help or hinder women in gaining access to the national legislatures of these 25 EU countries. This framework is based on a thorough study of the literature such as *country studies* describing the development of women's political representation in the Netherlands (Leyenaar 2004), in France (Allwood and Wadia 2000), in Belgium (Molle and Gubin 1998), in the Scandinavian countries (Haavio-Manilla (eds.) 1985; Karvonen and Selle (eds.) 1995 and Bergqvist (eds.) 1999), *country chapters* in edited volumes (Lovenduski (ed.) 2005; Galligan and Tremblau (eds.) 2005; Matland and Montgomery (eds.) 2003; Hoecker (ed.) 1998; Jaquette and Wolchik (eds,) 1998; Nelson and Chowdhury (eds.) 1994; Lovenduski and Norris (eds.) 1993) and *books and articles* on specific factors effecting women's political representation, such as electoral systems (Golosov 2001; Vengroff, Creevey and Krisch 2000; Matland 1998; 2005; Welch and Studlar 1990; Darcy, Welch and Clark 1987; Rule 1987;), recruitment and selection practices in political parties (Kunovich and Paxton 2005; Fox and Lawless 2004; Mackay 2004; Caul 2001; 1999; Norris 1997a; Norris and Lovenduski 1995), the use of quota legislation (Dahlerup and Freidenvall 2005; Dahlerup 2006; Freedman 2004; Childs 2002; Meier 2000; 2004; Dahlerup 1998), constitutional changes (Donaghy 2004; Dobrowolsky and Hart 2003; Chaney and Fevre 2002; Russell, Mackay and MacAllister 2002; Ross 2002) as well as *books and articles*  that looked at the consequences of women's presence in parliaments, for exam-

<sup>2</sup> For the publications see www.quing.eu;www.femfiin.com;libarts.wsu.edu/polsci/rngs

ple on representational styles and on policy outcomes (Bird 2005; Childs and Withey 2004; Childs 2004, 2001; Lovenduski and Norris 2003; Oldersma 2002; Bochel and Briggs 2000).

# Framework for Analysis

The framework analyzing women's pathway into political representation makes a distinction between five stages: voting, recruitment, selection, election and representation.

*Figure 1.* Explanatory framework: pathway to politics in national parliaments in Europe


In each step in this process, *individual* and *institutional* factors affect the chances of women becoming involved in political decision-making. The first category addresses the extent to which individual characteristics favor political participation. For example, high levels of educational and professional experience, or coming from a "politicized" family are advantages when pursuing a political career. While having small children is a disadvantage to women who are striving to achieve a representative position or to keep it, a strong and lengthy involvement in the party as well as in non-political organizations is viewed as an asset by selectors. Women often have a long history of participation in community, school and religious organizations where they develop political skills and build a network of political contacts. Involvement in these organizations often means encouragement to run for office, because parties view the organizational support a candidate can rely on from these organizations as an attractive asset. A final example is the job satisfaction necessary to keep going as a politician. Given all the sacrifices, discovering that one's overall influence on decision-making is actually very small, often creates disappointment.

Institutional factors relate to the organization of society, its norms and values with regard to gender equality, as well as to the political system itself. The political participation of women depends heavily on the more general social and cultural climate of a country. Certain religious practices, for example, encourage and strengthen the inequality of women in society as mirrored in women's more limited access to education and the labor market. With some exceptions, the political rights given to women were not matched with societal adjustment to accommodate this public role of women. In the past, the strict division of labor between men and women left little scope for women to get involved in public affairs, since few nurseries were available, part-time work was not allowed and tax laws inhibited women's employment. From the 1970s onwards we find more equality legislation, often as a result of binding directives issued by the European Commission. A more recent phenomenon is the adoption of quota legislation for political offices. In some cases, the constitution is amended either with explicit gender quotas for certain political functions or in such a way that makes it possible to pass national legislation such as electoral laws demanding substantial representation of women in politics. Depending on the actual conditions and sanctions in the actual texts of the quota laws, the ultimate effect will be a sharp increase in the representation of women legislators.

Whether a country has a well-developed civil society also has an effect on women's political representation, since community associations and other groups often serve as a recruitment pool for women potential candidates. But a political system with too much interest representation may have a negative impact on women's political participation. Corporatism institutionalises group access to parliament, and since many groups have "gender profiles," with women in humanitarian organizations and men in economic and professional groups often deemed to be more relevant for representation, access is more difficult for women.

How a political party conducts the selection of candidates is very dependent on the electoral system of a country. Comparing the two main types of systems, the single member plurality system (SMP) negatively impacts the chances for women to get selected in comparison to a system of proportional representation (List-PR). In an SMP system, individual candidates need to fight for their seats in several arenas. They have to convince the party leadership of their suitability as candidates for the constituency in question. If they are successful here, they then have to fight during the election campaign against competitors from other parties. Candidates in SMP-systems are expected to engage in door-to-door campaigning, to participate in rallies, to mobilize voters at markets and shopping malls. Generally speaking, women are less inclined than men to put themselves forward in this way. All this results in lower numbers of women presenting themselves as candidates. Further, in many single-member constituencies, male candidates have been active in the party for a long time and only in the last ten years have women come forward. Given the well-documented electoral advantage of incumbents (Norris 1997b), women, as relative newcomers, may find it difficult to gain access, since parties are typically very reluctant to deselect incumbent candidates.

Dealing with a *list* of candidates instead makes it easier for parties to balance their party tickets and divide winning slots on the party list among various internal party interests, including the women's section of the party. Another reason to place women on the lists is to appeal to gender-sensitive voters. In addition, in list-PR systems, political parties are the major actors in the election campaign and candidates play a less assertive role.

The selection process itself is another factor. In general, a decentralized selection process, in which local branches or individual party members have the last say in the selection of candidates, has tended to result in the selection of fewer women. This appears to be because national party leaders are more concerned about male-female balance than are local or regional party branches.

As a result of the continuous pressure of women activists both within and outside political parties, and because of the parties' concern to attract the female vote, gender has become an explicit issue for many political parties. Special policies were adopted to improve the position of women in the selection process, such as training programs and the introduction of gender quotas. Since quota-setting has been done more often by parties with a center-to-left orientation than by conservative parties (Caul 2001), party systems as well as the degree of competition between parties do also matter.

A final example concerning the last stage, representation, is that the culture of political parties and representative bodies, the shared values, ideas and practices, may not coincide with the cultural norms and values of women MPs. Men and women differ in attitudes towards decision-making: women are more focused on consensus and balance in communication and more democratically oriented, while men are more focused on competition and have a more autocratic orientation (Vianen and Fischer 1998). Once elected, women politicians may often feel isolated in the world of politics because they operate in other networks. Apart from the time factor, this is often a reason for women to leave their political positions after a single term, while men are more often inclined to stay (Castenmiller *et al.* 2002).

### Explaining Differences in Increase Rates

For a more in-depth analysis we grouped the 25 countries. Given the specific circumstances determining women's political role, the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) – countries are treated as one group. The other countries are grouped according to: the overall increase rate; the percentage of women MPs in 2005 and the increase in percentage of women MPs in 2005 compared to 2004 (hereafter referred to as the increase rate).

*Figure 2:* Increase Rate Women MPs in Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands

*Figure 3:* Increase Rate Women MPs in Greece, Italy, Ireland, France, Cyprus and Malta

*Figure 4:* Increase Rate Women MPs in Portugal, Spain, Britain, Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria

At the top end of the scale we find Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Germany who share a similar development of already 10-20 percent women MPs in the 1950s, followed by a gradual increase towards 40 percent in 2005. At the bottom end are Greece, Italy, Ireland, France, Cyprus and Malta who have 16 percent or less women in parliament in 2005. Some (Greece and Cyprus) show a clear increase since 2000, but others (Italy and Ireland) experienced a decrease in women's political representation. In between, we find Austria, Belgium and Spain who share a similar increase rate: from hardly any women MPs until the 1980s, through a sharp increase after 1995, to more than one-third in 2005, and Luxemburg, Portugal and Britain where in the 1950s and 1960s only a very few women were represented in the three parliaments and the great leap forward happened in the 1980s (Luxembourg) and in the late 1990s (Britain and Portugal). (See for the percentages, appendix 1, table 1)

### The Top

What do the top five countries have in common that explains their rank? First, especially in the Scandinavian countries, the dominant churches have never proclaimed that women should not become involved in public life. Consequently, conditions for social and economic gender equality were introduced already in the 1970s. Second, with the exception of Germany that uses a mixed system, the electoral system is seen as encouraging women's representation through proportional representation in large multi-member constituencies. Third, gender quotas were introduced relatively early in Swedish, Danish and Dutch social democratic parties. This happened mainly because of strong women's lobbies in these parties. Unlike other Western European countries where a considerable part of women's new-found political focus was channeled into feminist and protest politics, here existing women's groups in the political parties were revitalized by the women's movement of the 1970s (Sinkkonen and Haavio-Mannila 1981; Dahlerup 1988; Leijenaar 1989). In the Federal Republic of Germany, women struggled with the question of whether to join the parties or form new, autonomous women's organizations. In the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, the *autonome Frauenbewegung* (autonomous women's movement) was quite popular among welleducated women. They concentrated on grass roots activities and established a world for women: women's health centers, summer universities for women, bookstores and cafés for women. The founding in 1979 of a political party by a leftist movement in which many feminists were active, the Green Party, changed the anti-party approach somewhat. From the beginning, the Green Party put gender equality on the agenda and applied a 50-percent quota to both its internal party positions and its representative positions (Lemke 1994; Kolinsky 1993). The other parties followed suit with the Social Democrats embracing quotas and the Christian Democrats modernizing their views on the family and women's traditional roles. Fourth, in all five countries the governments have pressured the parties to increase women's political status. In the Scandinavian countries, it helped that equality legislation already existed guaranteeing a balanced composition of public committees and boards (Borchorst 1999). The existence of this kind of legislation made it more acceptable for political parties to introduce affirmative action. In the Netherlands, the government tried to influence the parties' attitude towards women's political presence not with legislation but by providing financial incentives and training facilities for potential women candidates (Leijenaar 1993).

Spain, Belgium and Austria also belong to the top in 2005, but the increase rate follows a different pattern: from less than 10 percent women in 1995 to more than one-third in 2005. For a long time, party leadership in these countries, as the main gatekeeper, was able to neglect women as candidates for elective office. The close-knit networks of interest groups and political parties in Austria and Belgium were very difficult to access and political posts were divided among the network members. Even the relatively high participation of Belgian women in traditional women's organizations, combined with active women's factions within the parties, could not prevent this (Molle and Gubin 1998). In Spain, the distrust in political institutions combined with doubts among feminists about the effectiveness of joining political parties, meant that during the preparation for the first democratic parliamentary elections in 1977, women did not fight for fair representation. The debate among feminists on whether to participate in the political parties or feminist organizations led, in 1979, to a split in the Spanish feminist movement and this was one of the reasons why relatively few women got selected and/or elected in the first decade of the new democracy (only 6 percent) (Gallego Mendez 1994). A closed list system and small constituencies did not help women candidates either. The same feminists, however, pushed for a national machinery for gender equality, which came into place at the end of the 1970s. This resulted in a government plan to strengthen the social, economic and political role of women in Spain (Astelarra 1998). The absolute majority of the Socialist Party (PSOE) in the election of 1982 made it possible to implement these proposals. With regard to their own party organization in 1987, the PSOE introduced a quota of 25 percent, which motivated many women to become affiliated. Other parties followed suit and set quotas. This, together with a fierce lobby from women party activists, contributed to a representation figure of 36 percent in the parliament of 2005 (Valiente 2005).

In Austria, the change in parties' attitudes towards women started in the 1980s when many young Austrians started to criticize traditional party politics and the Green Party was founded (Steiniger 1998). During the 1990s, the two largest parties, the Socialist Party (SPÖ) and the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) that had been in power for a long time, lost many of their adherents. Interestingly enough, male renegades went to the Freedom Party Austria (FPÖ), while more women connected with the Green Party and the Liberal Forum. In the 1990s, one can speak of a gender gap in voting behavior. In the 1995 and 1999 elections, for example, the gender gap widened to a difference of 21 percentage points (Plasser and Ulram 2000). In 1993, the SPÖ adopted a gender quota of 40 percent and since then both the SPÖ and ÖVP have selected many more women to parliament (Köpl 2005).

In Belgium, the continued extremely low rate of representation caused so much frustration among active women both inside and outside the political parties, that they demanded legislation on gender representation in politics. The fact that the Belgian political system is defined in large part by a language cleavage and a regional cleavage, meant that Belgian society and Belgian jurisprudence were accustomed to the application of quotas on behalf of specific categories of citizens, which made acceptance of quota legislation based on gender more feasible. The Belgian parliament accepted in 1994 a law imposing a minimum percentage of candidates of each sex, starting with a 25 per cent quota applicable to the local and provincial election of 1994 and gradually increasing to a 33.3 per cent quota to be in use at the parliamentary elections in 1999. The Belgian quota law, however, did not stipulate *where* to place women candidates, and this meant that, although parties did reach the quota for female candidates, they failed to get the same percentage of women in the parliamentary party, since women candidates found themselves placed in the lower slots of the party lists (Meier 2003). In July 2002, parliament passed another law stating first, that for each list, the difference in the total number of male and female candidates cannot be greater than one and, second, the top two candidates on the list should not be of the same sex. The double quota laws certainly had an impact. In 1999, 18 percent of the MPs were women. In 2003, after the addition to the electoral law with regard to the place on the list, this percentage increased to 34.

Considering women's representation in 2005, Luxemburg, Portugal and Britain hold a mid-position. In the 1950s and 1960s, very few women were represented in the three parliaments. The great leap forward happened in Luxemburg in the 1980s and in Britain and Portugal in the late 1990s. The extremely low figures in Britain have always been attributed to the use of the SMP- electoral system, and the related parties' resistance to the promotion of women in electoral politics. For a long time, women candidates were seen as being less attractive to the voters than males, regardless of other characteristics. For that reason alone, local party leaders preferred male candidates for office (Norris and Lovenduski 1993; Lovenduski 1994).

Not surprisingly, a change in selection procedures caused the increase in the percentage of women MPs between 1995 and 2000. An active lobby of women in the Labour Party was successful, when in the course of the election of 1997, the Labour Party decided that 100 constituencies could have only all-women shortlists. This policy generated resistance among the party's constituency organizations, especially among disappointed male aspirants, and in January 1996, two male aspirants challenged the legality of the all-woman shortlist at an Industrial Tribunal. The Tribunal upheld their case, agreeing that all-woman shortlists contravened the Sex Discrimination Act.3 This ruling had a negative effect on the subsequent selection of women candidates, but did not lead to a "deselection" of the 35 women who had already won a place on the ballot and hence the increase of women MPs (Lovenduski 1998).

The sharp increase in women's representation in Portugal and Luxemburg can be also explained by institutional reform. After the revolution, Portuguese women, as in Spain, were not very eager to become involved in party politics and many chose not to enter the heavy competition for parliamentary seats. Also, especially in the rural areas, the influence of the Catholic Church was strong and for a long time challenged the dominant traditional perceptions of what were considered to be appropriate male and female interests. This changed in the 1990s with the founding of several women's organizations that generated considerable public support for gender equality in politics (Tavares da Silva 1998). Their lobby convinced the government of the need for action and in 1997, when the Portuguese Constitution was being revised, an article referring to the political participation of women was included. The aim of the constitutional reform was to allow the legislature to submit electoral laws designed to secure equal participation. A government proposal to revise the Electoral Law accordingly was, however, rejected by the Parliament in 1999, as parliamentarians were more in favor of alternative solutions, such as the adoption of internal rules by parties. Although the law did not pass through parliament, the debate on the issue of women's political representation pushed the parties into action, resulting in many more women candidates than in previous elections.

In Luxembourg, women's participation in the labor market has always been low and cultural pressure on women to become housewives and mothers has been very strong. Until 1993, only 37 percent of adult women were gain-

<sup>3</sup> In order to avoid similar court cases in the future, the Labour Government submitted a bill in parliament in October 2001 to exclude matters relating to the selection of candidates by political parties from the scope of the Sex Discrimination Act. "The key objective for this Bill is to enable a political party, should it wish to do so, to adopt measures which regulate the selection of candidates for certain elections in order to reduce inequality in the numbers of men and women elected, as candidates of the party" (Explanatory notes Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Bill, 2001).

fully employed. Furthermore, women themselves have not been very keen to strengthen their political power. Women's organizations in the 1970s and 1980s were not very interested in the representation of women in politics. Even women active in the parties were more concerned with their parties' views on women's issues than on representation (Wagener 1998). Once again, the electoral system may be partly blamed for the low figures. In Luxembourg, voters can either vote for a list or cast personal votes. Voters have as many votes as there are MPs to be elected for that region, with a maximum of two votes per candidate. This system favors well-known candidates, and parties do their utmost to select popular candidates, bypassing newcomers, including women candidates. The application of voluntary party quotas changed this practice. Only under the influence of the German quota debate that took place in the mid-1980s did the issue of the under-representation of women reach the agenda of the parties. Since then, data on women politicians have been gathered and published and, as a result of consistent public interest in the issue, parties have been more willing to nominate women for office (*ibid.*). The two main parties, the Christian Social People's Party and the Socialist Workers Party, adopted gender quotas of 33.3 percent in 2002.

### The Bottom End

The lack of progress in the six countries that share the fate of having the lowest percentage of women representatives in their 2005-parliaments can be explained as follows. First, there is the predominance of the Catholic Church (in Malta, Ireland and Italy) and of the Greek Orthodox Church (in Greece and Cyprus), which actively kept women at home. We still find a strong (though weakening) tradition of religious practice. Consequently, the model of the male breadwinner and the female homemaker is still supported by culture and by governmental policies. In Greece, for example, educational standards of women are still lower than those of men and in Greece as well as in Cyprus, Malta and Ireland, the participation rate of women in the labor market has always lagged far behind the rates of other European countries. These perceptions of the proper roles of men and women also permeated the political parties.

Second, referring to the electoral system, we find four different electoral systems in six countries: list-PR in Greece and Cyprus, STV4 in Ireland and

<sup>4</sup> Single Transferable Vote (STV) is also viewed as a proportional system. Like list-PR systems STV allows for proportional representation of opinions, but unlike them not in terms of parties. Voters cast a vote by ranking as many candidates as they wish, regardless of party in order of their preference. See for detailed explanation of how STV works Gallagher and Mitchell 2008, 593-596.

Malta, a mixed system in Italy (from 1995-2006) and SMP in France. Italy and France are clear cases of the negative impact of SMP systems. France elects its national deputies through SMP in two rounds, but its local and regional representatives through a list-PR system. At the national level, we find that women compose only 12 percent of the parliament, while at the local level in 2005, 47 percent were women councilors. The latter percentage is a direct effect of the application of the quota law (see below). In Italy the list-PR system was replaced by a mixed system in 1993. The reform of both the electoral and party system should have resulted in more women MPs. After all, women politicians were not involved in the party scandals and a larger share of women in politics would have been a signal of new politics replacing the "old (corrupt) politics." However, the contrary was true. Replacing the list-PR system with a mixed system resulted in the nomination of predominantly male candidates in the single member districts (Re 2005; Guadagnini 2005).

The use of STV in Malta and Ireland is also considered a barrier to women's political empowerment. STV is associated with the very personalized nature of Irish and Maltese politics. Under STV, every personal vote counts, meaning that personal campaigns by the candidates are necessary and that parties nominate well-known, professional candidates (Galligan 1988; 1993). Fewer women can afford costly campaigns, not least because traditionally many women had no paid employment. A positive effect of STV, however, is that a woman candidate can run on a woman's ticket. But so far STV has not been very beneficial to women.

Politics in Ireland, Greece, Cyprus and Italy are still very much personalized. Cliental voting, based on an exchange of favors, is still an important norm. Voters prefer politicians they trust will be able to return favors. Since women candidates are seen as less prestigious and less instrumental, they are less favored by the electorate (Guadagnini 1993). Another factor is the importance people attach to a personal network in the party. In order to be selected for an eligible place on the list, intense personal relations with many (local) party leaders is a necessary condition. A long party career is a prerequisite for selection. Not only are women party members fewer in number, but also their party careers are much shorter. For example, in PASOK, one of Greece's main political parties, women constituted in the 1990s only 15 per cent of the membership (Cacoullos 1994).

In France also politics remained culturally a man's job and women have found it extremely difficult to break into this male bastion. An important barrier has been the recruitment into French politics through the so-called *Grand Ecoles* of which the *Ecole Nationale Administrative* is the most prestigious. Women have always been under-represented at these schools and in spite of women's increased educational and professional experience, this has not changed. Another obstacle is the practice of combining political mandates, the *cumul des mandats*. 5 Allwood and Wadia (2000) describe how the *cumul des mandat*s works negatively for women creating "a self-perpetuating, narrow circle of elites which monopolizes power and privileges at a number of different levels and which is reluctant to admit newcomers" (2000, 150). The turnover of seats is very low and the number of incumbents is very high. Secondly, it also means that the elected representative is identified with the male *notable* who "not only undertook political functions but also exercised a moral, father-like authority (*ibid.*, 150)." Women find it very difficult to adhere to this image, since most often they cannot afford to fulfill all these (unpaid) local functions, either because they do not have the right jobs or their other (caring) responsibilities are an obstacle.

As in Belgium, the extremely low representation figures stimulated a debate on the need for quota legislation and resulted in quota laws in France, Italy and Greece. The Greek parliament approved in 2000 an amendment to the Constitution enabling the implementation of the principle of equality in politics and in 2002, a law came into effect requiring at least one third of each list of candidates for municipal and regional elections to be from either sex. Consequently, parties also nominated more women for the parliamentary election of 2004, resulting in a representation of 14 percent women. The sharp increase in women's representation in Cyprus, is undoubtedly a consequence of Cyprus entering the European Union (EU). As with the other new EU members, an impressive number of legislative measures regarding gender equality has been passed. In Italy, after two previous quota laws had been declared unconstitutional in 1995, the Constitution was changed in 2003 to permit electoral laws that demand quotas.6 This happened in 2004 when for the European elections, a law was passed stating that neither of the two sexes may be represented by more than two-thirds of the candidates on the candidate lists. The parliament turned down similar attempts aimed at the national elections (Gaudagnini 1998; 2005).

In France, women's representation in politics became an issue in the presidential campaign of 1995 and in the parliamentary election of 1997. Both winners, President Chirac and Prime Minister Jospin, sensing the public support for parity and the demand for action, came forward in 1998 with a bill for constitutional reform (Sineau 2005; Allwood and Wadia 2000).7 The-

<sup>5</sup> The practice of holding several political offices at multiple levels of government.

<sup>6</sup> According to Guadagnini, the existing paragraph in the Constitution "All citizens of either sex can have access to public offices and elective posts under equal conditions" was completed with the following sentence: "For this purpose the Republic promotes, by means of special measures, equal opportunities for women and men." (Guadagnini 2005, 145).

<sup>7</sup> Article 3 of the Constitution was amended with the following text: " the law favours the equal access of men and women to elected mandates and appointed posts.."

se constitutional changes made room for the introduction of quota laws and in 2000, several laws passed parliament requiring political parties to include 50 per cent women on the lists in elections under PR. For the parliamentary elections which use SMP, the law demanded that between 48 and 52 per cent of all candidates presented in the constituencies had to be women. The law had a large impact on the proportion of women local and regional councillors, but in the 2002 parliamentary elections, the parties did not adhere to parity. In total, 38 percent of all candidates were women, but many of them did not win the seat in their constituency and only 12 percent women were elected in the Assemblee Nationale.

### The Central and East Europe (CEE) Countries

The collapse of the political systems in 1989/1990 forms a turning point when discussing women's parliamentary representation in the CEE countries. But, contrary to what one would expect since building new institutions often creates a window of opportunity for women to gain access, the proportion of women MPs decreased considerably in the newly installed parliaments.

*Figure 5:* Increase Rate Women MPs in the CEE-countries

In the communist era, institutional conditions for women's representation were rather similar in the eight countries and, according to the framework earlier presented, inclusive. With the exception of Hungary and Slovenia, suffrage was granted to women around 1920 and gender equality was explicitly supported by state-socialist ideology and protected by constitutional guarantees. This was reflected in the identical educational level of women and men, in the fact that women accounted for close to 50 percent of the labor force and in policies facilitating women's employment, such as paid maternity leave and child-care. Recruitment and selection to parliament was controlled by one single force, the Communist Party. Party elites were thus able to adhere to their commitment to gender equality and include women in the parliamentary party. In each of the countries, an official party controlled women's section existed, such as the Union of Czechoslovak Women or the National Council of Hungarian Women. They provided a platform for participation and articulated women's issues whenever possible (Wolchik 1994).

Are these institutional conditions the reason for relatively high percentages of women in the CEE-parliaments of the 1970s and 1980s? Little relationship seems to exist between women's political representation and women's educational and employment levels or the state supported gender equality policies. Many authors point to the symbolic value of women's parliamentary representation (Matland & Montgomery 2003; Jaquette and Wolchik 1998). Women were guaranteed representation in Parliament through a system of reserved seats and co-optation, yet Parliament in itself had very little influence. Hardly any women were in the much more powerful politburo. According to Siemeñska (2003), women MPs in the Communist parliament in Poland served a decorative role and did not represent the "best and brightest of Polish society (Siemeñska 2003, 218)."

Scholars of gender relations in these former socialist countries mention the discrepancy between ideology and practice with regard to gender equality. Women were above all active in the lower sections of the labor market, they solely took care of the family, they were almost totally absent in decision making positions in the parties and in business and earned less than their male colleagues. For example, in Czechoslovakia, the labor market was highly segregated and women's wages were about two-thirds of those of men (Wolchik 1994). Traditional values about family and gender roles are still propagated by both governments and the churches. In Poland as well as in Hungary, a broad consensus prevailed about the necessity for women, especially those with small children, to stay at home. In Hungary, women enjoyed a three-year maternity leave (Szalai 1998; Siemeñska 1998). All this shaped women's political activism during and after the transition and helps to explain the sharp decrease in female representation. In addition, the following factors were also important.

First is the role that women played in the dissident movements that led to the fall of the communist regimes. As supporters of democratic changes both women and men, especially among the younger generation, participated in the popular movements, such as the Popular Front in Estonia and in Lithuania

and in the Civic Forum in Czechoslovakia. But not many women were at the forefront of the opposition from whence the future political leaders were to be recruited. Furthermore, competition for political influence through seats in the newly installed parliaments was fierce. Szalai (1998) describes this as follows: "Thousands of previously nonexistent posts were opened, offering dignified and responsible positions to a great number of well-educated, politically motivated men who earlier could not find acceptable forums to realize their ideas (1998, 199)." Women's contributions to the fall of state socialism were not viewed as important enough to warrant a share of this newly acquired power. Nor were women willing to push actively for representation, given the negative image of politics in general and more specifically of female MPs in the former regime, namely as puppets of the Communist Party.

Second, the transition to a market regulated economy hit both men and women severely with unemployment rising and living standards decreasing.8 Together with the demolishing of state-organized facilities for childcare, this increased the burden of performing family responsibilities and maintaining the level of income (Koncz 1993, 358). Not much energy was left for playing a prominent role in politics.

Third, we see a revaluation of the traditional family model, embracing the role of women as mother and housewife and denouncing gender equality values. Szalai (1998) mentions that in Hungary, the claiming of rights for women is seen as an expression of hostility to the family (1998, 197), while Krupavičius and Matonyté (2003) describe the situation for women in Lithuania as follows: "After a long period of indoctrination, during which women had been told they should prioritize their social rather than family roles, they took the emerging democracy as an opportunity to return to the family (2003, 82)." Women's organizations that were established right after the transition mainly focused on the basic needs of women and much less on obtaining gender equality in politics.

Fourth, unlike what happened in Scotland and Wales, inclusiveness in terms of gender was not an issue when building the new political institutions, nor were women involved in the process. At that time, EU-watchers were not very concerned with decreasing representation figures of women MPs. No lobby for quota legislation or for quotas set by political parties existed. All quotas were viewed as remains from the past and thus opposed by male party leaders as well as by women. In the end, the first democratic elections led to a sharp decline of women's representation in the parliaments. Political parties had selected very few women candidates and many of them were placed at the bottom end of the candidate lists.

<sup>8</sup> An exception is Slovenia were, right after the transition, women did not lose their jobs at a higher rate than men (Antic, 2003).

### Post Communist Era

Since these first elections after transition, the proportion of women in parliament has increased again, not yet to the former 30 per cent levels, but in most cases certainly to a level equalling that of the "old" EU-countries. To explain the empowerment of women in the CEE-countries, four factors are relevant: economic welfare, the electoral system, the status of gender equality and the application of quotas. Considering economic conditions, the initial shock of loss of job security has waned somewhat and conditions have improved overall. Given their high levels of education, many women fulfil professional jobs or occupy middle-management positions that provide them with political resources such as political interest and networks. The gender effects of the new electoral rules in the post-communist countries are very aptly described in the book, *Women's Access to Political Power in Post Communist Countries* edited by Matland and Montgomery (2003). Six of the eight countries did choose a system of proportional representation, while Hungary and Lithuania opted for a mixed system. In all the countries, electoral thresholds have been established in order to stop party fragmentation. Too many parties competed for a few district seats in the first elections after transition, which meant less room for parties to balance their tickets according to gender. Siemienska (2003) gives the example of 200 parties emerging on the Polish political scene at the time of the elections of 1991 in which 29 parties won seats. Among these 29 parties was an all-women's list that won one seat (Siemienska 2003, 219-220). And in Slovenia in each election, eight to nine different parties competed for 88 seats (Antič 2003).

Another important development is that the issue of gender equality has been gaining momentum, thus influencing party leadership to take gender into account in the selection of candidates. The European Union played a substantive role in this process. As part of the accession negotiation, candidate countries had to adopt existing EU laws into their national legislation, among which were several legal principles guaranteeing equal opportunities for women and men. The principles of equal pay and equal treatment in the access to employment, promotion and working conditions have now been introduced into the legislation of the eight CEE-countries, as well as institutional mechanisms for gender equality, such as the Governmental Equal Opportunities Office in 2001 in Poland and the Equal Opportunities Ombudsperson in 1999 in Lithuania. Civil society has started to flourish and along with it, many NGO's were established, working on improving women's economic, social and political status. Women's sections of parties have been created or rejuvenated, like the Club of Leftists Women in the Communist Party in the Czech Republic, and women MPs started to organize themselves across party lines. In Poland, the Women's Parliamentary Circle was already in place in 1991 and the Parliamentary Women's Caucus in Lithuania followed in 1997. The appointment of Hanna Suchocka as prime minister of Poland in 1992 also helped to further the acknowledgement of women as political leaders (Siemienska 1998).

More recently, women involved in the political parties have been seeking media attention and requesting quotas. A fine example is the Hungarian "yellow-scarf movement" initiated by women from the Hungarian Socialist Party. During the election campaign in 2003, women demonstrated each week for two hours, waving their yellow scarves, for more political say and a change of government policy on gender issues (Gurmai and Bonifert 2004). In 1990, not one political party used gender quotas in the selection of candidates for parliament. By 2005, with the exception of parties in Estonia and Latvia, many (leftist) parties used quotas ranging from 20 per cent (Party of the Democratic Left in Slovakia and the Hungarian Socialist Party) to one third (Social Democratic Party in Lithuania and the United List of Social Democrats in Slovenia). While some political parties have voluntarily adopted quotas, so far, not one country has passed quota legislation in order to guarantee substantial women's representation. In Slovenia, in 1995, an amendment to a Law on Political Parties asking for a gender quota of one-third, failed to pass parliament (Antič 2003).

In conclusion, the overall picture of women's parliamentary representation in the CEE-countries is now rather similar to that in the western European countries. Hungary and Slovenia lag behind, like Greece and France, but in the other CEE-countries, figures have been increasing and further improvement can be expected.

# Evaluating Europe

This chapter investigates the variance in women's parliamentary representation. The 25 EU Member States differ in almost every aspect that we have discussed here. Not only does each country use different methods to elect its members to parliament, but they also differ with regard to the socialeconomic position of women and in the acknowledgement of gender equality as a basic human right that should be implemented in each field of society. Years of socialization, for example by the church, proclaiming that women and men should fulfil different roles in society and that operating in public life is a valued role only for men, have caused a severe backlog in women's representation in countries such as Greece, Italy, Ireland and Malta. It has been tougher there for women to break into the traditional male bastion of politics, in contrast to countries with a more flexible ideology on gender roles. The electoral system is certainly not the only factor explaining the low representation of women. Greece, which uses a PR-list system, has hardly any women in parliament. Here the personal character of the elections is viewed as an important cause for the lack of women. However, in Finland where, because of the importance of preferential votes, the elections also revolve around persons, we find one of the highest percentages women in parliament. In list-PR systems, quotas are easier to apply and quotas have proven to be the best guarantee for a higher representation of women. As demonstrated by the British case, using quotas in a simple plurality system is not impossible, but neither is it easy. So far in countries where parties adopted quotas in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, more women have participated in the political arena.

The women's factions of political parties have been very instrumental in getting more women into parliament. Their existence was re-energized by the emergence of the new women's movement at the end of the 1960s. In those countries where (feminist) women decided to work in and with political parties in order to improve women's status, as they did in the Scandinavian countries, we find earlier on a more receptive attitude towards gender equality in politics.

Looking at participation in the labor market and in higher education, women in general have improved their status. They have caught up with men in higher education and the majority of women have paid jobs in the workforce. In several countries, child-care facilities have been greatly improved and institutional experiments are being carried out to combine care and paid employment. But this change in the gender division of political resources did not result in a similar increase in women's political participation. More is involved, as we have seen in the CEE-countries during the communist era. Politics itself seems to carry obstacles for newcomers, especially women. Politics is about power, something one does not want to share with too many others. Women as activists, as party members and as politicians had to bulldoze party leaders into selecting more women to internal party and external representative offices. This is one of the reasons why more women are in newly established political bodies, such as the European Parliament or the recently created parliaments of Scotland and Wales. When no incumbents have traditional claims on seats, to "allow" newcomers in is easer. An exception to this was of course the sharp decrease of women representatives in the newly installed parliaments of the CEE-countries.

In the first decade of the 21st century, the numerical presence of women in most national parliaments is much higher than before. The question is whether this success in numbers will be permanent. Can we expect more diverse and colorful pictures of newly installed parliaments (and cabinets and European summits) in the near future? Some factors may reverse the positive trend in women's political representation. First, young, well-educated women, who themselves experienced no sex discrimination in education or employment, are turning against positive action measures for women, including gender quotas in politics. Second, embracing a gender mainstreaming approach at both the international and national levels may result in the disposal of Equal Opportunities Units and specific women's policies. Another consequence might be the abolition of women's sections of political parties. A third danger is the rise of populist parties in Europe, the majority of whom advocate conservative views on the role of women in society and seem to delegate only a few women to the parliament, as recently witnessed in Sweden and the Netherlands.

On the positive side, the issue of gender representation is likely to stay on the political agenda. In those countries with relatively low percentages of women legislators and little progress, the demands for quota laws will become louder. In countries where progress was followed by a relapse, women have demonstrated, demanded their fair share and have been able to turn the tide.<sup>9</sup> 

A balanced gender representation in politics is strongly correlated with gender equality in the wider society. In order not to lose the ground that has been won in recent years, clarity on the desirability and importance of gender equality and a gender balanced political representation is needed. The simplest way to achieve this is to embed these as conditions for good European governance in a European Constitution, combined with sanctions against those national states that do not comply.

 9 For example this happened in Switzerland, when large demonstrations took place in December 2003 when the number of women in the 7-member Swiss government was reduced from three to one. The reaction was the largest demonstration of women ever. The 2010 government in 2010 has a majority of 4 women. Further, in Sweden when the percentage of women in parliament decreased from 38 to 33 after the parliamentary elections of 1991, women in- and outside the political parties protested fiercely, resulting in representation of 40 percent in the elections of 1994.



*Table 1:* Women's Representation in Parliament, 1955-2005 (percentages)

Source: These figures are compiled from different country studies and overviews.

a) The figures before 1991 are the figures for the federal state of Yugoslavia

b) The figures before 1991 are the figures for the federal state of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (Inter-Parliamentarian Union, 1995-2005)

### References


Currell, M., 1974. *Political Woman*. London: Croom Helm.

Dahlerup, D., ed. 2006. *Women, Quotas and Politics*. New York: Routledge.


Kirkpatrick, J., 1974. *Political Woman*. New York: Basic Books.


Molle, L. Van and E. Gubin, 1998. *Vrouw en Politiek in België*. Tielt: Lannoo.


# Chapter 6 Gender and Politics: Mapping the Terrain in the Age of Empire

*Jane H. Bayes* 

# Introduction

Mapping the terrain of the state of the discipline for gender and politics is a daunting endeavor. The literature is vast and much will be missed in any survey including this one. Previous surveys of the discipline have classified the gender and politics field as being 1) concerned with unmasking the male bias in the canon, in political concepts, and in political practices; 2) being concerned with "adding women in" to the current political framework focusing primarily on political participation and politics and the state (Bedford 2004) or the "politics of presence" (Phillips 1998); and 3) being concerned about reconceptualizing the political framework (Carroll and Zerilli 1993). My argument in this review is that the field continues to be concerned with unmasking male bias in concepts and approaches. It continues to be concerned with "adding women in" to the current political framework. As a field, it has often identified theoretically where the field might go to be reconceptualized, but lagged behind other disciplines and sub-fields (like feminist theory or gender and international relations) with regard to asking questions and doing the research that might transform the political framework and politics. This may be a result of ideological commitments which may be another way to describe the field and its divisions into three parts.

One part of the field is closely bound to the Westphalian model of nation states and Enlightenment ideas of representative and democratic government. It asks questions about gender and the state, public policy and the state, representation, social movements, participation, elections, public political institutions. It tends to assume an individualistic approach to politics and state actions. It seeks to show that women have been excluded from public life, that the state and many political practices are male biased and it seeks to study how women can be added to or be present in existing frameworks. This part of the discipline is very much located in the United States, Western Europe and to some extent, the former British commonwealth states. Methodologically it favors empirical data, is not given to elaborate questioning of concepts and their meaning, and tends to be somewhat ahistorical. It is critical of the exclusion of women and gender bias but often not of the structure or the basic ideology of the liberal state. The survey of the field by Burns (2002) as summarized below is an excellent and somewhat extreme example of this approach although elements of it are also in much of the research cited by Githens (1983), Carroll and Zerilli (1993), Bedford (2004), and Lawless (2011).

A second division of the discipline is united by its critical opposition to at least certain features if not the entirety of the first part. It has its roots in radical feminist theory and socialist feminist theory (See Jagger and Rothenberg 1978), in feminist standpoint theory, in post-colonialism and post modernism. Radical feminist theory, socialist feminist theory and feminist standpoint theory all have concerned themselves with identifying and analyzing patriarchal structures, texts, and concepts that oppress women and make them invisible. Post colonialism focuses on articulating the point of view of the subordinate, the colonized, the marginalized, the subaltern, and attempts to voice her concerns, her situation, her desires. The post-colonial approach had its origins in novels written in ex-colonial countries but later expanded from its literary roots and became associated with the ideas of Fanon (1963), Said (1978); Memmi (1967) and postmodern analysts of power such as Foucault, Deleuze and Derrida. Dependency theory of the 1960s and 1970s has also been a precursor of this perspective. A major concern of these points of view has been to oppose and critique the Westphalian Enlightenment definition of politics, to deconstruct the hegemonic discourse of the powerful, to focus on language and concepts and their consequences, to challenge the centrality of the state, to challenge the public/private divide and other dualisms of liberal thought – such as reason/emotion or objective/subjective, universal/particular – to identify the hierarchical, dualistic nature of western thought, to make the subaltern visible and vocal and to focus on the ubiquitous nature of power. A questioning and sometimes rejection of universals has been central. Methodologically, this approach relies on qualitative, historical, philosophical, and contextual analysis. It is not individualistic, but rather sees agency as being limited and socially or even linguistically constructed. The location of its practitioners have represented a smaller proportion of those in the field in the US and European academies, especially those who are women of color (hooks 1981, 1984; Hurtado 1996; Ong 1999, Spivak 1988, Mohantry 1993, Mendoza 2000, 2002; Cohen, Jones and Tronto 1997) and those who are at least partially grounded in ex-colonial states such as India (Guha and Spivak 1988) and Latin America (Mendoza 2000). Feminist postmodernism and feminist post-colonialism have focused on the structures, hierarchies and linguistics of power, what these structures permit and how they operate. Most recently, a focus on "intersectionality," or the study of "the relationships among multiple dimensions and modalities of social relations and subject formations (McCall 2005, 1771)," has inspired scholars to seek to understand and disentangle the multiple and varying power relationships between gender, class, race, ethnicity, nationality, and sexuality. In political science, this has been an important contribution of women of color – especially in the United States (Krause 2011, 105-111).

A third division of the divided field of gender and politics consists of those in the political science or interdisciplinary subfields of Gender and International Relations, Gender and Development, and Gender and Globalization, and Gender and Democratization that have been concerned to define as political a variety of factors not particularly recognized as political by the dominant Enlightenment view; topics such as the organization of the economy, the family, health, religious institutions, and public policy of all sorts– not necessarily electoral politics or formal political institutions such as parliaments or bureaucracies or state departments. Much of the research in this area is based on the unmasking of gender biases and discrimination, but it is also concerned with theories of power, domination and subordination. Research in this category leans heavily on the conceptual critiques of the Westphalian Enlightenment view, but at the same time, attempts to incite to action or develop and advocate policy in areas other than electoral politics. Examples would be peacekeeping efforts, rape counseling, agricultural initiatives, grant writing between the majority and minority worlds, reproductive health initiatives, social movements, transnational organizations, local/global connections, use of international law and structural adjustment policies. All three of these approaches to political science concern themselves with the majority and minority worlds although with varying frequency and focus. They are distinguished by their assumptions and by the focus of their investigations. All are struggling to understand and change or alter the masculine hegemonic order of the world.

### Organization and Methodology of this Chapter

To make this task more manageable, I will draw on and summarize previous surveys of the literature to build on the work that has gone before. I will not talk about how various works fit explicitly into the three divisions I have outlined above, but rather will present summaries of literature surveys organized chronologically by subfield. This I hope will give the reader an idea of how developments have been different in different subfields and how several different scholars have summarized each subfield. Drawing on these summaries as a data set, I will attempt to make some comments about any trends that emerge at the end. This should give an account not only of the significant research in the field as it has become recognized, but also an account of the change (or lack of change) and the segmentation that has characterized the field over the past three decades. I am including in my mapping, not only surveys that have been labeled surveys of gender and politics or women and politics, but also reviews of gender and development, gender and globalization, and gender and democratization as they appear in book introductions, article collections, or elsewhere. Most research in the field does not fit only into one of the three divisions mentioned above. Practically all feminist research depends to at least some degree on challenging accepted political practices and concepts. The research does differ in how this is done, to what extent it is done, and whether it is meant to reform the Westphalian Enlightenment model or rather is meant to confront it and/or transform it.

# Surveys of the Discipline of Women and Politics or Gender and Politics

Several surveys of the discipline of women and politics or gender and politics exist in the literature (Githens 1983; Carroll and Zerilli 1993; Lovenduski 2000a, 200b; Burns 2002; Beneria and Bisnath 2001, Bedford, 2004, Lawless 2011). Each of these reflect the priorities of the field at the time as well as the expertise and background of the authors. As a group, they present a picture of the kinds of questions and the type of findings that this focus on conceptual questioning and "adding women in" generates. Missing from these surveys of the literature are studies of gender and comparative government (see Beckwith 2010), gender and public policy making as well as gender and comparative public policy (See for example: Mazur 2002; Gelb 2003).

### Githens, 1983

Githens in 1983 focused on the political behavior of women. She wrote that gender research had up to that point, 1) been largely descriptive, 2) been under financed and consequently been based on small samples, 3) been done in a relatively short time frame, making conclusions possibly time specific, and 4) attempted to explain patterns of political participation by discussing the characteristics of women or the characteristics of the political system. She also acknowledged that public policy was getting greater attention (Freeman 1975; Gelb and Palley 1982) as was the role of the women's movement in shaping women's political behavior and public policy concerns (Boles 1979; Evans 1980; Rossi 1982) and the interface of feminist theory and political philosophy (Orkin 1979; Elshstain 1981a, 1981b; Hartsock 1983). Citing criticisms of the field by Carroll (1979) to support her position, Githens argued that the orientation of political science as a field, the concepts used, the questions asked, tended to treat gender research as an "addendum to the discipline" and to consider women's political behavior within a "framework of deviance. (Githens 1983, 475)." The problem for her was that "objective = masculine," a stance that "condemns much gender related scholarship to oblivion by trivializing its findings, limiting its conceptual framework and restricting its potential contribution to a better understanding of politics and political life (Githens 1983, 474)." As Carroll put it, "women's efforts and struggles within their own contexts are ignored" often because what is considered political by the discipline occurs only in the public sphere, a place where women have been traditionally excluded. Githens continues by reviewing the socialization literature, women's political participation at the citizen level (primarily voting or voting related behavior patterns such as party identification, voting turnout, differences between men and women's voting behavior and differences among women), and women as political office holders (that women are minimally represented and why, characteristics, recruitment, behavior, structural constraints on participation, differences in women's representation in different political institutions). She concludes that the research on women and politics has, as a whole, helped to address an enormous information gap with much needed empirical data about women's political behavior and their political lives despite the conceptual problems and biases. However, the findings present "a mass of conflicting data and interpretations (Githens 1983, 489)." She suggests that the reasons for this lie in political science assumptions about: 1) the nature and diversity of intra-group relations, 2) the parameters of political activity, 3) the value attributed to particular kinds of political activity, and 4) the definition of political elites. The result of these disciplinary assumptions, she argues, is that the more interesting questions about how women participate politically, how they accomplish political goals, and the factors that influence modes of participation are ignored (Githens 492).

### Carroll and Zerilli, 1993

A decade later in their 1993 review of the state of the discipline, Susan Carroll and Linda M.G. Zerilli argued that research in the field of women and politics could be divided into three categories: 1) "critiques of the ways in which political theory and empirical research in political science have traditionally excluded women as political actors and rendered them either invisible or apolitical," 2) "research that attempts to add women into politics, to make them visible while accepting the existing dominant frameworks of political analysis;" and 3) "research that calls existing frameworks and assumptions into question and argues that frameworks and assumptions of political science must be reconceptualized (Carroll and Zerilli 1993, 55)." Their review indicated that in the decade that separates their survey from that of Githens, considerable work had been done in the 1980s to address Githen's 1983 critique of the discipline.

In discussing women as invisible or apolitical, Carroll and Zerilli began first by discussing feminist re-readings of classical political theory texts to conclude that "women were not simply missing in the canonical texts, rather, they had been read out of the Western tradition by political theory scholars (Okin 1979; Elshtain 1981a; Saxonhouse 1985; Eisenstein 1981; Shanley 1982; Jones and Jonasdottir 1988)" and often classified as "utterly deficient in those qualities that were deemed necessary for active participation in the civic community (Carroll and Zerilli 1993, 56)." Women were recognized for their "disruptive sexuality, lack of justice, incapacity for reason, or all of the above and more (Carroll and Zerilli 1993, 56)." Still other feminist theorists saw that the exclusion of women in the tradition of western political thought contributed to a biased meaning of concepts such as justice, rights, consent, and citizenship, a set of conceptual meanings that could not be rectified by an "add women and stir" formula, but rather had to be rethought and retheorized (Pateman 1980; Eisenstein 1981; Elshtain 1981b; Saxonhouse 1985; Nelson 1989). Other critiques of the behavioral literature noted the same exclusion, invisibility, and political incapacity of women to be embedded in works such as Angus Campbell *et al. The American Voter* (1960*)*; Robert Lane, *Political Life: Why People Get Involved in Politics* (1959); Fred Greenstein, *Children and Politics* (1965); Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, *The Civic Culture*  (1963); Robert Dahl, *Who Govern*s? (1961) and Hans Morgenthau *Politics Among Nations* (1960) (Bourque and Grossholtz 1974; Sapiro 1979; Tickner 1991). In general, Carroll and Zerilli summarize these critiques as claiming that political science as a discipline had failed to recognize the gendered nature of political activity, had erroneously proclaimed male political activity to be universal, and all important, had defined women as politically deficient. Furthermore, they had ignored the political activities of women in families, in history, in voluntary organizations, in communities, in social movements, in international relations and elsewhere.

Carroll and Zerilli report that while some theorists argued that liberal theory is unable to resolve the contradiction between its view of women as rights bearing citizens and women as an oppressed sex-class (Landes 1988; Shanley 1989; Eisenstein 1981, 1984; Pateman 1988), other researchers accepted the traditional liberal democratic framework to argue that women must enter mainstream electoral and political institutional politics to achieve equality. Whereas Githens in 1983 concluded that the findings of women and politics research were contradictory and perhaps context specific, Carroll and Zerilli report some definite results. They cite research showing that women are kept out of public office by the tendency of incumbents to be reelected (Andersen and Thorson 1984; Darcy, Welch and Clark*.* 1987; Carroll 1985; Studlar, McAllister and Ascui 1988) and by the use of single member district rather than proportional representative electoral systems (Rule and Zimmerman 1992, Welch and Studlar 1990). They report findings that quotas for women on party lists have helped women take office in some European countries (Dahlerup 1988; Kolinsky 1991; Phillips 1991). Carroll and Zerilli also identify another set of research results concerned with identifying and analyzing the differences between men and women's political behavior and decision making (Bennett and Bennett 1989; Bledsoe and Herring 1990; and Van der Ros 1987).

Carroll and Zerilli's third category for women and politics research in 1993 consists of those studies that call into question the frameworks and assumptions of political science. They cite a group of studies that use women's own perspectives as the beginning for rethinking the political (Carroll 1989; Fowlkes 1992; Enloe 1990). A second group of studies are those that look at social movements and the activism of working class rather than elite women (Bookman and Morgen 1988). A third group are those studies that use gender to study political structures and policies (Carroll and Zerilli 1993, 67). This includes studies on the welfare state and its origins (Gordon 1990; Sarvasy 1992; Nelson 1990; Diamond 1983; Mink 1990; Piven 1990). The equality/difference debate is another arena that has sparked considerable controversy. Nancy Chodorow (1978) and Carol Gilligan (1982) both drew on psychological theories to argue that women's differences are to be found not in nature but in the way boys and girls relate differently to their mothers. Gilligan maintained that this circumstance gives women a different moral voice, a theme that some adopted (Ruddick 1989; Elshtain 1987; Cohn 1987), and others opposed or found difficult to accept. Some have argued that the "difference dilemma" (how to recognize difference and yet prevent separate inherently unequal spheres) is a matter of power difference (MacKinnon 1988). Finally, Carroll and Zerilli note that Nancy Hartsock has drawn on Marxist historical materialism to argue that seeing the world through women's eyes is not enough, but one must develop a "feminist standpoint" through feminist activism (Hartsock 1983).

Carroll and Zerilli conclude with the observation that the key dilemma for feminists in the 1990s is that the category of woman itself is in question. Instead of the difference debate being applied to men versus women, the challenge has become one of sameness/difference among women. Just as traditional political science has claimed the male stance as universal and thereby made women invisible, feminists who claim women as an analytical category make women of color, indigenous women, lesbians, and often poor women invisible. The category "woman" becomes white middle class woman and is incapable of distinguishing race or sex. Carroll and Zerilli argue that researchers should not abandon the category "woman" as it has challenged some of the central assumptions of political science. Instead, the task is to pay closer attention to differences between women and to make research on women and politics more inclusive, more contextual and more historical (Carroll and Zerilli 1993, 72).

#### Lovenduski, 2000

In 2000, Joni Lovenduski edited a two volume collection of journal articles that she felt reflected the best work in the field and that represented the questions being asked entitled *Feminism and Politics*. Volume One is divided into four sections: 1) Feminism, Women, and Political Science; 2) Women's Movements; 3) Participation and Attitudes: The Gender Gap; 4) The State and Political Institutions. To introduce the survey in section one, Lovenduski picked some early articles from the 1970s and early 1980s. Two were about female political participation and representation (Bourque and Grossholtz (1974) and Sapiro (1981); one was a critique of Sapiro's idea of women's interests by Diamond and Hartsock (1981); one was Githens' 1983 review of the discipline; one was by Vicky Randall (1991) that discussed feminist methodology and the last was Joan Tronto's "Beyond Gender Difference to a Theory of Care (1987)."

Section Two on women's movements has articles concerning the U.S., the Canadian and the French women's movements; Section Three on participation and the gender gap includes eleven articles, five of them from non U.S. publications ranging in dates from 1975 to 1996. Section Four on the state and political institutions includes five articles, one by Jane Jenson on the women's movement and the state in Western Europe (1985); one by Wendy Brown on "Finding the Man in the State" (1992) that analyzes the various masculine powers that the state exercises; Marian Sawer's 1996 article on "Gender, Metaphor and the State" that tracks the change in the image of the state as it moved from a "nanny" social welfare state to a neo-liberal "night-watchman" state, noting the highly gendered metaphors that have been used to discredit both social liberalism and the welfare state; and two articles by Mary Fainsod Katzenstein, one discussing the ERA and assessing the value of electoral politics for women (1984) and another arguing that the women's movement had moved to mobilize within institutions (especially the Catholic Church and the military) in the conservative political era of the 1980s (1998).

Volume Two has five parts: 1) Women's representation; 2) Democratization (mainly about E. Europe); 3) Citizenship; 4) Public Policy (mothers' pensions in the U.S.; Swedish Welfare State, Symbolic Reform in France; welfare states); 5) Redefining Politics (British Labor Party in the 90s, women's public toilets; abortion and US Supreme Court). As Lovenduski states, the project is limited to articles that have appeared in journals and covers Europe and the United States only. This publication is very important because it has a European and not exclusively United States focus. A substantial number of the articles are about Scandinavia, France, Canada, Australia, Britain and Eastern Europe. It also places an emphasis not present in previous reviews on policy studies, on democratization and on comparative studies in addition to providing concrete examples of topics, questions, and approaches discussed by Carroll and Zerilli. Lovenduski ends her introduction to the volumes by identifying three methodological battles that gender researchers continue to face. The first is the "persistent assumption that the same factors are influential for women and men." The second is that the "factors conventionally used to explore differences between women and men capture sex but not gender differences." The third is that "the preference given to quantitative over qualitative research strategies, … reduces the visibility of the subtle causes and effects of gender differences. (Lovenduski 2000b, xx)."

The Lovenduski collection echoed some of the ideas expressed in the Githens and in the Carroll and Zerilli reviews. One is that not only is politics a man's world, but "political science as a discipline tends to keep it that way" by limiting the definition of politics and the political to a very narrow set of activities that are explicitly stereotyped as male (Bourque and Grossholtz 1972). This theme is echoed in Wendy Brown's essay as well, arguing that understanding this is the first step to changing it. Sapiro's piece on women's interests explores the many complexities of representing women in liberal democracies, while Diamond and Hartsock point out some of the problems that Sapiro has identified as being the result of her "trying to work within the conventional categories of political analysis." Vicky Randall's essay on "Feminism and Political Analysis" notes that the ascriptive lower social status assigned to women often creeps into presumably "objective scientific" methodologies of the discipline. She argues that feminist methodologies that emphasize the informal and the personal and insist that the private is political are trying to let women be heard and trying not to reproduce and reinforce the existing oppression of women. Joan Tronto's essay on the politics of care represents a positive rather than a negative attempt by feminist researchers to open new topics of inquiry. For the most part, the other essays in the two volumes address issues that fit into Carroll and Zerilli's first two categories: studies that identify and critique the omission of women in political analyses and studies that attempt to add women to accepted frameworks.

#### Burns, 2002

In 2002, Nancy Burns contributed the only chapter on gender entitled "Gender: Public Opinion and Political Action" to the American Political Science Association's *Political Science: State of the Discipline* volume edited by Ira Katzenstein and Helen V. Milner. Burns, an empiricist, recognizes the importance of the interrogation of concepts that Carroll and Zerilli in 1993 identified as the major current dilemma facing the field. She begins her review with a discussion of the concept of gender, agreeing that this questioning of what she calls "categories" has been a major recent development in the field particularly with regard to the problem of the intersectionality of race and gender (see Haslanger 2000; Wingrove 1999; Young 1994; Crenshaw 1992; Higginbotham 1992; hooks 1984; Kim 1999; Nakano Glenn 1992; Stoler 1996). She also admits that this interrogation of concepts creates "trouble" for empirical analyses. She states that in the discipline, "one standard approach has been to adopt gender as a rather content-free dichotomous variable dropped into a regression, on the idea that that will offer evidence about whether, by chance, gender matters (Burns 464)." This approach ignores the differences within each of the dichotomous variables. It also tends to treat gender as a causal factor. Burns argues that political science is an "individualistic" discipline (465) that has not resolved this problem very satisfactorily. "It relies on an odd melding of individualism and essentialism (465)." She suggests that it is difficult to use individual data to see the property of a group. The interrogation of concepts also creates problems for empirical analyses because empirical data come from individuals at a single point in time and thereby obscure history and "the social organization that keeps gender from generating a divide (*ibid*., 466)." Burns states: "Unlike race – wrapped up as it is with striking spatial segregation – average differences between women and men are rarely 'divides' (Kinder and Winter 2001), and thus the wedding of an undifferentiated category to an individualistic enterprise makes less sense in the study of gender than it does in the study of some other bounded categories. (*ibid.,* 465)." She notes that the use of panel data could help with the historical deficiencies but that it has not been used very much (*ibid*., 467).

With regard to aggregate data, she states:

Scholars less committed to methodological individualism and more comfortable with categories than most political scientists turn to aggregate analysis to solve this problem (Jackman 1994; Tilly 1998). These aggregate analyses can sometimes offer a clear view of the accumulation of inequality, and they can do this with cross-sectional data. But we are individualistic political scientists, after all, and so we will have to devise different strategies, starting perhaps with a larger investment in panel analysis. (Burns 2004, 467).

While recognizing some of the limitations of empirical analysis, Burns believes that these can be overcome. She states that political scientists are beginning to cross the divide between category and individual by developing quantitative tools "to allow us to see the residues gender leaves in our data (*ibid.,* 467)." She notes that the field has recently moved to take advantage of comparative analysis of hierarchies and of intersectionality in a variety of subfields such as American political development (Mettler 1998; Skocpol 1992)), public opinion (Conover 1988; Sigel 1996); legislative turnover (Blair and Henry 1981; Carroll 1989) and participation (Burns, Schlozman, and Verba 2001) to identify "particular mechanisms that make sex matter (468)" and "to understand how, for all its variability, gender is a systematic social force (468)." Burns believes that the field is at a tremendous turning point, a time when the "possibilities grounded in the study of comparative hierarchies and in the comparative study of intersectionality – are exploding (469)."

In the second half of her essay, Burns turns her attention to the literature in American politics dealing with institutions, social movements, public opinion, participation, candidates and policymakers. With regard to institutions, she identifies those who have studied the consequences of how gender is conceptualized in an institution (Epstein 1988; Skocpol 1992; Orloff 1996) and those who have asked how institutional rules and procedures shape women's ability to obtain standing and power (Katzenstein 1998; Harvey 1998; Kanter 1977; Sigel 1996). In discussing the literature on social movements, Burns notes that scholars have shown that women's movements have depended heavily on pre-existing sex segregated groups in the society (Freeman 1975; Cott 1977; Mansbridge 1986; Cohen 1999; Payne 1995). They have also used the footholds that they have gained in institutions as platforms to push for change (Freeman 2000 Andersen 1996; Higginbotham 1990; Harrison 1988; Harvey 1998; Cott 1990; Edwards 1997). Research on consciousness and identity has generated less unanimity with regard to results.

In the field of public opinion, Burns summarizes findings that document a gender gap between men and women on political issues (Frankovic 1982; Klein 1985; Shapiro and Mahajan 1986; Conover 1988; Kenski 1988; Miller 1988; Welch and Sigelman 1989; Bendyna and Lake 1994; Conway, Steuernagel and Ahern 1997; Norris 1985; Schumaker and Burns 1988; Burns and Schumaker 1987). Since 1982, women have been more Democratic than men, favored welfare policies and opposed war more than men. Men have been more supportive of economic growth at the local level, while women have favored public welfare and neighborhood protection. No differences in opinion have been found between men and women with regard to abortion or women's rights. With regard to political participation, men are more active on taxes and foreign policy, while women participate more on education and abortion issues. Of the active women on abortion, those opposed to abortion are more active than those in favor. Low income women are more active on issues of basic human needs, crime and drugs than are low income men (Burns, Schlozman, and Verba 2001). Another part of this literature attempts to explain differences in opinion by correlating views on issues with other beliefs, such as ideas about the roles of the sexes, parenthood, motherhood, feminist consciousness, sexism (Luker 1984; Kinder and Sanders 1996; Mathews and deHart 1990; Mansbridge 1986; Klatch 1987; Ruddick 1989; Sapiro and Conover 1997; Tolleson Rinehart 1992; Sanbonmatsu 2000; Jackman 1994; Sigel 1996).

The gender gap between men and women in participation is small and in the United States narrower than in other countries (Christy 1987; Verba *et al* 1978). In exploring the reasons for this, scholars have used variables such as income, education, skills, free time, marriage, motherhood, childhood socialization, views on gender roles to find correlations with mixed results. The overall findings suggest that the gendered nature of institutions such as the family, workplace, and religion impacts women's and men's political participation differently. Women tend to respond positively to strong women candidates, while men do not. Little work has been done on developing comparative and intersectional accounts of the differences between men and women among different populations defined by race, ethnicity, and class (Burns 2002, 482).

The disadvantages that women face as political candidates has been the main concern of the literature on candidates. Women come to office having first been teachers or active in voluntary associations. Men are more likely to have been in law or business. Men run for office at an earlier age than do women (Burrell 1994; Carroll 1985; Duerst-Lahti 2005; Gertzog 1995; Kirkpatrick 1974). Barriers to women's recruiting include the parties' male networks, access to campaign money, and especially incumbency. Multimember districts favor women more than single member districts (Carroll 1985; Rule 1992).

In summarizing the literature on policymakers, Burns finds questions about 1) whether women face discrimination in legislatures and 2) about whether women change the legislative process. Here the literature shows that women policymakers have different policy priorities than men, that they consider it one of their responsibilities to represent women, that they prioritize bills on children and family more than men and that they support more feminist legislation than do men (Burrell 1994; Tamerius 1995; Thomas 1991; Bratton and Haynie 1999; Thomas and Welch 1991; Tamerius 1995; Jennings 1991). Researchers have found little difference between men and women with regard to legislative or lobbying strategies (Reingold 1996; Schlozman 1990; Nownes and Freeman 1998). Studies by Kathlene (1994, 1995) and Mattei (1998) indicate that once women are in office as policymakers, they use different styles of leadership and that men react differently to these. What is surprising about the Burns review of the field is that although she recognizes the importance of contested concepts – even the concept of "woman" that Carroll and Zerilli identify as a major problem facing the field in 1993 – and she admits that empirical methods tend to be inherently ahistorical and sometimes limited in being able to connect individual data to identify the property of a group, her ideological commitment to an understanding of the discipline as being composed of "individualist political scientists (Burns 2002, 467)" committed to "methodological individualism (*ibid*.)" means that she and her review of the field are firmly rooted in the group of scholars whom Carroll and Zerilli classify as being interested in adding women to the existing dominant frameworks of political analysis or the politics of presence.

### Bedford, 2004

In her piece entitled "Gender and Politics" for a Routledge volume on the discipline of political science, Kate Bedford organizes her essay by discussing three themes in the literature: 1) gender and participation in politics; 2) gender, politics and the state; and 3) the gendered nature of the categories through which politics is defined. This effort differs from the others discussed above in that it includes women, countries, and regions outside of the United States, Europe and the old British Commonwealth.

In her first section, Bedford discusses the literature on the gender gap (Carroll 1989; Conover 1988; Lovenduski 2001; Inglehart and Norris 2000) to conclude that the gender gap has become a global phenomenon with women taking positions more to the left on gun control, militaristic policies and government spending than do men. She next takes up the barriers to women in obtaining elected office citing Sue Carroll's findings that party discrimination, unequal access to money, gender role socialization, educational inequities and male incumbency all help to keep women out of public office. Positive action strategies, including quotas, have increased women's numbers in the parliaments of Great Britain, South Africa, India, Uganda, Scotland and Wales. Bedford notes that the assumption that more women in public office will mean that women's interests are better represented is being reconsidered as many women who have been elected have not identified with women's issues. When women do get into parliamentary positions, it does not mean that they make their way into the elite circles of government. Some studies have shown that women legislators have different priorities from male legislators (Ross 2002). Bedford notes the criticism by Cohen, Jones and Tronto (1997) that women and politics as a field has tended to define political participation with regard to established institutions such as Congress and thereby ignored the political participation of non-elite women as they struggle in situations of subordination and inequality. She also notes the importance of women's often unnoticed political participation in social movements as in the democratization of South Korea, Brazil, and South Africa (Nam 2000; Geisler 2000; Peterson and Runyan 1999).

In discussing the relationship between gender, politics and the state, Bedford cites a number of studies that show how researchers in the field are taking a context – specific focus. States are different and need to be approached differently. For example, the Australian civil service allows civil servants to be advocates whereas Canada and the United Kingdom do not. Policy change through the judiciary is easier in Canada than elsewhere (Chappell 2000, 2002). Studies of women in Uganda and China indicate that independence of the women's movement from the state is critical (Howell 2001; Tripp 2000a, 2000b ). Bedford notes that research on international influences on women's relationships to the state is increasing and shows how feminists use international agreements such as those on human rights to pressure their own governments and also how international agreements and pressures such as neoliberalism, privatization, and structural adjustment policies can prevent women activists from achieving positive actions from the state (Alvarez 1990; Alexander 1994).

In the third section of her essay, Bedford presents a discussion of the literature on the gendered nature of the concepts that define politics, a theme mentioned in Githens, Carroll and Zerilli and Lovenduski's reviews. Feminist scholars have examined concepts such as public and the private (Brown 1995; Elshtain (1981b), Okin (1979) , Pateman (1989); Carabine (1996)); authority (Jones 1988); rights (Bunch 1992) and power (Cooper 1995) to show the masculinized ways in which they are conceived and the extent to which they depend on a division between the autonomous, visible, individualistic, self sufficient, public male as opposed to the non-autonomous, invisible, bonded, dependent, private female while in fact it "takes two gendered entities to make one citizen (Brown 1995, 161)."

While Bedford, unlike any of the other surveys of the field mentioned above, includes examples of studies from all over the world and not just the United States, Europe, and British Commonwealth countries, her guiding paradigm continues to adhere to the traditional western political science division of the public and the private. Politics is that which is in the public domain. This occurs in spite of her informative and interesting discussion of feminist scholars' contestation of traditional political concepts.

### Globalization Trends since 2004

Trends in the world are mirrored in the discipline. As the fall of the Berlin Wall opened up East Europe and Central Asia, as the United Nations' world conferences on women, population, the environment, human rights, and habitat during the 1990s brought more women together around the world and as the spread of the internet increased, the discipline of gender and politics also expanded to become more concerned with the problems of women in all parts of the world. At the same time, it became somewhat less wedded as a whole to the Westphalian Enlightenment view of what counts as political.

Studies of gender and electoral participation, gender and representation, gender and the state have continued since Bedford's 2004 review. While some of this continues to focus on the United States with new research on the gender gap (Whitaker 2008), on gendered representation and participation in U.S. politics and women in elected office (Freeman 2008; Wolbrecht, Beckwith and Baldez 2008; Dolan 2004; Dodson 2006; Palmer and Simon 2006; Watson and Gordon 2003; Thomas and Wilcox 2005) and on representation and participation in Europe (Lovenduski 2005; Leyenaar 2004; Tolz and Booth 2005; Threlfall, Cousins and Valiente 2005; Elman 2007), an increasing volume of work concerns itself with these issues in other parts of the world especially Latin America, the Middle East, and East Europe (Rodriquez, 2003; Galligan and Trembley 2005; Saint-Germain and Metoyer 2008; Bayes *et. al* 2006; Lind 2004; Matland and Montgomery 2003; Bayes and Tohidi 2001; Phillips 2008; "Engaging Islam" issue of the *International Feminist Journal of Politics.* 2008 10,4).

In 1999, *the International Feminist Journal of Politi*cs was founded to provide an outlet for scholars writing about gender politics in the international arena and the non-western world. Feminists in the subfield of international relations were particularly important in starting this journal and its articles deal with a wide variety of economic, social and political issues related to gender such as water (v. 9, 4, 2007), religion (v. 10, 4, 2008), intersectionality (v. 11, 4, 2009), violence (v. 8, 4, 2006), trafficking (v. 14, 1, 2011) as well as more traditionally political science topics such as human rights (vols. 12, 3 & 4, 2010) gender mainstreaming (v. 7, 4, 2005) and democracy (v. 5, 3, 2004).

The journal *Politics and Gender* came into being in 2005 with a heavily comparative emphasis replacing the journal *Women and Politics* which had had a much more U.S domestic focus. This journal has become the official journal of the American Political Science Association's Research Section. Every issue of the *Politics and Gender* journal has a "Critical Perspectives on Gender and Politics" section devoted to articles with a particular theme. These themes such as women's movements (v. 6, 4, 2010), gender and judging (v. 6, 3, 2010), oil, Islam and gender (v. 5, 4, 2009); feminism and quantitative methods (v. 5, 3, 2009); women in executive office globally (v. 4, 3, 2008); state feminism (v. 3, 4, 2007); intersectionality (v. 3, 2, 2007); gender quotas (v. 2, 1, 2006); gender in campaigns (v. 2, 3, 2006) reflect a field that continues to be heavily rooted in liberal Westphalian state concerns involving representation, elections, and a separation of public and private but also one that is beginning to embrace more interdisciplinary topics.

In 2011, *Politics and Gender* published a symposium entitled "The State of the Field: Studying Women, Gender and Politics" composed of articles by the new editorial board of the journal headed by Jennifer Lawless (2011). This collection nicely illustrates the diversity of approaches that has come to characterize the field of gender and politics in the last decade as many scholars continue to work within the traditional liberal western political science Westphalian model (Lawless, Fox, Krook), while others – especially in the subfields of gender and international relations (Prügl) and feminist theory (Krause) – are reaching out to give the field as a whole a much broader interdisciplinary and global diversity. Richard Fox in the lead article entitled "Studying Gender in US Politics: Where do we go from Here?" begins with the statement "Studies of gender politics in the United States almost always have at their foundation concerns about political representation (Fox 2010, 94)." He notes that while empirical studies of elections have found the electoral process to be gender neutral (Burrell 1994; Selzer, Newman and Leighton 1997), gender was found to play a role in political recruitment (Sanbonmatsu 2006), political ambition (Lawless and Fox 2005; 2010) and in the challenges that men and women face with regard to voting, media coverage, campaigning and fund-raising (Falk 2008; Lawless and Pearson 2008). Studies of gender differences in policy priorities and leadership styles come to mixed conclusions with some studies showing that women legislators tend to focus on "women's issues" (Gerrity, Osborn and Mendez 2007; Swers 2002), while others find no evidence of this gender difference (Fredrick 2009; Schwindt-Bayer and Corbetto 2004).

Reviewing the field of gender and comparative politics in this symposium, Mona Lena Krook notes the struggle that those involved with gender and comparative politics have with being recognized by mainstream comparativist political scientists. Referring to a 2010 symposium in *Perspectives on Politics* (v. 8, issue 2) which addresses how to develop a comparative politics of gender, Krook notes that comparative feminist researchers have long been interested in social movements (Chappell 2002a; Banaszak 1996), political parties (Wiliarty 2010; Young 2000) elections and public policy (Inglehart and Norris 2000; Tripp and Kang 2008), and public policy and the state (Htun and Weldon 2010; McBride and Mazur 2010). Krook observes that the field of comparative politics in the past has been the disciplinary home for many area specialists and for those who engage in area specialists and for those who engage in cross-national research. Area specialists may be less inclined to be comparative but may also be more reliant on qualitative field work research methods which help to keep the subfield "problem driven" and "relevant to the real world," while cross national researchers often study mostly industrial countries where quantitative data is more likely to be available. As Aili Marie Tripp notes, a tension often exists for the feminist comparativist who would like recognition from her non-feminist peers in the discipline and would like her work to integrate more completely with the mainstream but who would also like her research to speak to the real life problems of the women she is studying (Tripp 2010), a theme echoed by Sue Tolleson-Rinehart in her call for translating gender politics into practice in the last contribution to this symposium review.

Writing about feminist theory in the symposium, Sharon Krause argues that the last decade has "involved a 'world diversification' of feminism to a more global, comparative, and differentiated body of work." She finds feminist theorists to be using a wide spectrum of methodological perspectives ranging "from analytic liberal theory to poststructuralism to discourse ethics to postcolonial theory to Arendtian agonism... (106)" and more. For her, "the last decade has demonstrated that feminism does not have to be one thing to flourish. (106)." Likewise, Elizabeth Prügl makes similar comments about the field of gender and international relations noting that the field has diversified into three main components, feminist security studies, feminist international political economy, which is highly interdisciplinary, and international governance (112).

Studies of gender, the state, and state policy making have been particularly numerous in the last ten years in part because of the 1995 UN Platform for Action that called for states to engage in gender mainstreaming and encouraged the establishment of quotas for women. The idea of gender mainstreaming is that states should examine all policies and all policy making to determine the impact these policies and procedures have on both genders and seek to take measures that will promote gender equality in all of these areas rather than segregating some policy areas from all others and designating them as "women's concerns." This idea was adopted by a number of governments after the Beijing meeting in 1995 with the result that states established "national machineries" of what some called "femocrats" in their national bureaucracies to perform these functions and analyses. Studies of gender mainstreaming have been carried out by political scientists such as Rai (2002); Haussman and Sauer (2007); Walby (2005) and Adams (2007). Others have been done by economists (Kabeer 2008, Schmidt 2005). The United Nations has since 2002 published ten volumes in their New Gender Mainstreaming Series on Development Issues each dealing with specific policy areas: HIV/AIDS; health, gender based violence, budgets, poverty, multilateral trading, informal economy, conflict, and education. An international group of feminist political scientists called the Research Network on Gender Politics and the State (RNGS) led by Amy E. Mazur and Dorothy E. McBride has been active during the last 10 years analyzing how states have engaged in gender mainstreaming with regard to the specific policies of abortion, prostitution, job training, and political representation (RNGs website).

The establishment of quotas is another policy advocated by the United Nations to increase the equal political participation of women. Quotas have been used all over the world in a variety of ways. In Europe, they have been used primarily in party lists (Leyenaar 2004). In India, village councils have a quota of reserved seats for women. Over a hundred countries have adopted quotas as a means of getting women candidates into office (Krook 2009). The issue raises a host of research questions concerning how quotas are implemented, why countries or political parties adopt them, whether they are effective, and whether they have other detrimental or beneficial consequences (Krook 2009; Dahlerup 2006; Franceschet and Piscopo, 2008). (See also "Global Database for Quotas" for Women.)

#### Gender and Development

Development studies came into being as a response to the economic condition of the world at the end of World War II. With Europe and Japan decimated by the war, the United States embarked on a number of "development" plans such as the Marshall Plan, the Japanese Occupation as well as United Nations development plans for other parts of the world. Until 1970 when Ester Boserup, a Danish economist with extensive United Nations experience, wrote her book, *Women's Role in Economic Development*, development studies had been primarily about men. Boserup wrote about how development activities affected women differently from men and how they marginalized women. Benería discusses the division of the field in the 1980s between Women in Development (WID) and Women and Development (WAD). Women in Development were those attempting to integrate women into development by including women into the modern sector of various economies. Opposing this approach were those taking a Marxist or socialist approach who held that women were marginalized not only by socialization and lack of opportunity to participate, but also by the very developmental process itself which was creating new economic, social, and political gender inequalities that subordinated women. These critics were known as Woman and Development (WAD). The goal was to change the development model to eliminate these inequalities in the household, in the labor market, and in development policies. In the 1980s this evolved into Gender and Development (GAD) to focus on the large number of norms that characterize relationships between the sexes rather than focusing just on women (Benería and Bisnath xii).

The field of gender and development is interdisciplinary in character. Sociologists, demographers, political scientists, public health experts, anthropologists are active in the field, although economists were first drawn to the subject and continue to be heavy contributors. Yet, many of the questions raised by practitioners in the field are political questions such as: do women have access to and/or control over resources such as land, labor markets, and commodity markets, how can women be empowered and how can institutions be changed? Gender and development studies have paid particular attention to reproduction, the division of labor in families and the structure of households as economic and ultimately political institutions (Sen 1996, 433). As Sen states: "This conceptual framework rests on the argument that production and reproduction, market and nonmarket activity are intrinsically linked and organized by relations of power. Factors affecting one tend to affect the other. The labor of women is critical to both, but women have relatively little autonomy to make decisions about either. (Sen 1996, 823)." In exploring these relationships, gender and development scholars have been asking: 1) how does liberalization affect women's as opposed to men's participation in markets; 2) does liberalization make it easier or more difficult for women to perform reproductive work with regard to labor time, time management, household division of labor, and access to resources and services; and 3) how does liberalization impact women's health, nutrition, basic needs, childcare, sanitation, security, access to and control over food water? These questions are linked in complex ways. As Sen explains:

For example, market liberalization, may expand women's potential to earn incomes through trade and encourage a switch of labor time away from food selfprovisioning toward trading; but involvement in trade, while holding out a promise of higher income, may be more risky and less secure. Higher income earning by women may also increase the threats of domestic violence from men who feel their authority is being undermined. Thus, even if women's situation improves along some dimensions, it may worsen along others… (Sen 1996, 823).

Research on the impact of liberalization on women presents a complex picture with benefits in some arenas and losses in others. While some women have been employed in export based manufacturing, the working conditions in these factories have generally been quite poor, increased trade and cheaper imports often undermine traditional industries and agriculture creating unemployment and poverty, and neo-liberal policies often cut social services on which women depend. Overall the cumulative picture appears bleak (Sen 1996; Stewart 1992).

Gender and development researchers have also asked about the differential impact of structural adjustment policies on men and women (Afshar and Dennis 1992; Bakker 1994; Beneria and Feldman 1992; Elson 1991; Sparr 1994; Tanski 1994, 2000; Moghadam 2000; Benería and Bisnath 2000; Lucas 2007). Overall, findings indicate that these policies have not been successful in providing a basis for growth, in improving macroeconomic indicators, or in diminishing poverty and satisfying basic needs for women. Although circumstances vary in different locales, in many cases, structural adjustment policies have made life conditions worse for women (Stewart 1992; Sen 1996; Benería 2003; Moghadam 2000).

Some of the more specific research questions addressed by gender and development scholars include the economic division of labor within households and families, gender, employment, and labor markets, gender and markets and women's access to and control over resources. Questions that are particularly political concern policy development, project implementation, empowerment strategies for women, and questions about institutional and social change (Visvanathan *et al.* 1997; Benería and Bisnath 2001; Benería 2003; Saunders 2002; Murayama 2005; Kevane 2004; Chachage and Mbilinyi 2003; Kuiper and Barker 2006). The literature in the field of gender and development is enormous. Some of the more recent books include: Jain 2005; Jaquette and Summerfield 2006; Sharma 2009.

#### Gender and Postcolonial Studies

As mentioned above, postcolonial studies originated in novels written by those in colonial or ex-colonial countries. However, the field today includes the perspectives not only of women from Majority world (the Third World or the South or the impoverished in the First World or the North) countries but also the perspectives of women of color living in Minority world (OECD countries/the North/industrialized countries). They speak from the point of view of those under domination. India has been a vibrant center for this approach. Anne McClintock, Amir Mufti and Ella Shohat edited a representative volume entitled *Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives* (1997). Topics of particular concern in this book are nationalism, multiculturalism, diasporic identities, the intersection of race, class, and gender, and postcolonial theory. The essays are particularistic, about explicitly defined populations, about identities and identity formation, about the problems of joint political activity among women of different races. Alexander and Mohanty'*s Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures* (1997) is a collection of articles about colonial legacies, capitalist state practices, identity formation and modes of feminist postcolonial organizing. Chandra Talpade Mohanty in *Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity* (2003), revisits her often quoted "Under Western Eyes" essay which discusses the problems of western feminism's hegemony dominating that of Majority world feminisms. Breny Mendoza has addressed this same question in her piece "Transnational Feminism in Question. (2002)." Nationalism and its meaning for women and their identity is another important theme in this literature. (See Lois West's *Feminist Nationalism* 1997). Reina Lewis and Sara Mills have compiled a representative reader, *Feminist Postcolonial Theory* (2003).Writers such as bell hooks, Aida Hurtado, and Patricia Hill Collins are important contributors to this field writing about women of color in the United States. Gloria Anzaldúa and Analouiae Keating in *This Bridge We Call Home* 2002 note that while their *This Bridge Called My Back* (1981) "displaced whiteness, *this bridge called my home* carries this displacement further. It questions the terms *white* and *women of color* by showing that whiteness may not be applied to all whites, as some possess women of color consciousness just as some women of color bear white consciousness. (2002, 2)"

### Globalization and Gender

The recognition that the world is undergoing a dramatic change brought about by the "death of distance" due to technological developments with regard to communication, travel, ideology, and especially finance, has helped to foster a new approach to global studies and to the study of gender. In many cases, this development has stimulated the subfields of gender and development, gender and international relations, gender and postcolonial studies and gender and democratization. Most of the work in this new field coincided with the rise of the neo-liberal Washington consensus of the 1980s and produced a voluminous interdisciplinary academic literature, although women and globalization received practically no attention until the 1990s. This occurred in spite of the heightened international political activity initiated by the United Nations' world conferences on women in 1975, 1980, 1985 and 1995 which brought women in non-governmental organizations around the world together in a series of local, regional, national and ultimately world conferences with official governmental representatives to discuss how to improve the lives of the world's women. The topics the field covers are broad and include questions such as: What does globalization entail from different ideological and geographical perspectives? How has global security, global finance, global trade, global migration, labor, the environment, gender relations, and human rights been affected by these new global changes? What is the impact of global feminist transnational organizations? What is the relationship between global and local feminist or women's organizations? How has globalization affected women's leadership, women's prospects for democratization?

The response to the posing of these questions has been broad and diverse drawing upon many disciplines and ideological persuasions from those feminists working in the Westphalian Enlightenment tradition and from those in radical, neo Marxist, socialist, post-modern and post colonial traditions as well. Feminist economists were already at work challenging the gender bias of many economic concepts and assumptions. The field of gender and development had been analyzing the gendered impact of structural adjustment policies for some time and documenting the feminization of poverty due to globalization. One of the first books by political scientists in the new field was a collection put together by Pam Rajput and Hem Lata Swarup (members of IPSA Research Committees 19 and 07) entitled *Women and Globalization* (1994). This volume focused on the impact of structural adjustment policies on women in India, Bangladesh, Philippines, Latin America, and Africa. Saskia Sassen, an urban sociologist, was perhaps one of the first to discuss and theorize the political implications of globalization from a feminist perspective. In 1996, she wrote an article entitled "Toward a Feminist Analytics of the Global Economy" (1996) which provided many research questions for others to pursue. The article noted that the global economy and globalization processes were providing "sites of contestation" that put women in a position to challenge and change established gender regimes, to become visible rather than invisible political actors and to improve the status and life situations of women. One of these sites was where capital intensive agriculture meets with subsistence agriculture and women's invisible subsidization of the waged labor of men though household production and subsistence agriculture becomes apparent; a second was in the feminization of the labor force which has brought women into the paid labor force around the world; a third was in global cities where poor immigrant women are brought in contact with new identities, new memberships, new forms of organizing; a fourth was in the question of sovereignty and its transformation and the fifth was in the arena of international law. Sassen states; "The strategic nexus for my inquiry is the transformation of sovereignty and the openings this has created for women (and other largely invisible actors) to become visible participants in international relations and subjects of international law (Sassen 1998, 86)." As Sassen notes, researchers in the field of gender and development had already done some of this research, especially on the nexus between capital intensive and subsistence agriculture and on women in the labor force (Boserup 1970). A major thrust of the field is to identify and document ways and locales in which the forces of globalization are changing gender regimes (Kelly *et al.* 2001)

The gender and globalization field raises many new questions for research and invites interdisciplinary approaches. Is globalization something new? Many women in the Majority world see it as simply a continuation of western imperialism (Fall 2001). This raises many of the questions about hegemony that concern post-colonial feminists. What impact has the global feminization of the labor force had on gender relations (Visvanathan *et al.* 1997; Haj 1992; Rai 2002; Lucas 2007). Here the questions asked by feminist economists and those working in gender and development are particularly germane. How have major institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF treated women? Many are concerned to document how globalization has eroded the welfare state (Sawer 1996; Young 2001). In what ways have global migration flows impacted women and gender relationships (Gonzalez 2001; Kelson and DeLaet 1999; Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2002; Morokvasic, Erel and Shinozaki 2003). How has globalization changed sex trafficking (Samarasinghe 2007; Hanochi 2001; Kara 2009)? What has been the experience of women migrants in their host countries (Freedman and Tarr 2000; Sincar 2001; Sarker and Niyogi De 2002; Parrenas 2001; Piper 2008)? All of these questions draw on literature and research in the fields of economics, sociology, anthropology, and geography to ask political questions about gender and globalization. Issues involving borders, citizenship and immigration laws and policies are also of interest.

A significant segment of what falls under the mantle of Gender and Globalization concerns transnational organizing and transnational activism among women, and a concern for gender and democratization processes. The United Nations Conferences on Women from 1975 to 1995 were very much involved with identifying common interests among global women and promoting transnational political organizing among women around the world from both the Majority and the Minority worlds. From the perspective of those of the postcolonial feminist persuasion, transnational feminism and activism in the age of globalization raises questions of western feminist hegemony. Proclamations that sisterhood is global by western feminists at international meetings can obliterate the different views of less privileged women all over the world. In a situation of such global inequities, any organizing between Majority world and Minority world women tends to be dominated and controlled by the more wealthy Minority world women. Moreover, an aid driven hierarchy can develop with middle class Majority world women mediating between the Minority world funding institutions and the women for whom the aid is meant. Postcolonial feminists insist that organizing must be context driven, specific, theorized from a basis of difference among women and ever sensitive to power differentials within and between societies or countries (Naples 2002, 271; Dekoven 2001). This difference creates a very uneasy situation for transnational feminist scholarship and activism. The situation calls for more research on the nature of various feminisms in different parts of the world and a greater distribution of such information (Bayes and Tohidi 2001; Hsiung, Jaschok and Milwertz 2001; Tripp 2000b, 2009; Moghadam 2005, 2007; Hawkesworth 2006, 2012).

#### Gender and Democratization

Studies that belong in this category of research on women and politics are those that give historical and contextual accounts of women's participation in democratization movements in Brazil (Alvarez 1990), South Korea (Yoon 2001); Latin America (Jaquette 2009) Latin America and East Europe (Jaquette and Wolchik 1998). In Latin America and South Korea, women were very active in women's movements mobilized around motherhood when these societies were in flux (much as women's activities during wartime); however, after the military dictators were overthrown, women's movements lost their momentum. Women in Central Europe, where women's equality had been associated with an unpopular communist regime, were more interested in returning to old traditional sex roles. Other research in this vein that seeks to understand the societal wide supports for democratization are those that realize the importance of empowerment for women. Empowerment in this sense means that women in countries where women have been confined to the home and restricted in education and other opportunities, have a chance to be active by organizing locally. Bystydzienski and Sekhon in their edited volume on *Democratization and Women's Grassroots Movements* (1999) favor a participatory democracy and present articles to show how women are organizing themselves differently in the different regions of the world. Datta and Kornberg discuss various political empowerment strategies for women in Pakistan, the Caribbean, Mexico and Costa Rica, Africa and China (2002). Other studies document women's movements in Latin America (Crasky and Molyneux 2002), Asia (Judd 2002; Parker 2005), and compare women's movements in a variety of countries around the world (Basu 2010, Banaszak 2006; Banaszak, Beckwith and Ruch 2003; Threlfall and Rowbotham 1996; Nijeholt, Vargas and Wieringa 1998). Leadership studies and leadership training courses and gender training courses for women are important aspects of what is recognized to be important for building democratic societies.

### Conclusions

In surveying the literature for this review two trends emerge. The first is the ideological and methodological divide between those studying the United States and Western Europe and everyone else. The second is the increasing "globalization" of the discipline in the last 10-15 years and its increasingly interdisciplinary character. The previous surveys of the discipline illustrate that the scholars writing for the American Political Science Association's surveys (and at least one European in 2000) perceived (or were directed to perceive) the field as about women in Europe and the United States and other advanced democratic countries. Even though their theoretical critiques of liberal political concepts led them to question dichotomies such as the public and the private and the confinement of politics to the public, for the most part, they continued to focus on political participation in elections and social movements and on politics related to interaction with the state and explicitly political institutions such as parties, legislatures, courts, bureaucracies, courts. Even when their theoretical investigations led them to question the cultural boundedness of political concepts (see Burn's questioning of the concept of "woman,"), this has little real consequence for many. Only Bedford's 2003 survey included studies from Majority world countries.

In contrast, feminists working in the interdisciplinary field of gender and development were the first to call attention to the importance of the family and the household as an economic unit (and ultimately political unit) in determining the welfare of women in Majority world countries. They also were among the first to study women in the labor force as a political and social phenomenon. Postcolonial feminists added still another dimension to the field, one informed by the critiques of politically gendered concepts by those who had gone before, but also acutely critical of the power imbalances in the world and the ways in which these exclude, marginalize, impoverish and silence postcolonial women both in the Majority world and in the Minority world. Feminists in the subfields of international relations, perhaps because their discipline was in disarray at the end of the Cold War, have been quicker than those concerned with political participation (defined as voting or running for office) and representation to pay attention to the realities of the global situation. They have looked to other disciplines such as economics, sociology, geography, anthropology and new perspectives such as postmodernism, and postcolonialism to fashion new questions and develop new approaches. The United Nations meetings of the last part of the 20th century, especially the 1995 meeting in Beijing were responsible for generating thousands of networks among women, both local and international, which have brought more of the world's women in contact with one another and raised awareness about the differences as well as the similarities of the questions and problems different women around the world face. Feminists interested in globalization and its impact on women have asked questions about gender regime change due to migration, to labor force participation, to cultural exchange, to transnational organizations, and to transnational activism. They have been concerned with anti-globalization forces and movements. Democratization feminists have challenged the notion that the conduct of regular competitive elections is an adequate definition of democracy and search to understand and create the explicit conditions that foster the construction of participatory democracies inclusive of both women and men.

#### References


*cal Equality*, edited by Sidney Verba, Norman H. Nie, and Jae-On Kim. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


# Chapter 7 Feminist International Relations – The State of the Field

*Elisabeth Prügl* 

There are many indicators that feminist IR is becoming an established subfield, including panels at major academic conferences, sections in professional organizations, single-authored and edited books as well as journal articles … While the field initially exhibited a need to justify feminist approaches, scholars are now pursuing their work alongside or despite mainstream IR – they are getting on with it, often redefining IR in the process.1

Annick Wibben's assessment bears witness to the remarkable accomplishments of feminist scholars in International Relations (IR) who, only twenty years ago, began to scale the ramparts of this thoroughly masculinist field. At the time, these scholars, often at the beginning of their careers, began to question the subtexts of a field that largely had excluded women and that was blind to its own masculinist biases. Women began to meet in their own conferences, started to write against the grain, founded the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies (FTGS) section of the International Studies Association (ISA) in 1990, and the ISA Women's Caucus in 1993.2 In the course of the decade, the feminist IR network broadened and progressively institutionalized. In spring of 1999, the first issue of *International Feminist Journal of Politics* (IFJP) was published, becoming a major outlet for scholarship of feminist international relations. Today, feminist IR is well-established: FTGS regularly features more than 50 panels at ISA meetings, IR textbooks include sections on feminist approaches, and feminist IR produces a steady stream of scholarship.

Writing against an exclusionary bastion, the first generation of feminist IR scholarship took on conceptual underpinnings that functioned to sanitize the field from the disturbances of feminism. This included epistemological critiques questioning positivist premises as well as biases in the theoretical construction of self-interested, autonomous state actors (Grant and Newland

<sup>1</sup> Wibben 2004, 98.

<sup>2</sup> Karen Erickson (2004) recounts the story of the origins of the Women's Caucus and of the increasing participation of women in ISA.

1991; Tickner 1992; Peterson 1992a and b; Sylvester 1994). Feminist scholars also sought to make visible women in international politics and argued for the relevance of gender as an analytical lens (Enloe 1989; 1993; Peterson and Runyan 1993). These critiques defined feminist scholarship in IR, establishing its legitimacy and preparing the grounds for feminist empirical research.

The relationship of feminist IR to the mainstream remains "troubled," however, and much of the field untouched by feminist critiques. Some have considered this a matter of concern (e.g. Tickner 1997; 2001; Locher and Prügl 2001); yet others have warned against "yearn[ing] to be a tight IR insider" and argued for going on with the business of feminist scholarship untied from the strictures of the discipline (Sylvester 2004, p. 59; Zalewski 1998). While there have been "promising" (Wibben 2004) engagements with feminist work by the mainstream (e.g. Jones 1996 with responses by Carver, Cochran and Squires 1998; and Carpenter 2002 with responses by Carver 2003; Zalewski 2003; Kinsella 2003; Goldstein 2001 discussed by Evangelista 2003; Prügl 2003; Kier 2003), more importantly there has been a proliferation of empirical work as feminists produce knowledge on pressing issues of our times (Tickner 2004, 50). In what follows, I review a part of this literature, namely that which addresses itself to issues of security and political economy, and summarize major strands of argument.

### Feminist Security Studies

The disjuncture between feminist approaches and the IR mainstream is perhaps most pronounced in the subfield of security studies, long considered one of the most exclusionary domains of IR.3 The disjuncture stems from profoundly different ontologies: Where mainstream IR focuses on unitary states and their security, feminists are concerned with individuals and their bodily security. Where the normative inclination of mainstream IR is to stabilize systems and orders, feminists are concerned with changing oppressive structures. Where mainstream IR imagines autonomous, rational actors, feminists see gendered and militarized identities constructed relationally (Tickner

<sup>3</sup> While I am concerned with the exclusion of feminist ideas, the dearth of women's participation in ISA sections focusing on security is telling. Between the 2002 and 2004 ISA conferences women's participation on panels sponsored by the International Security Studies section dropped from 29.6 to 23.9 percent, and from 15.5 to 12.2 percent on panels sponsored by the Diplomatic Studies section. However, women's participation increased from 17 percent to 26 percent in the Scientific Study of International Processes panels, and from 11.8 to 16.7 percent in the Intelligence Studies section. Yet, this compares to an overall participation rate of women at the conference of 33.2 percent in 2002 and 34.1 percent in 2004. See Sarkees 2004.

2001, 48; 1992; Steans 1998; Enloe 1993; 2000; Locher and Prügl 2001; Youngs 2004). Spike Peterson makes clear the threat that these feminist critiques pose to the IR mainstream:

... analytically and structurally exposing how gender operates to constitute the theory and practice of IR is thoroughly disruptive. It disturbs foundational concepts, conventional dichotomies, familiar explanations, and even the discipline's boundaries. It effectively demasculinizes the discipline. I believe that many who sense these systemic implications resist feminism not because they deny its truths but because they prefer their investment in the current arrangements of sex, gender, IR, and theory (2004, 42).

Despite these incompatibilities, feminists have made important inroads in security studies. Some have adopted positivist language to appeal to the mainstream. This includes proliferating scholarship on the role of gender in democratic peace that has found a correlation between domestic norms of gender equality and a tendency of states to go to war (Caprioli 2004; Caprioli 2003; Caprioli and Boyer 2001; Regan and Paskeviciute 2003; Tessler and Warriner 1997). Others have latched on to constructivist critiques that have gained a foothold in security studies, and yet others have refused the mainstream. The issues they have sought to address include why men dominate in war-fighting, how international practices co-produce women's subordination and war, and how feminist movements produce change in institutional contexts, including peacekeeping operations and militaries.

### Men and Women – Protectors and Protected

Joshua Goldstein's book on *War and Gender* (2001) compiles a vast range of evidence from different disciplines exploring the reasons for men's predominance in war fighting. Employing a positivist format of hypothesis-testing, he finds that "small, innate biological gender differences in average size, strength, and roughness of play" combine with the "cultural modeling of tough, brave men, who feminize their enemies to encode domination (Goldstein 2001, 406)" to explain the cross-cultural uniformity in the association of warfare with men. Biology and culture interact to produce a universal pattern, but in a strikingly novel suggestion, culture is stubbornly stable while biology emerges as comparatively malleable. Goldstein's book has received considerable attention and critique. It provides a much needed corrective to the biology is destiny argument revived by Francis Fukuyama when he suggested that women cannot run the world because it is dangerous and their peaceful inclinations cannot counter manly aggression (1998; for critiques see Tickner 1999; Ehrenreich *et. al*. 1999). It also constitutes a rich compilation of empirical findings from biology, anthropology, psychology, history, and women's studies. Critics have bemoaned Goldstein's focus on the individual studies. Critics have bemoaned Goldstein's focus on the individual level of analysis, his tendency to attach gender to individuals (men and women) and his blindness to gender as a construct that informs a variety of social forms (including institutions and discourses). They also have disagreed with his static, binary, and implicitly heterosexist understanding of gender that presupposes cultural uniformities between women and men (Evangelista 2001; Prügl 2001; D'Amico 2003).

More commonly, feminists have rejected positivism and employed constructivist and post-structuralist approaches to the question of men's predominance in war. These approaches lead them to ask not so much about what causes men to go to war as about the places of women in war, the entwining of masculinism and militarism, and the construction of masculinity through war. Feminists have probed the strange debate around gays in the military, the way in which gays pose a threat not to the effectiveness of militaries but to the construction of militarist masculinities (Cohn 1998; Kier 1998). Feminists also have explored the way in which military interventions produce gendered national identities. Thus, the first Gulf War projected an image of the United States as "tough and tender," taking on a new responsibility in a unipolar world while establishing a "new world order" masculinity (Niva 1998). In contrast, the war on terror has employed gender in order to reinforce mutual hostilities, and the association of men with war fighting renewed their legitimacy as actors in world politics while devaluing the agency of women (Tickner 2002). Women in this war again were relegated to the role of victims – victims and relatives of victims of 9/11; victims of the Taliban regime, whose plight served to justify war (Pettman 2004). Apparently the war system and sexism, militarism and patriarchy, continue to be firmly intertwined (Reardon 1985; Enloe 2000).

When probing patriarchy and the war system, feminists often have described the way in which male protectors and feminine "protectees," masculine warriors and feminine "beautiful souls" constitute each other in political theory and public discourse (Stiehm 1982; Elshtain 1987). Iris Marion Young (2003), in an article informed by a deep concern about the militarization of the United States, has reformulated this argument as "the logic of masculinist protection." She documents the appeal of the concept of the masculine protector not only in the creation of masculine and feminine identities, but also for the creation of a security state "that wages war abroad and expects obedience and loyalty at home." She urges us to deny leaders the role of the masculine protector lest we end up accepting "a more authoritarian and paternalistic state power, which gets its support partly from the unity a threat produces and our gratitude for protection (Young 2003, 2)." Internationally, feminists have observed a silencing of critique not only in the US but also by the US. Haideh Moghissi (2003, 595) professes her horror in the face of "President Bush's war cry that 'you are either with us or with the terrorists' and John Ashcroft's unambiguous condemnation of all criticism of the John Ashcroft's unambiguous condemnation of all criticism of the administration as 'giving ammunition to America's enemies.'" For her, this language evoked Iranian politics under Ayatollah Khomeini, the empowerment of "right-wing forces" and the unleashing of "violent patriarchal religious zealots," which forced her to flee her home country.

Feminists around the world also have bemoaned the new racism asserting itself in post-9/11 policies, "the privileging of white-Western suffering over and above everyone else's political concerns (Abood 2003, 577; also Couani 2003)." African feminists have recalled the terror attacks in Kenya and Tanzania and the disproportionate number of Africans that died in those attacks. At the same time, the US government acted as if African lives did not matter (Ajayi-Soyinka 2003). "What Africans are asking," Obioma Nnaemeka (2003, 602) points out, "is that humaneness be stretched to the point where an American life is equal to a Kenyan, Sudanese, or Tanzanian life." Feminists also have professed a sense of powerlessness in the face of the proliferation of warfare, the killing of civilians in Afghanistan "at a rate four times higher than that of the NATO bombardment of Kosovo and Serbia three years earlier (Kostash 2003, 591)," but also a coming together in new global movements such as Women in Black.

The gendered protector/protected logic also informs humanitarian interventions and the construction of "the civilian" as the one to be protected. Charli Carpenter (2003) has shown how international organizations have used "women and children" as a proxy for "civilians." Thus, in the former Yugoslavia, evacuations of civilians excluded fighting-age males although they were the explicit target of Serb massacres and most in need of international protection. Carpenter in part blames feminists who have argued that women and children suffer disproportionately in war. But Helen Kinsella (2004) suggests discourses of gender do not merely denote the distinction between combatants and civilians in an arbitrary fashion, but actually produce this difference through operations of power. Thus, "the structural and productive power of sex and sex difference" is embedded in the laws of war, visible in the writings of Grotius and in the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War, producing the gendered categories of combatant and innocent (or civilian) while constructing gender inequality. Carpenter's observations in the Balkans thus can be interpreted as an outcome of the way gender produces actors and targets in international law.

#### Women, Gender, and United Nations Peacekeeping

In addition to these discursive analyses, in the post-Cold War era, feminists have begun to explore the role gender plays in the United Nations and in institutions more broadly (Cohn and Enloe 2003). The institutionalization of gender mainstreaming and the adoption of Security Council resolution 1325 (on mainstreaming gender into peacekeeping operations) in October 2000 provided additional impetus for scholarly attention to the role of gender in UN peacekeeping. Feminists have scrutinized the peacekeeping missions of the 1990s, intrigued by the association of masculinized militaries with creating "peace," a category often discursively constructed as the feminine counterpart to masculine war-making. What was one to make of this crossdressing of militaries as peacekeepers and peacemakers? Not surprisingly, studies have found contradictions in abundance.

Whitworth (2004) vividly illustrates the contradictions that emerge when soldiers, trained to become "killing machines," are entrusted with peacekeeping operations that require them to keep under tabs precisely the characteristics that they have been taught to excel in, *i.e.* the capability and willingness to employ violence. In Cambodia, peacekeeping facilitated a transition to democracy and civilian peacekeepers supported women's increased political participation, while at the same time peacekeepers were engaged in sexual abuse and created a flourishing market in prostitution involving Cambodian women returning from refugee camps. For Canada, peacekeepers functioned as a source of pride and identity helping construct the country as a good global citizen; they threw the country into a crisis of identity when reports surfaced from Somalia implicating Canada's elite troops with torturing and killing Somalis and with racist, homophobic, and misogynist practices (see also Razack 2004).

The role of peacekeeping for the formation of Dutch national identity figures in a collection of European scholarship on the experiences in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Cockburn and Zarkov 2002). Like the Canadians, the Dutch draw on their peacekeeping military as a source of national pride, and the Dutch press evoked notions of national trauma when Dutch troops failed to prevent the slaughter of Muslim civilians in Srebrenica (Zarkov 2002; De Leeuw 2002; Dudnik 2002). This literature emphasizes the continuity between wartimes and pre- and post-war situations, interrogates how pre-war constructions of masculinity make possible war atrocities and how post-war reconstructions inscribe militarism into states and societies. The lack of attention to issues of gender inequality in reconstructing Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the disregard for the plight of trafficked women who fed the peacekeepers' appetite for prostitutes all were extensions of masculinist and militarist practices into post-war situations, urging us to pay attention to apparently uninterrupted processes of masculinization/militarization (Enloe 2002; Rees 2002). Indeed, feminist interrogations of war have linked militarism and patriarchy, locating the reasons for militarism in various forms of misogyny and leading to an imperative of fighting patriarchy in order to overcome war (e.g. Wasmuht 2002; Mathis 2002; Zwingel 2003).

Part of this scholarship examines how peacekeeping missions have paid attention to gender (or not), finding little commitment on the part of leaders, but also documenting incipient efforts to train militaries and showing that missions with strong civilian components (that typically include more women) have tended to be particularly successful (Mazurana 2002; Carey 2001). Louise Olsson (2001) describes this dynamic in the UN mission in Namibia, where an unusually large number of women participated as a result of a long planning period and of a commitment to professionalism on the part of the mission's leadership. Henry Carey (2001) provides a comprehensive overview of gender mainstreaming in a range of peacekeeping operations, from Namibia to Burundi, finding successes in the fact that gender mainstreaming is included in many mandates, but also reporting difficulties with the prosecution of rape crimes both when the violators are in-country nationals and when they are peacekeepers. Sherill Whittington (2003) recounts the fascinating story of mainstreaming gender into the UN mission fostering the transition in East Timor. Here commitment by the leadership enabled extensive gender training, data collection, a campaign against domestic violence, and work on gender issues with East Timorese civil society actors. The result was an election in which women took 27 percent of seats in the Constituent Assembly and made up 40 percent of the commissions charged with preparing a new constitution.

Feminists also are reporting on the successes and constraints of efforts to mainstream gender into the operations of civilian intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations involved in post-war reconstruction and conflict prevention. For example, while Oxfam has had a gender policy since 1993, its implementation has been patchy. In humanitarian relief situations, a series of dichotomies, such as the distinction between "hard" technical interventions (such as providing water) and "soft" interventions (such as awareness-raising, education, group formation), short-term and long-term programming, has functioned to marginalize women and their skills (Williams 2002). Similar dichotomies existed in the OSCE mission to prevent ethnic conflict in Estonia, where the linguist and social science competence of female diplomats was considered less valuable than the legal competence of the men (Birkenbach 2002).

Peacekeeping missions and post-war reconstruction efforts also have raised questions about how peacekeeping militaries should be changed to account for gender more extensively. In interviews, Bosnian women active in NGOs have emphasized that they valued peacekeeping militaries for providing security. But they also wished for a change in military culture, creating an "international military regime" in which peacekeepers recognized and respected the contribution of women's organizations to building democracy, in which militaries were accessible and ready to cooperate with women's organizations, in which militaries were sensitive to local culture, and which izations, in which militaries were sensitive to local culture, and which would allow soldiers to show their humanity (Cockburn and Hubic 2002). Cockburn and Hubic report anecdotes of women soldiers reaching out to local groups, but also of those unresponsive to local efforts. Kari Karamé (2001) similarly tells of meetings and friendships between women in Southern Lebanon and women soldiers in the Norwegian battalion of the peacekeeping operation.

Overall, however, little scholarly attention has focused on what women's increasing presence in militaries means for war or post-war reconstruction. Scholars have noted a change in the public status of militaries: they are no longer just "war machineries" but also public employers required to submit to the same laws as all other employers (Eifler 2002). The development has been particularly pronounced in Europe, where the European Court of Justice has ruled against the exclusion of women from European militaries on the grounds of non-discrimination. But while some have speculated that militaries will change "if service is no longer a way to demonstrate manhood (Stiehm 1989, 7)," Eifler has suggested that both the US and Russian militaries have found new ways of "doing gender" that have secured women's exclusion and marginalization, the Russians by locking women into short-term labor contracts that supposedly are to be applied to men as well in the future, the Americans through combat exclusion. In both cases, there is an enormous struggle over the threatened loss of military masculinity.

### Feminist Political Economy

Rationalist approaches dominate the subfield of International Political Economy with a focus on negotiations and inter-state cooperation. Feminists have made few inroads into this type of IPE. Instead, they have contributed to a critical IPE that embeds economic processes in society and interrogates the relationships of power that constitute economic interaction. Because critical IPE is a multi-disciplinary endeavor, it more easily resonates with the extensive literature on gender and development and with feminist writings in the social sciences more broadly.

Feminist interventions in critical IPE have centered in particular on making visible women's paid and unpaid labor and on integrating understandings of that labor into theoretical approaches to political economy. Feminists have brought post-structuralist, post-colonial, and neo-Marxist orientations to this purpose. With the surge to prominence of gender mainstreaming, some interventions also have begun to focus on the way in which institutions reproduce gender, broadening the emphasis from a focus on women's labor to gendered economic regulations, and employing organizational and institutionalist approaches to highlight the gendered underpinnings of neo-liberal economic regimes.

### Making Women's Labor Visible: From Manufacturing to Services and Care

Globalization has brought into relief women's labor in new ways. Feminist interventions in the 1980s and 1990s described the emerging role of women as assembly line workers under a new international division of labor in manufacturing (Fernandez-Kelly 1983; Tiano 1994; Cravey 1998), the ambiguous impacts of neo-liberal policies from free trade to structural adjustment (summarized in Benería 2003; Çatağay, Elson and Grown 1995), and the dual and interrelated processes of the flexibilization and feminization of labor (Ward 1990; Mitter 1992; Boris and Prügl 1996). At the turn of the 20th century, feminists also turned their attention to the burgeoning and increasingly globalized services industry that organizes women's care labor into transregional "care chains" (Yeates 2004).4 

Feminists have become alarmed about a newly emerging international division of labor in services. Third World women increasingly migrate to work as nannies, maids, and sex workers in Europe, the US, East Asia and the Middle East. They enable women in Europe and the US to work outside the home and women in Taiwan to mitigate the traditionally tense relationship with their mothers in law. They also allow men to continue to evade their "second shift." Migrating women send remittances to give their children a basic standard of living and an education. At the same time, the new globalized services economy has created a "deficit of care" in sending countries; global economic inequality is being extended to reproductive labor and the labor of love (Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2002; Lan 2002; Parreñas 2002; 2001).

Sex work is one aspect of the new international division of labor in services, emerging together with proliferating inequalities and with the expansion of international tourism (Cabeza 2004; Outshoorn 2004). The phenomenon of internationalized sex work has spawned a rich and sometimes contentious literature. Activists and scholars fight and argue against coercive practices in the sex industry, including the enslavement of sex workers and international trafficking of women and girls for the purposes of prostitution (Bales

<sup>4</sup> This does not mean that concern with practices in manufacturing has ceased. One major area of investigation is highly exploitative flexible forms of manufacturing enabled by international globalization and their regulation (Prügl 1999a; Chowdhry 2001). For an overview of the gendered impacts of globalization in manufacturing, services, and agriculture, and of the gendered impacts of global governance practices see Wichterich 2000.

2002; Hanochi 2001). In parallel, prostitutes increasingly have organized, redefined themselves as sex workers and are attacking the "old tired ethics" that have painted all forms of prostitution as exploitation. Scholars have documented this movement and criticized international discourses on prostitution for their cultural imperialism and for denying agency to Third World prostitutes (Kampadoo and Doezema 1998). Furthermore, they have highlighted the racism embedded in global desire industries.

Post-colonialist feminists have expanded this line of argument to International Relations more broadly, describing the relationship between Westerners and Third World women service workers as an enactment of postcolonial relations of conquest and desire (Ling 2002). In the neo-liberal economic order, an "economy of desire" constitutes reproductive labor as an extension of sexual relations that makes racialized and naturalized Third World women available to men, both in the West and within the Third World (Agathangelou 2002; 2004). The work of women, migrants, and children sustains a "techno-muscular capitalism" – global market competition driven by technology – by providing the "intimate labor" that complements the work of a largely male, techno-managerial elite (Chang and Ling 2000). The masculinist states of newly emerging economies are implicated in these processes. Here, foreign maids enable the constitution of middle-class identities and of nationalist state identities as modern within the context of Western hegemony (Agathangelou 2002; Chang and Ling 2000; Chin 1998; Han and Ling 1998; Ling 2002; Jeffrey 2002). The approach interweaves a theorization of post-colonial relations with gender relations, making visible the complex interactions of privatized and public forms of power in the international economy, while providing an inroad to understanding relations between "the West" and "the rest" in the area of security as well (Agathangelou and Ling 2004).

The post-colonial literature identifies gender not only in women's and men's labor power, but also in the relationship between North and South, East and West. This approach facilitates an understanding of not just people but economic orders as gendered, sexed and racialized. The practice of gender mainstreaming latches on to this more structural (if not post-structural) understanding of gender and other status dichotomies, taming it for institutionalist purposes.

### Gender and Global Economic Governance

The feminist emphasis on political practice has led many to question prevailing images of globalization as unavoidable and unstoppable. Georgina Waylen (2004, 558) has argued forcefully that "globalization is not an immutable and irresistible force" (see also Bergeron 2001). Acknowledging this fact makes processes of globalization amenable to political intervention. Accordingly, Waylen argues, it is necessary for feminist practice to understand the ways in which global economic processes are constructed and regulated. She emphasizes the need to probe not only women's labor in workplaces and households, but also neo-liberal policies and the gendered norms, discourses, and ideologies surrounding globalization. Feminist scholars have examined such governance from different perspectives. They have employed discursive and institutionalist approaches to highlight the gendered underpinnings of neo-liberal economic regimes.

Focusing on gendered discourses in the global media, Charlotte Hooper (2001; 2000) has explored constructions of bourgeois-rational and citizenwarrior models of hegemonic masculinity in *The Economist*. Patricia Price (2000) has identified a rhetorical similarity between discourses of female slenderness promoted in magazines and self-help writings, and free-market reforms promoted by the Bretton Woods institutions and popularized in business journals such as *The Economist*. The corporeal effects of these discourses are similar: they produce hunger and renew borders between femininity and masculinity, between have-nots and haves.

The transition to capitalism in Eastern Europe has served as a quasiexperiment for scholars probing the gendered construction of markets. While most feminists are critical of the claim that socialism entailed gender equality, comparative research on the economic status of women in East and West during the Cold War has found more gender equity under communism. For example, Éva Fodor (2004) argues that "the state socialist emancipation project" in Hungary was successful in that it enabled women to participate in various forms of "workplace authority." By comparison, Austrian women had many fewer chances of career advancement. The transition to capitalism has entailed significant losses for women in Eastern Europe in terms of employment, social services, reproductive rights, and representation in parliaments (Einhorn 1993).

Jacqui True (2003) describes the gendered construction of consumer markets in the Czech Republic. Here sex and gender were newly employed in marketing and advertising campaigns, producing women as sex objects and Western products as providing virile potency. True connects the creation of gendered consumer markets to the creation of differently gendered labor markets (2000), an increasingly feminized public sector and masculinized private and foreign enclave sectors. And she connects them to the creation of a gendered civil and political society, the masculinization of politics and the feminization of the civic sphere. She concludes that "globalization and gendering processes are inextricably bound (2003, 175)."

The transition to capitalism in Eastern Europe has involved changes not only in the area of production, but also in reproduction. Feminist sociologists and anthropologists have studied these changes. They have analyzed the intense struggles over women's reproductive rights (abortion in particular) and described pervasive redefinitions of everyday gender relations. Shifting gender divisions of labor in the household; new rules guiding sexual relations and friendships; new economic roles and opportunities together with new wage inequalities, all bear witness to the restructuring of gender orders that economic restructuring has entailed (Gal and Kligman 2000).

Fodor, True, and the studies reported in Gal and Kligman all, to some extent, link the gendering of political economies to state institutions. Feminists in International Relations have extended this understanding to the "internationalized state," arguing that global economic governance also (re)produces gender. Shirin Rai (2004) has suggested that the notion of global governance is an ideology that has "constitutionalized" neo-liberalism, privileging discourses of efficiency over the common good, separating economics from politics, and ignoring the degree to which markets are socially embedded and gendered.

Interestingly, much feminist literature exploring international institutions (the internationalized state) has focused on human rights, and less on economic governance, and has documented the emergence of a "global gender equality regime" (Kardam 2004; Berkovitch 1999; Joachim 1999; 2003; Zwingel 2005; Inglehart and Norris 2003). To the extent that feminists have studied international economic governance, they have investigated the gendered rules of (neo-)liberal economics rather than policy-making in international institutions. Feminist political economists (Elson 2000; Elson and Çatağay 2000; Ferber and Nelson 1993; 2003) have provided a reconceptualization of economics that accounts for the regulative values produced by states and the care values produced in a reproductive economy. Spike Peterson (2003; 2002) suggests a new framework for seeing the global political economy as consisting of a productive, reproductive, and virtual economy. This allows her to shed light on the production of value in areas typically considered marginal in mainstream economics (households, informal sector, but also virtual space) and on the processes of biological and social reproduction accomplished through socialization. Isabella Bakker (2003) similarly foregrounds processes of social reproduction to argue that the shift in the international economic order from "embedded liberalism" to "disciplinary neoliberalism" also has entailed a shift in gender order. Following Brigitte Young (2001), she suggests that this has involved the reprivatization of production, the decline of the family wage model, and the renegotiation of private and public spheres. These models constitute an important correction to the production-focused masculinist bias of liberal economics.

As gender mainstreaming has become a preferred strategy for advancing gender equality in the UN system, the European Union and in governments around the world (Mazey 2001; True and Mintrom 2001; True 2003; Rai 2003), there is an increasing demand for studies that probe ways in which international institutions perpetuate gender biases in all kinds of issues areas, including economic policies. A few studies have begun to address gender politics in economic institutions, often drawing on the discursive critiques of neo-liberalism. Anne Sisson Runyan (1999) identified a neo-liberal "framing" of women's economic and political advancement in the Economic Commission on Europe's regional discussions leading up to the Beijing Women's Conference. Focusing on international labor rules, Prügl (1999a and b) documented the way in which ILO Conventions constructed the category "worker" as masculine by disregarding work that takes place in the home. Feminists in International Relations are now moving beyond these engagements with the internationalized state, exploring gender in policy sectors that have remained largely untouched by feminist critiques. They are interrogating the way in which finance, trade, agricultural, and transportation policies are gendered and are proposing ways in which these policies could address gender inequalities (Sen 2000; Bisnath 2001; Prügl 2004a; Polk 2004). In this way they are adding to the extensive existing literature on the significance of gender in employment, social and development policies (e.g. Sainsbury 1999; Lewis 1998; Mazur 2002; Benería 2003; Rai 2002).

Gender mainstreaming, the systematic incorporations of gender considerations into all stages of policy, program, and project cycles, has had ambiguous outcomes. Governments and international organizations increasingly have adopted the rhetoric of gender mainstreaming and the strategy has spawned innovative changes in public management. One of these changes is the introduction of "gender budgets" spearheaded by UNIFEM (now UN Women) that have found imitators in various countries (Elson 2004). Yet gender mainstreaming sometimes has become an excuse for cutting womenfocused programs and has entailed the incorporation of equality goals under institutional agendas. The World Bank in particular has been faulted for instrumentalizing gender equality, making it a tool to further economic growth (Bessis 2001; Prügl and Church 2006). Furthermore, gender mainstreaming has run up against patriarchal organizational cultures and against the constraints of macro-economic and macro-political environments (Braunmühl 2002).

Considerable debate exists among feminists about the value of gender mainstreaming. Rai (2004) cautiously argues that feminists need to engage with state institutions that enable global governance. Similarly, Ruth Pearson (2004) urges feminists to generate workable policy proposals directed towards states, translating feminist economic analysis into "effective political action." But others have been wary, seeing dangers of cooptation and the suppression of difference among women as typical for engagements with the state (Rai 2004; Wood 2004; Bessis 2001). Bergeron (2001; 2004) further cautions that "state-centric" approaches tend to take global capitalism as given, as an outside force that can be moderated but not fundamentally changed. Focusing on the state limits the feminist imagination from envisioning more radical alternatives. But feminists working in international institutions and others have refused this dichotomous framing, emphasizing the need to combine gender mainstreaming approaches with women's empowerment and the need for femocrats to work in conjunction with movement actors (Zaoudé and Sandler 2001; Prügl 2004b).

### Conclusion

This review of the state of a field is incomplete, both because of the size of the field and of the limitations of the author. Here I took on two well-defined, large subfields in International Relations, i.e. security studies and international political economy, and probed feminist interventions. There are other important areas where internationally oriented feminist scholars have made important contributions. In particular, there is a proliferating literature on democratization both at the state level and at the international level. Literatures on global civil society, the role of international advocacy networks and of women's movements fit into this body of literature, as do writings on feminist strategy. They are a central part of contemporary feminist International Relations and my lack of attention to these writings here should not distract from their centrality to the field (*e.g.* Jaquette 2003; Naples and Desai 2002; Molyneux and Razavi 2002; Braig and Wölte 2002; Liebowitz 2002; Eschle 2001; Kelly et al. 2001; Ackerly 2000).

The purpose of this essay is to document the considerable richness of feminist scholarship in International Relations. It is a self-confident scholarship that has moved from talking at the mainstream to constituting itself as a distinct body of knowledge that the mainstream ignores at its own peril. Feminist analyses of masculinity, war- and peace-making provide trenchant answers to understanding IR's classic question – why war? Feminist studies of women's work in all economic sectors and in reproduction complete the partial picture of globalization offered by liberal economics. And feminist explorations of gendered, racialized, and sexed messages in economic conduct help answer questions about the causes of poverty and inequality. Feminist International Relations thus has emerged as a field of scholarship central to understanding the pathologies of our global world.

### References


*Relations,* edited by Marianne Braig and Sonja Wölte. London: Zed Books: 55- 79.


*schen Recht und Gewalt: Internationale Sozialordnung, Völkerrecht und Demokratie*, edited by Stephan Albrecht, Werner Goldschmidt and Gerhard Stuby. Hamburg (Germany): VSA-Verlag.

# Chapter 8 Western Feminist Theories: Trajectories of Change

*Mary Hawkesworth* 

Feminism is a global political movement to improve the conditions of women's existence and to eliminate gender-based inequities and injustices.1 Feminist theories arise in conjunction with feminist activism and academic practices, seeking to illuminate the barriers and constraints that circumscribe women's lives, explain their dynamics and persistence, and identify mechanisms for change. From the outset, feminist theories have been diverse and contentious, reflecting the specific conditions of their emergence.2 In this paper, I chart some of the central themes of feminist theorizing while also indicating critical points of disagreement among contending feminist theories.3

Feminist theories articulate claims of justice that do not fit the models of justice as restitution, reparation or rectification developed in the Western philosophical literature. Since Aristotle advanced his conception of compensatory justice as a rectifying or reparatory transaction between one person and another, Western philosophers have argued that both wrong-doing and its rectification must be tied to specific historical events. But the systematic inequities that women experience in particular times and places do not conform to the model of injury or the possibilities for rectification that Aristotle envisioned. Ranjana Khanna (2001, 105) has pointed out that women's subordi-

 1 In the aftermath of four world conferences on women sponsored by the United Nations, there are self-identified feminist activists working in all parts of the globe. It is important to note, however, that there are also many women activists working to improve women's lives who eschew the feminist label, for various reasons. Some perceive feminism as inescapably linked to Western hegemony; others object to the bourgeois character of Western feminism, which they take to be invariant; yet others hope to avoid marginalization within their home nations that accrues to those who identify as feminist.

<sup>2</sup> Contemporary Western feminist scholars have traced feminist debates from the 15th century and are currently working on recovery of voices from earlier periods.

<sup>3</sup> Publications in the field of feminist theory have increased exponentially over the past four decades. It would be impossible to do justice to this rich literature in one short paper. While I hope to provide an overview of some of the major currents in these works, I note from the outset that the schematic analysis presented here does not begin to encompass this vast literature. For a recent effort to provide an overview of feminist theories, see Lorraine Code, ed., *Routledge Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories.*

nation exceeds the boundaries of any particular event and is more akin to "spectral overshadowing." As such, mainstream philosophy denies any possibility for rectification: How can justice dispel something that cannot be accounted for by a verdict? How can women be accorded sovereignty when it is not a matter of restoration precisely because women have never had it? How can justice address the micro-inequities that permeate women's daily lives when they are not unlawful or illegal (Khanna 2001)?

One challenge that feminist theorists have embraced is to develop analytic strategies and conceptual vocabularies necessary to make the injustice of male domination and women's subordination visible and to refigure conceptions of justice so that rectification becomes possible. In the 19th and 20th centuries, feminist theorists devoted great effort to "denaturalizing" the social relations and social roles of women and men. Liberal feminists from Harriet Taylor (1851) and John Stuart Mill to activists fighting for abolition and women's rights attempted to demonstrate that women's "nature" was an altogether artificial thing, the result of forced repression of certain capacities and excessive stimulation of other capabilities (Mill [1869] 1971). They emphasized the role of law in excluding women from educational and occupational opportunities, from legal standing and constitutional rights, and from participation in politics and public life, thereby producing women as inferior beings. As early as the 1830s, black feminists in the United States also pointed out that state and federal laws deprived black women and men of the status of human beings; denying them rights of self-determination and constitutional protections in ways that differed significantly from the deprivations experience by white American women (Maria Stewart in Richardson 1987; Guy-Sheftall 1995). Contrary to dominant beliefs, feminists argued that the subordination of women and the systematic dehumanization of blacks were the effects of the legal code, a socially produced and sustained hierarchy, not a reflection of natural aptitudes and abilities. Within this liberal framework, laws which served as the instrument of sexual and racial oppression were targeted for change. Thus one strain of feminist and critical race theorizing has consistently focused on the transformation of the state and its legal apparatus as a primary mechanism for social change.

Within the vibrant socialist movements of 19th and 20th century, feminists construed the causes of women's oppression and the strategies for social change quite differently. While the laws of bourgeois (and feudal) states cemented unequal relations, on this view, a full understanding of "the woman question" required more expansive theoretical conceptualization encompassing exploitative divisions of labor within capitalist industrial production, unequal roles in physical and social reproduction sanctioned by marriage practices and kinship systems, commodity fetishism, modes of circulation, trade and exchange. Following cleavages between social democrats and proponents of revolutionary socialism, socialist feminists disagreed about the precise tactics needed to achieve more equitable gender relations in the short term, but they agreed that the overthrow of capitalism and the achievement of socialism were essential to the feminist project in the long run. Specific prescriptions for social transformation surfaced in the intricacies of the domestic labor debates, the proliferation of versions of materialist feminism, as well as the wide-ranging arguments about dual systems theory, which explored the intricate relations between capitalism and patriarchy (see for example, Benston 1969; Barrett 1981; Delphy 1984; Eisenstein 1979).

Early efforts by Western feminist theorists in the academy to analyze the proliferation of rich and diverse feminist theories gave rise to a classification system commonly referred to as the "hyphenation model." Within this framework, approaches to feminist theorizing were analyzed in the context of the larger Western philosophical traditions to which they had affinities such as liberal feminism, socialist/Marxist feminism, psychoanalytic feminism (Elshtain 1981; Jaggar 1983). Radical feminism alone emerged within this schema as a free-standing critique of the "mindcuffs of phallogocentrism," an attempt to achieve a thorough repudiation of "malestream thought," and to diagnose the "l'homm(o)sexualité" characteristic of Western philosophy. (Daly 1973, 1978; O'Brien 1981; Ruth 1981, Irigaray 1985a, b).

As a guide to feminist theories, the hyphenation model was useful in showing continuities and shared assumptions underlying certain approaches to feminist theorizing and particular traditions in Western thought. It also made visible the potent critiques of the Western philosophical canon afforded by feminist scholarship and demonstrated that feminist theory provided a much needed corrective to the pervasive androcentric bias in traditional and contemporary philosophical discourses. Working within particular philosophical traditions, feminist theorists identified omissions and distortions circulating in philosophical texts that generated noxious representations of women. Feminist philosophers demonstrated that classical and mainstream philosophers often violated disciplinary standards of argument and evidence when making claims about women, that their contradictory assertions about women undermined the internal consistency of their claims about human nature, and that they routinely failed to notice that the hypotheses advanced about women were inadequately warranted. Thus feminist theorists pointed out that much of what masqueraded as objective philosophical analysis was nothing more than patriarchal or phallocratic ideology.

The hyphenation model of feminist theory has been criticized, however, on a number of grounds. In analyzing particular approaches to feminist theory within established Western philosophical traditions, the hyphenation model tended to make feminist theory seem derivative of mainstream thought. Moreover, the divisions created by the categories within the hyphenation model obscured what feminist theories had in common. model obscured what feminist theories had in common. According to Judith Grant's analysis (1993), "second wave" feminist theories – liberal, socialist, radical, psychoanalytic and postmodern – all shared certain fundamental (and problematic) core concepts, including the notion that women were/are oppressed as women, that experience is an appropriate analytical tool for understanding women's oppression, and that the personal is political, i.e., the system of gender oppression, which is political, is manifested in interpersonal relations.4 Grant (1993) identified a range problems associated with these core concepts. The notion of the universal oppression of women as women suggested that an organic relationship exists among women, which transcends time, space, culture, class, race, a notion singularly at odds with the enormous diversity among women and with basic understandings of historicity. The attempt to find an experiential ground for women's universal oppression that encompassed women across races and classes pushed feminist analysis toward an unacceptable form of subjectivism (*i.e*., an experience is oppressive if a woman perceives it to be oppressive), which mired feminist politics in a mode at once absolutist and relativist (for no one could challenge a particular woman's subjective perception).

While acknowledging some of the limitations of early approaches to feminist theory, other feminist scholars have noted that feminist theorizing is neither fixed, stagnant, nor inherently derivative of malestream thought. Feminist theorizations of embodiment and sexuality, for example called attention to the microphysics of power in radically new ways. Variously characterized as an instinctual urge, a species imperative, the means of procreation, a site of pleasure and desire, and a primitive elemental force that all societies seek to control (Rubin 1993), sexuality was theorized by feminist scholars as a site of power. Whether celebrated as a source of physical delight or denounced as a temptation to sin, traditional depictions of sexuality were often cast as the scene of the first sexual division of labor. In Aristotle's vivid terminology, the male was defined as he who mounts, and the female as she who is mounted, inscribing both a presumption of heterosexuality and an active/passive dichotomy at the core of putatively natural erotic practices. Noting the power differentials embedded in such a construction of "natural" urges, feminist scholars suggested that it is a mistake to construe sexuality solely in terms of desire, pleasure, and procreation, for it is also a system of domination.

Shulamith Firestone (1970) analyzed eroticism as a subspecies of romanticism, a cultural tool of male power that channels women's desire for love into genital sex. Castigating Freud's invention of the "myth of vaginal orgasm,"

<sup>4</sup> Recent scholarship by feminist historians has called the "wave" metaphor into question, suggesting that there has been far more continuity in feminist activism since the late eighteenth century than previously imagined. See, for example, Rupp 1997; Henry 2004; Offen 2000; Springer 2002; Hewitt 2010.

Anne Koedt (1970) suggested that this perverse construction of "mature sexuality" defined women's pleasure exclusively in terms of what pleases men. Far from being a space for the free play of desire, feminist theorists conceived heterosexuality as a political relation of domination and subordination that puts men first and maintains male supremacy (MacKinnon 1987), a social institution of violence that places women in perpetual servitude to men (Wittig 1979), a cosmogony that envisions men and women as complementary because they "fit together" while masking asymmetrical power relations (Delphy 1993), and as a compulsory system that assures men the right of access (physical, emotional, and economic) to women, while requiring that lesbians be invisible in contemporary societies and written out of history (Rich 1980).

By situating heterosexuality in relation to larger structures of male power, early feminist thinkers suggested a strong affinity between lesbianism and feminism. Charlotte Bunch (1972), for example, depicted lesbianism as a "political choice" and as a "revolt against white male power" by womenidentified-women who act together to end sexual and political domination. Similarly, Monique Wittig (1979) characterized lesbianism as an escape from the class of women and from servitude to men. Differentiating lesbianism from male homosexuality, Adrienne Rich (1980) envisioned a "lesbian continuum" that encompassed a political stance that entails commitment to the value of feminism and freedom of women as a group, a form of primary emotional intensity among women, bonding against male tyranny, marriage resistance, conscious desire for erotic experience with women, and the strength to break taboos and reject compulsory sexual subordination.

In her pathbreaking book, *Epistemology of the Closet*, Eve Sedgwick (1990, 27) questioned the tendency in many feminist works to conflate sex, gender, and sexuality, suggesting the need for greater analytical differentiation of these concepts: "The study of sexuality is not coextensive with the study of gender; correspondingly the study of anti-homophobic inquiry is not coextensive with feminist inquiry. But we can't know in advance how they will be different." In a related move, Cheshire Calhoun (1994) challenged the conflation of lesbianism and feminism, calling for a clear distinction between patriarchy (or structures of male domination) and heterosexuality. According to Calhoun, feminist theorists had failed to recognize that heterosexuality is a political structure of domination distinct from patriarchy; heterosexuality divides heterosexuals and non-heterosexuals into different groups with different rights and opportunities, creating privilege for some, while systematically excluding others. Echoing Audre Lorde's (1985) insight that "heterosexism" is the belief in the inherent superiority of one form of loving, Calhoun defined "heterosexualism" as a political system that supports male privilege *and* heterosexual privilege. It enshrines the man-woman dyad as the basic unit of society; privileges reproduction as a heterosexual domain, and produces gender dimorphism, sexual divisions of labor, and occupational and legal arrangements that privilege heterosexuals.

Audre Lorde (1985) also pointed out that "homophobia," which encompasses both a terror of love for the same sex and a hatred of those who are gay and lesbian, is a powerful mechanism of social control. Homophobia drives a wedge between gay and straight, while also deploying the coercive powers of heterosexuality to keep gays and lesbians closeted. To be "outed," is to risk losing one's biological children in a custody battle, being denied the possibility of adopting children, losing one's job, being punished for public displays of affection, facing housing discrimination, being harassed by neighbors, being subjected to "normalizing" therapies, being excluded from representations of love, being denied the right to marry, and being subject to physical violence and death at the hands of virulent homophobes (Calhoun 1994; Pharr 1997). Linking these forms of coercion to microtechniques of power that produce "normalized" and disciplined bodies, Michael Warner (1991) theorized "heteronormativity" as encompassing intricate expectations, demands, and constraints that sustain hierarchies of difference grounded on the presumed naturalness of heterosexuality. Heteronormativity is systemic, pervading cultural production, occupational structures, legal and political institutions, medical practices, and immigration protocols, as well as religious, philosophical, and scientific discourses, denigrating and marginalizing those who refuse the strictures of heterosexuality. Indeed, heteronormativity is so pervasive that it has been assimilated within gay and lesbian communities in the form of "homonormativity" (Duggan 2003), a system of values that privileges homosexuals who "mimic" heterosexual norms of monogamy, marriage, and family, while pathologizing dissident forms of queer existence. Challenging naturalized views of race, sex, and sexuality, feminist theorists and queer theorists called attention to processes of racialization, gendering, heteronormativity and homonormativity through which relations of power and forms of inequality are constructed within the nation state, shaping the identities of individuals as well as institutional practices.

The institutionalization of Women's Studies programs in Western universities in the 1980s gave rise to a new generation of academically-trained feminist theorists who were committed to linking theory and practice, and to the deployment of gender and intersectionality as analytic categories in ways that were attentive to context and historicity. The limitations of the hyphenation model in combination with the proliferation of feminist theorizing within the academy led to widespread abandonment of the hyphenation model by late 1980s.

More recent classification schemes have offered an alternative categorization of feminist theories. In the aftermath of what became known in the United States as the "equality-difference" debate, some feminist scholars distinguished approaches to feminist theory that (1) problematize women's exclusion from the major institutions of the public world (social, political, economic, religious, academic) from (2) approaches that focus on difference as a primary category of analysis (women's differences from men, as well as systemic differences among women based on race, class, nationality, sexuality, historicity), and (3) approaches that embrace the postmodern refusal of categorization. While some analysts treat the shift from "equality feminism," to "difference feminism" to "postmodern" or "post-structuralist feminism" as a chronological development from the 1970s to the 1990s (Zalewski 2000), other feminist scholars situate the emergence of post-structuralist feminism in the context of recent debates within French philosophy and Anglo-American literary criticism (Friedman 1998), noting that all three approaches to feminist theorizing continue to flourish in particular geographic and institutional sites. On this view, postmodern feminism is intimately linked to deconstructive and genealogical methods of discursive analysis which call for the interrogation of all binaries and the investigation of power-knowledge constellations of particular concepts. Suspicious of the "will to truth" embedded in quests for analytic precision and totalizing metanarratives, post-structuralist scholars caution that theoretical discourses produce the power hierarchies they claim merely to investigate. Imbued with these concerns, postmodern feminist theorists urge transformative strategies of textual disruption, destabilization of boundaries, fixities, "givens," and resistance against normalizing tendencies in discursive formations.

Several feminist theorists have pointed out that a taxonomy of feminist theory that organizes the field in terms of equality feminism, difference feminism, and postmodern feminism, whether positing a chronology or acknowledging simultaneous coexistence, has an implicit ideological agenda, for it occludes the vibrant tradition of socialist/Marxist feminist theorizing (Ebert 1996; Hawkesworth 1988; Squires 1999). The point is not simply that the theoretical premises and transformative strategies of liberal feminism, difference feminism, and poststructuralist feminism are at odds with those of socialist feminism, although they are. Post-structuralism, for example, challenges basic assumptions of Marxist thought including its philosophical materialism, historical materialism, referential theory of language, as well as its faith in the power of rational analysis and collective action for emancipatory ends. The larger issue is that a taxonomy that depicts feminist theory solely in terms of equality, difference, and postmodern approaches literally erases socialist/Marxist feminist theorizing from the history and current practices of feminism. Such an erasure forecloses a range of transformative strategies of particular import in this period of globalization – strategies central to feminist theorizing in the global South. For this reason, some socialist feminist theorists have suggested that the "equality feminism, difference feminism, and postmodern feminism" typology should be understood in relation to the increasing neo-liberal hegemony on the global scene and its project of depoliticization (Ebert 1996; Squires 1999).

Within the discipline of political science, feminist political theorists have devoted considerable efforts to an exploration of the conditions of intelligibility of misogyny and androcentric bias in the Western tradition in political theory. Their goal is not simply to make these biases visible, but to examine how and why they occur and persist and to what extent they permeate the political practices inspired by Western political thought. Their answers to these questions also have important implications for feminist theorizing about trajectories of social change.

In *Public Man, Private Woman* (1981, 15), Jean Elshtain argued that women were silenced and excluded from public life because "that which defines them and to which they are inextricably linked – sexuality, natality, the human body – are omitted from public speech." Formed in the context of the ancient Greek polis, the conception of the public world as the "realm of freedom" was carefully distinguished from conditions pertaining to the "realm of necessity," conditions of birth, dependency, vulnerability central to women's lives. Indeed, Elshtain argued that politics itself should be understood as "an elaborate defense against the tug of private, familial, female power" (1981, 9). Given the constitutive nature of women's exclusion from the political, then, Elshtain made a powerful case that women cannot attain full and meaningful citizenship until the contours of the political are systematically redefined.

Following Hannah Arendt (1958), Wendy Brown (1988) agued that classical conceptions of politics were devised as a "guarantee against the futility of individual life." Construing the individual body as mired in the repetitious cycles of *animal laborans* (*i.e.,* the arduous production of subsistence which is necessarily consumed for the sake of life thereby requiring relentless toil to meet continuing needs), the founders of political theory conceived politics as a realm of speech and action that could immortalize deeds of the daring, allowing an escape from undistinguished animal existence. According to Brown, the desire to escape the body was a gender-specific fixation, reflecting male desires, anxieties and fears. Privileging mind, reason, and immaterial form as the highest and best in human existence, classical Greek political theorists claimed this terrain of excellences for men and for politics, while reducing women to pure embodiment incapable of the authoritative deliberation requisite to political life. "Saturated with modalities of masculinity," traditional conceptions of politics, power, freedom, order, and justice exclude women, construing them as a threat that seeks to recall men to their animal nature. Thus Brown suggested that gender-inclusive politics will require alternative conceptions of power, courage, freedom, and the body. Indeed she argued that a crucial feminist task is to theorize freedom through the body in ways that refigure desire and necessity as loci for creative possibilities such as love, intimacy, and reproductive labor, laying a groundwork for a new conceptions of politics.

Shifting from ancient to modern political thought, Carole Pateman argued in *The Sexual Contract* (1988) that the celebration of individualism and the freedom to consent that underlies the liberal tradition in political theory has an irrevocable male bias. Pateman compares the narratives of consent to leave the state of nature and create a political society advanced by the social contract theorists with Freud's account of the formation of an insurrectionary band of brothers to overthrow the domineering father in *Totem and Taboo*. But where Freud was explicit in linking the motivation of the brothers to their desire to wrest control of sexual access to women from the patriarch, social contract theorists presuppose an implicit "sexual contract" prior to the creation of the state, which they never specifically articulate. The existence of the sexual contract is essential to the reproduction of political subjects within these new polities. Moreover, Pateman suggests that the asymmetrical nature of these sexual contracts concluded on terms set by men to insure the satisfaction of male desire helps to explain the exclusion of women from political participation, despite social contract theorists' claims about the equality of human beings in the state of nature. For if women were understood to possess the same rights to explicit consent accorded to men within the liberal polity, men would no longer be able to dominate sexual, marital, familial or political relations in ways that social contract theorists deem "natural." Thus Pateman conceives the exclusion of women from liberal polities to be as constitutive of modernity as Elshtain and Brown suggested it was of antiquity.

Christine DiStefano (1991) has also argued that the conceptions of autonomy and self-creation central to modern political thought should be understood as particular "configurations of masculinity." Drawing upon object relations theory, she links the preoccupation with an unconstrained and selfdetermining individual to male psychological needs of separation and individuation fueled by fear of "maternal engulfment." The manifestations of this male preoccupation in political theory are manifold. The life-giving Mother is repressed in political theory (forcibly expelled, denied, forgotten) but reappears in displaced generative guises such as a sadistic and vindictive Nature that causes human suffering, a conception of sovereignty that is selfgenerating through time, a conception of capital that reproduces itself with inexorable deliberateness, a conception of freedom from the past which leaves the individual unfettered as he takes up the task of making his future. The repression of the Mother also has consequences for the truncated possibilities that political theorists accord to women more generally, which range from omission and neglect to excessive elaborations of sexual difference as a legitimation for differential treatment, to the depiction of women as "men minus" who lack the crucial capabilities requisite to citizenship, however they may be defined. DiStefano also traces the consequences of male fear of maternal engulfment to the entrenchment of rigid boundaries between the public citizen and the privatized self in modernity, to the effort to build unbridgeable walls between the public world of power and politics and the private sphere construed as a feminized space of nurture, reproduction, love, and care. The entrenchment of such boundaries can pose formative obstacles to feminist efforts to engage the public world on equal terms and to politicize injustices that permeate the "private" realm.5 

Taking issue with feminist political theorists who assume that "women" have a fixed meaning in canonical works of political theory, whether that meaning is posited in terms of sexuality, maternalism, or the private sphere, Linda Zerilli (1994) argued that Woman figures in philosophical discourses as a signifier of culture *and* chaos. Hence Woman is simultaneously a "sociosymbolic site of stabilization and destabilization." In contrast to claims about fixity of meaning, ambiguity lies at the heart of Woman's symbolic power. Zerilli treats political theory as analogous to a Saussurian conception of linguistics, which construes language as constitutive and generative rather than referential or representative, producing meaning through a play of signs dependent upon the differentiation of each sign from every other sign in the system. Within this post-structuralist framework, political theory is performative. It does not merely describe and explain the nature of politics or the nature of women, it produces them. The ambiguity central to signifying Woman within theoretical discourses then has critical import for women's lives. According to Zerilli, political theorists code disorder as Woman and they displace all that resists or refuses order onto an externalized Other, Woman. Thus Woman circulates as a sign of the abyss, of all that is dreaded and feared in the self and in culture, which must be contained or expelled. Drawing upon Kristeva's conception of abjection, Zerilli suggests that as a figure of the abyss, Woman is a liminal figure that constitutes the borderline between the symbolic order and political space. As such, Woman becomes a marker and a scapegoat for the "utter failure of meaning, for sociopolitical bedlam" (1994, 10). Ironically, however, political theorists' confidence that they know what Woman is, that they understand "natural" sex differences, leads them to deploy Woman to contain the crisis of meaning figured by the abyss. Thus while disorderly Woman circulates as a sign of chaos and dread, "proper femininity offers solace." Political theorists use proper femininity to fix meaning and escape instability, to make the unfamiliar familiar, the unknown, known.

<sup>5</sup> On the problems that entrenched boundaries pose to feminists, see also Tronto 1993.

Within Western political theory, then, Woman is both a sign of the abyss and a defense against it. Precisely because of the multiple and contradictory meanings of signifying Woman, Zerilli argues that it is impossible to contest theoretical visions of disordering and disorderly Woman by pointing out their absurdity, by exposing their logical contradictions, or by highlighting their rhetorical function to exclude women. Rational discourse affords little ammunition against the productive dynamics of abjection. Instead, feminist theorists must adopt a strategy of defamiliarization. "Feminists must redeploy Woman to make the known unknown, fully strange, and alien, not in the least bit reassuring. They must interrupt the longing for closure, coherence, unity, and commonality" (1994, 146). According to Zerilli, feminist transformative politics of destabilization, defamiliarization, denaturalization requires far more than making an "outsider an insider."

In *Political Theory and the Displacement of the Political* (1993), Bonnie Honig also interprets political theory as a "therapeutic narrative designed to console and mitigate anxieties," and as such profoundly hostile to the disruptions of politics. Endorsing efforts to unmask the fears that motivate the fable, Honig identifies the "tragically undecidable dilemmas of politics" themselves as that which propels political theorists to seek finality, fixity, truth. Like Zerilli, she encourages feminists to embrace undecidability as a good central to political strategies of disruption. Indeed Honig argues that disruption is precisely what creates spaces for politics, spaces for alternative perspectives, spaces for new forms of life. Following Nietzsche in the claim that there is more to being than knowing, Honig's prescriptions for social change would have feminist theorists move beyond the past two decades of debates concerning epistemology and the ground for feminist claims to knowledge and truth, and actively embrace the perpetual contest of politics.<sup>6</sup>

Claims that the Western philosophical tradition is inherently androcentric, masculinist, or phallogocentric have not gone uncontested within the field of feminist theory. Andrea Nye (1994, *xv*) has argued that if feminists accept the view that sexism is constitutive of political philosophy, then the scope for feminist theorizing is drastically curtailed: "Feminism can only be disruptive rather than constructive." Moreover, the claim that phallogocentrism is the deep structure of philosophy necessarily marginalizes women philosophers in general and feminist philosophers in particular. Similarly, Jana Sawicki (1991) notes that if philosophy is conflated with phallogocentrism, the options for a feminist theoretical discourse are few. Feminists must

<sup>6</sup> It is interesting to note that in developing her agonistic conception of politics, Honig adopts the conception of "virtu" associated with Machiavelli and Nietzsche, which had been roundly criticized as inherently masculinist by Wendy Brown (1988) and Hannah Pitkin (1984).

speak in ways foreordained by men, construct an altogether new language, or be condemned to silence. Following Audre Lorde (1984), Sawicki warns that excessive focus on phallogocentrism can mask racist and class biases within the philosophical tradition and hinder the development of transformative strategies attuned to the simultaneity of oppressions.

Tim Kaufman-Osborn (1997) has cautioned against too hasty an acceptance of claims about the productive effects of political theory. He suggests that such encompassing claims constitute a form of "discursive essentialism," which posits that language alone makes things what they are. Kaufman-Osborn notes that there are extra-linguistic, extra-discursive dimensions to reality, whether it is the reality of the body, society, culture, or politics under investigation. He is keenly aware that the only access to these dimensions of reality is through the categories given in language. Nonetheless, he insists that to believe that political theory alone can account for all the complexities of experience is a form of intellectualist fallacy that ought to be avoided. Emphasizing the centrality of activism to social transformation, he holds "little confidence in the capacity of theoretical inquiry to offer direct or specific guidance to the sort of conduct through which inequalities are undone, injustices rectified, exploitations eliminated" (1997, 281).

Black feminist theorists have pointed out that many of the gender-based generalizations advanced by white feminist theorists, whether as part of the critique of the philosophical canon or as part of a critique of contemporary practices, are "racist, ethnocentric, and insensitive to the concerns of women of color" (Hill Collins 1998, 70. See also Hill Collins 1990; Lorde 1984; Hurtado1996; White 2001). In *Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice*, Patricia Hill Collins is particularly critical of new modes of academic feminist theory that deploy post-structuralist vocabularies that are inaccessible to those uninitiated in this technical discourse. She cautions that while celebrating the free play of signifiers, postmodern feminist theorists typically eschew policy recommendations and fail to offer constructive alternatives to the forms of domination that circumscribe most women's lives. Hill Collins suggests that while postmodern rhetoric fails to de-center power in the world, it may help to undermine collective action, supplanting politics with aesthetics (understood as questions of style) and social movement mobilization with the care of the self. For Hill Collins, feminist theory must reflect and respond to the conditions of people's lives; encompass a vision of emancipation; equip people to resist oppression; and motivate them to work for social justice.

Postcolonial feminist theorists have also advanced persuasive critiques of Western feminist theory (Mohanty 1991; John 1996; Spivak 1999). In making claims about "women," Western feminist theorists often fall into the "ventriloquist's fantasy" (John 1996, 22), projecting a Western voice and view onto a silenced subaltern subject. Chandra Mohanty (1991, 52-55) has characterized these forms of "ethnocentric universalism" as a mode of structural domination that suppresses the heterogeneity of women in the global South. Insensitive to the "politics of representation," Western feminist theorists often replicate patterns of Western hegemony, exercising influence beyond their geographic and national borders, selectively permeating the boundaries of other nation-states (John 1996, 16). In applying Western concepts and frameworks to the global South, feminist theorists are often unaware of how poorly their theories "travel" or of the dangers of forcing women in the South into these ill-fitting molds. The focus of much Western feminist theory upon the public/private demarcation as central to women's oppression, for example, fails to take into account that enslaved and colonized peoples were denied privacy and access to a private sphere by legislative fiat. Every aspect of existence was subject to intervention by the state and its representatives (Mohanty 1991, 9). Similarly, white Western feminist theorizing about "the personal as political" reflects class dynamics of particular white men and women without attending to structural differences that systematically altered the relationship between white men and enslaved and colonized women and men (Hurtado 1996, Mohanty 1991). Gendered divisions of labor such as the "male breadwinner, female homemaker model" taken for granted by Western feminist theorists are at odds with women's role in the production of subsistence in much of the global South. And many Western feminist theorists remain unaware of the inequalities created when Western development agencies imposed a male breadwinner model in many parts of Africa in the 1960s (Boserup 1970). Mary John (1996) points out that many Western feminist theorists' analyses of class dynamics fail to comprehend how class relations can be complicated by caste even decades after the legal abolition of castes in India. Moreover, Freudian and Lacanian conceptions of sexuality accepted uncritically by some Western feminist theorists presuppose familial and linguistic dynamics, respectively, that may be singularly at odds with family formations and linguistic practices in the global South. Thus postcolonial feminist theorists note that Western feminist prescriptions for social transformation advanced in ignorance of the specificities of women's needs and circumstances and without consultation with women in the global South may bear far greater resemblance to colonizing practices than Western feminist theorists have acknowledged. For this reason, postcolonial feminists insist that the politics of representation, the question of who speaks for whom and what is said must become central to feminist theorizing (John 1996, 16).

Feminist theorists in the global South have devoted systematic attention to questions of women's economic and social empowerment. In taking up these questions they have been particularly concerned with the tendency of Western feminist theorists to assume that Western models of development and social transformation are the only viable models. Through efforts to cultivate "South-South" dialogues and through publications that circulate in the West, feminist theorists of the South have sought to challenge the fundamental assumptions of economic development and modernization theories presupposed by dominant approaches in Western political theory and liberal feminist theory. Criticizing the persistent tendency to incorporate Northern assumptions about the needs and interests of the global South, feminist theorists in the global South emphasize that far more attention must be paid to the impact of structural macro-economic factors that hamper women's ability to benefit from development efforts (Razavi 1998). In *Development, Crises, and Alternative Visions: Third World Women's Perspectives,* Gita Sen and Caren Grown (1987) argue that attempts to "modernize third-world states" do not resolve the inequalities among men and women created under colonialism, nor do these development programs address the growing income disparities in the global South. Contemporary development programs tend to replicate colonial hierarchies by promoting exploitative foreign investment and reducing national economic self-reliance. On their view, "Equality for women is impossible within the economic, political and cultural processes that reserve resources, power and control for small groups of people" (Sen and Grown 1987, 20). Rather than focus on economic growth, social change projects should be more "people-centered," giving people, and particularly women, greater control over their economic well-being. By allowing women of the South to define social change, development, and empowerment and have a say in policy choices, they suggest that not only would feminist theory rid itself of the vestiges of colonialism, but states would see reductions in military spending, a greater emphasis upon the basic needs of women, and increased national economic self-reliance (Sen and Grown 1987, 82).

Debates among feminist theorists in Africa, Asia, and Latin America about the best strategies for social transformation and about the role of transnational feminism in relation to efforts to achieve social justice are on-going (See for example, Dhruvarajan 2002; Mendoza 2002, Oyewumi 2003). Gayatri Spivak has noted that a central question for Western theorists when "the subalterns speak" is whether or not people in positions of power will choose to listen or refuse to hear them. Given the pervasive power asymmetries that continue to grow under globalization, Western feminist theorists' "choice to listen or remain deaf to women of the South" is yet another sign of Western hegemonic privilege (John 1996, 22).

Moving beyond the frame of the nation-state, feminist scholars have also theorized the international order as a raced and gendered regime. In contrast to mainstream approaches in international relations, which insist that race and gender are attributes of individuals, and as such, play no role at the international level, feminist scholars have demonstrated that policies and conventions operating at the international level structure human relationships as well as relations among states. Population policies, development policies, disarmament protocols, the law of the sea, peace-keeping missions, refugee policies, anti-poverty initiatives, Millennium goals, human rights protocols, and trade agreements constrain individual action as well as state conduct. Operating through national legislation, moral prohibitions, informal mechanisms of social control, appeals to the conscience of the world community, sexual and racial divisions of labor, and armed peace-keepers, international conventions support and maintain regulatory sexual and racial regimes that undermine the autonomy of certain subjects while shoring up the power of others (Bleiker 2000). By invoking the language of a racedgendered regime, feminist theorists have shown how practices of inequality become embedded in institutions and structures in ways that enable systems of racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual advantage and disadvantage to operate independently of the will of particular agents (Fierke 1999). Forms of privilege are converted into international rules, routines, practices, policies, institutions, and structures that serve and promote certain interests, creating political opportunity structures that are neither race nor gender neutral (Kronsell 2005; Adams 2007). To illuminate the microphysics of power operating within the international order, feminists have excavated the centrality of processes of racing, gendering, and sexualizing in the productive and virtual economies associated with globalization (Adler 1999; Nordstrom 1999; Peterson 2002). They have charted the seismic proportions of the global reproductive and care economies, tracing the global circuits of sex tourism, sex trafficking, marriage migration, and outsourcing of reproductive labor (Gibson, Law and McKay 2001; Handrahan 2004; Harrington 2005; Jeffreys 2000; Robinson 2006; Sullivan 2003).

In contrast to development discourses that conceive women as objects of regulation and control, victims in need of saving, micro-entrepreneurs who embody the solution to poverty, or child-bearers capable of redressing the looming population crises of welfare and postsocialist states, feminists have theorized models of development 'from below,' manifested in women's work with international organizations, transnational NGOs, national, regional, and local governments, and progressive solidarity networks to achieve an equitable and sustainable allocation of resources to meet basic needs (Bergeron 2003). They have theorized the political work involved in bridging differences and challenging growing inequalities (Alvarez 1999; Mackie 2001; Liebowitz 2002; MacDonald 2002; Staudt 2002; Beckwith 2007), examining feminist 'transversal' politics, i.e., women's rights activists' efforts to organize, mobilize, build alliances, and form coalitions to demand accountability from governments and international agencies and to create social change (Jaquette 2003; Mansbridge 2003).

Feminist theorists have struggled over the past thirty years to learn lessons from their mistakes, from critical omissions, distortions, and myopias. They have developed analytical tools to help frame new research questions by problematizing the given and denaturalizing the taken-for-granted. In so doing, they have sought to unmoor feminism from particular imperial trajectories. When taken collectively, feminist theories map an array of errors that researchers should avoid if we are to theorize the world without replicating hegemony. An inventory of these errors might include: failure to engage the politics of representation; flawed constructions of otherness that reify culture and tradition as ahistorical and bounded; static notions of place and identity; false universalism; depictions of women that mask their agency; configurations of women's political agency that fail to challenge liberal individualist presuppositions; naturalizations of gendered resistance that locate women's insurgency exclusively in the matrix of household, livelihood, or economy; discourses that erase women from cultural and symbolic politics; interpretive strategies that reduce struggles for recognition and social justice to identity politics or that insert an unbridgeable binary between recognition and redistribution; analytic strategies that homogenize, masking hierarchies of difference, contested meanings and power dynamics; taxonomies of difference inattentive to relations of power that produce difference; positing difference as means of policing borders and preserving hierarchies, rather than probing the instability of the categories; and strategies of inclusion within liberal pluralist and multiculturalist models that shore up hegemonic center-periphery relations.

Another way to think about trajectories of change introduced by feminist theories, then, is to consider how sustained engagement with canonical texts, disciplinary discourses, historical and contemporary events have generated new theories, concepts, questions, and analytic techniques that enable new ways of seeing and new ways of thinking, particularly about democratic practice and redistributive justice. Continuing to confront growing inequalities in this era of globalization, feminist theorists struggle to identify transformative mechanisms that can contribute to social justice.

### References


Tronto, Joan, 1993. *Moral Boundaries*. New York: Routledge.


# Chapter 9 Conclusion

*Marian Simms and Jane H. Bayes* 

# Gender and Politics and the Changing Status of Women Today

This volume has built upon the frameworks developed by scholars that have previously summarized the emerging discipline of gender and politics. We acknowledge their conceptualizations of the new discipline as "unmasking", "adding in" and "reconceptualising." We also note their reliance upon traditional models of the democratic nation state and adoption of a westernized approach towards emerging societies. This volume has sought to expand the work of those gender and politics scholars by incorporating a "global" approach that highlights the different approaches taken by scholars from different regions possibly in terms of an Old World (Europe) versus a New World (North America) dichotomy but also in terms of a "Majority World" (Socalled developing countries) versus "Traditional World" (Old Industrial Societies) approach. Hence this volume has been enriched by the idea that knowledge production is not neutral, but inherently linked to global power hierarchies, as articulated by the chapters on Latin America and Africa. Above all, the volume argues that gender and politics scholars in political science along with scholars from a variety of other disciplines have sought to use their research and writing abilities to identify, understand and document changes in the global economy, changes in economic and social opportunities available to women and especially changes in the ways that women have organized and become politically active to explore the reasons for the changes and to develop strategies for influencing local, national and global policymaking.

We also note that in many implicit ways, the field of gender and politics has itself emerged and developed in response to socio-economic changes in the past fifty years and to the ways that women have organized and become politically active, partly in response to such transformations. Since the 1960s, scholars concerned with gender and social movements have witnessed significant improvements for women in many countries; although in some places the well-being of women has deteriorated rather than improved. In many western countries, those movements drew upon activist traditions, especially those related to supporting women's claims to participate in the public spheres of education, paid work and politics, while others promoted the well-being of women in their reproductive and caring roles. In some countries, some women are more economically independent than previously. Women have greater access to education and have become educated citizens and/or educated professionals. Women's healthcare is often better as is their self knowledge and self esteem. Greater numbers of women are participating in local, regional, national and international political institutions. The picture is not entirely progressive. Women continue to be the victims of violence. For many, their labor continues to be exploited. Sex trafficking, slavery and prostitution are rife. Poverty, sickness and illiteracy continue to plague women at higher rates than for men. Discrimination against women continues. Moreover, the benefits of women's movements globally are quite uneven, with progress occurring in some parts of the world much more rapidly and effectively than in others. Even in many western countries, internal colonies of disadvantage – especially as they relate to indigenous peoples – continue unabated with poor quality of life for many inhabitants and unacceptably high levels of infant mortality, domestic violence and abuse of women and children. Overall, the chapters in this volume are grouped according to the broad themes they represent, beginning with those chapters on Latin America and Africa that take as their starting point the global production of knowledge and power. Next come case study chapters on South Asia (Kumari), Europe (Leyenaar) and the United States' literature review (Bayes), that have largely drawn from a tradition of explaining the nature of women's engagement with the nation-state and liberal democracy. Several of these chapters, notably the chapter on South Asia and parts of the United States and international relations chapters also explore more widely the role of civil society, family and kinship networks and other factors in explaining gender and politics relationships. Chapters on gender and international relations (Prügl) and feminist theory (Hawkesworth) review much of the pioneering conceptual work that the study of gender and politics has produced. While each chapter does not approach the topic in a uniform way, taken as a whole, they present a range of questions, problems, debates and kinds of knowledge production that the field as a whole represents. The chapters in this book sample these processes at work in different parts of the world, with rich examples of scholarly research and engagement drawn from country case studies, which are illustrative rather than exhaustive or comprehensive. Work on China, the former Soviet Union, East Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East, the Caribbean and the old British Commonwealth nations such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand remain for a future volume.

# Recent Changes in the Gender and Politics Field

Perhaps the most significant change in the field in the last 20 years or even the last 10 years is that as an academic discipline, gender and politics has greatly expanded its concerns and scope beyond the regions of North America, Europe and the old British Commonwealth nations of Australia, New Zealand and Canada, although it continues to be Eurocentric in much of its work. This change, triggered by the forces of globalization, has brought with it some realizations about the field concerning accepted assumptions, boundaries and distinctions. One of these is the assumed relationship of political science (and gender and politics) to universities and academic inquiry in any particular nation state. A second is the relationship of the subfield of gender and politics to the discipline and the tradition of political science. A third is the importance of the global world order and its impact on the field of gender and politics as a locus of knowledge production in any region or state.

# The Relationship between Discipline of Political Science and the Nation State

Consider first the relationship of the discipline of political science to the nation-state. While the study of politics in both the East and the West is an ancient endeavor and often categorized as a branch of philosophy, the discipline of political science is not much more than a century old and is rooted in North America and Europe (Norris 1997). The American Political Science Association was founded in 1903. The International Political Science Association was founded in 1949 under the auspices of UNESCO (United Nations, Educational, Social and Cultural Organization).1 Whether the discipline should be considered a science is a frequent source of debate. In some parts of Europe – especially Britain and in parts of the old Commonwealth – the field is known as *politics* or *political studies.* The notion of a science of politics suggests that the discipline can be "objective" or "value- free," divorced from political agendas or political ideologies and philosophies. The emergence of the field of women and politics or gender and politics has shown that political science as a discipline has been anything but "value-free" or "unbiased" where the topics of women or gender are concerned, nor is it free of bias ideologically or methodologically as all concepts, methods and categories carry with them some form of bias (Rudolph 2005). This point is clearly spelled out in the chapters by Mendoza on Latin America and Gouws on Africa.

Supported by vibrantly political grassroots women's movements in the United States, Europe and the old Commonwealth countries in the 19th and 20th centuries, white female scholars were gradually able to break gender barriers to study for postgraduate degrees in the 1960s and by the 1970s and 1980s, able to teach, research, write and publish about "women and politics" and then "gender and politics" in universities in the United States, Europe, and parts of the Commonwealth (Tolleson-Rhinehart and Carroll 2006; Rich 2007). As chapters in this volume on Africa and Latin America attest, this has not been the experience of either the discipline of political science or the subfield of gender and politics in other parts of the world at different periods of time. Countries with communist, autocratic, theocratic or military governments usually have no interest in political science as an academic discipline of inquiry. Countries wracked by poverty or warfare often have no extra resources to establish or maintain universities, much less departments of political science or subfields of gender and politics, even if they have a desire to do this. Yet in all of these regions of the world, knowledge about gender relations exists, is being produced and reproduced. However, this knowledge production is not necessarily occurring in political science departments or in universities and is not necessarily being widely communicated globally.

The recognition of global difference and the desire to respect human rights underpinned the establishment of the United Nations (UN) after the Second World War, an initiative that involved high profile feminists – notably Eleanor Roosevelt. The UN has generated new agendas and sites of activism for women, and its many non-government organizations (NGOs) have become sources of new knowledge creation and policy transfer. Nongovernmental organizations concerned with the health, well-being and eco-

<sup>1</sup> There is also the case of Swedish "exceptionalism" as Uppsala University founded in the 16th century has a Department of Political Science as one of its foundational departments.

nomic survival of women and families are quite diverse. Some of these may be indigenous, some may be influenced by church missionaries (liberation theology in Latin America), and some may be influenced by academic activists in the fields of economics, sociology, anthropology or political science who have developed the related subfields of women and development (WAD) or women in development (WID). Outreach programs not only on the part of the UN and its various agencies but also the World Bank or various programs funded by Nordic European and other governments and/or philanthropic foundations are important sources of knowledge creation that generally operate outside the boundaries of the discipline of political science but whose work and findings are often incorporated by gender and politics scholars.

Some of the tensions in the relationship between gender and politics as a field and the discipline of political science can perhaps best be understood by looking at the Mary Hawkesworth's chapter in this volume on the development of hyphenation models of feminist theory in the 1960s and 1970s whereby scholars have articulated feminist theories that can be classified as liberal, radical, Marxist, socialist, post-structural and post-colonial. Hawkesworth notes that except for radical feminism, these approaches reform "malestream" thought rather than making dramatic innovations. While feminist theorists may have recently moved on from the hyphenation models in favor of equality, difference and post structural feminism as Hawkesworth indicates, the basic assumptions of the hyphenation models continue to undergird and differentiate much of the research in the field of gender and politics. This can be observed in the chapters in this volume.

Liberal feminist assumptions support much of the research concerned with women's equality in political participation and in political representation. Some scholars go so far as to argue that almost all studies of gender and politics in the United States "have at their foundation concerns about political representation (Fox 2010, 94)." (See also Lawless 2010). Policies and research on quotas, mainstreaming, the gender gap, equal pay, affirmative action all are supported by liberal political assumptions. Anne Phillips has called this approach "the politics of presence (1995)." This reform agenda – like that of social democracy – seeks improvement in women's social well being and maintains that this can be achieved through gradual reform. Both liberal feminism and social democracy accept that the market can be humanized. This gender equality research is most relevant in countries that consider themselves "democracies" or perhaps those that aspire to be "democratic." It also carries with it the idea that current political systems can work if women are allowed to participate in an equal way. The chapters discussing women's political representation in South Asia, in European parliaments and in much of the United States literature on barriers to and strategies to improve women's political participation and representation illustrate this approach.

Radical, socialist feminist or post-colonial approaches are more likely to look at many factors in the society other than political institutions to argue that much more fundamental change must occur in a variety of ways if the well-being of women is to improve. For them, the problem and the solution are much more complex than adding more women to existing (often- in their view – failing) institutions. Radical feminists tend to argue that concepts, assumptions, language, and gender relationships in private as well as public institutions and interactions must change if women's social, psychological, economic and political situations are to improve in any meaningful way. Many feminist theorists subscribe to this view as their major concern is with concepts, assumptions and language as illustrated by the chapter reviewing feminist theory in this volume. Gender and politics scholars concerned with the field of international relations also challenge concepts, assumptions and language within the academic and policy discourse of international relations. This radical approach is applied in a different way in the chapter on Latin America where theorist Breny Mendoza argues that knowledge creation and its propagation are shaped by the global power hierarchies of the world as well as by indigenous economic, cultural and historical conditions, a view that is confirmed by the chapter reviewing the study of gender and politics in Africa.

Marxist and socialist feminist approaches tend to emphasize the importance of economic issues as illustrated by the discussion of the parts of the gender and politics field that discuss gender and the international political economy, gender and globalization, gender and development as reviewed in parts of the chapters in this volume on gender and international relations and the gender and politics literature in the United States. Here, as with those using radical approaches, research draws on a variety of disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, economics, geography as well as political science. The "political" is understood to be germane in both public and private institutions and is also considered to be historically conditioned.

# Contributions of Political Science to the Study of Gender and Politics

While gender and politics scholars have been critical of how the discipline excludes women, political science as a discipline has nevertheless provided intellectual foundations for the development of the field of gender and politics. The study of the state provided a frame for research on women and politics in the 1970s and 1980s where the initial focus was on explaining, problematizing and trying to rectify women's absence from public political life. Globalization and the collapse of the Cold War has challenged these intellectual foundations, but even in the post Cold War and globalization era, political scientists remain united by their subject matter, namely, power and the political (encompassing the state but going beyond it) and are divided by methodological diversity (Goodin and Tilly 2006).

Although many political scientists have resisted it, the field of gender and politics has ironically made important contributions to the discipline of political science. First of all, it has demanded that gender and women be included in the study of politics. It has challenged the state-centric frame of traditional political science by showing: that power resides in gender relationships and that gender has become a symbol and marker of power throughout the fabric of societies (Scott 1984); that power lies in the private as well as the public; that power is intersectional, simultaneously involving the intersections of race, class, gender, nationality, ethnicity, and geographical hierarchies. Methodologically, gender and politics as a field has opened political science to the methods and insights of other disciplines such as psychology, anthropology, linguistics, history, philosophy, geography and sociology as well as developed its own feminist methodologies (Hawkesworth 2006). This is exactly what Sawer and Simms found in their 1984 review of the gender and politics field. (Sawer and Simms 1984). They noted that because political science focused on the state and women were mostly excluded from the state and its institutions, gender and politics sought inspiration and guidance from a variety of sources outside of the discipline such as sociology, psychology, philosophy, history and geography. This has helped broaden the scope of political science and encouraged it to be more interdisciplinary. Gender and politics, because it is developed and propagated as a knowledge base from the grassroots, from those outside the mainstream (or "malestream"), can be radical in challenging established concepts and accepted notions of what is "normal" or "natural." It can be and is a source of originality and creativity for the discipline of political science. Because its subject matter – the perceived power relations between men and women, masculine and feminine, – is present in all parts of the globe, it can expand the discipline of political science into geographical, conceptual and institutional arenas that are untraditional, new and progressive, thereby strengthening the discipline and making it more broadly relevant to recognizing, addressing and resolving political problems and building societies that promote the continued well-being of their members.

# Gender and Politics, Political Science and Knowledge Production

A third realization that the contributions to this volume have brought to light is that the ability to produce knowledge is embedded in power configurations. A major aspect of the field of gender and politics has been to show and explain how power relationships can silence minorities, silence those without power, silence women through laws, through customs, through violence, through resource distribution, through habits and practices, through language, through institutions, through class, through race and through the control of knowledge production and distribution. Gender and politics scholars have explored how race, ethnic, and class power relations among women can silence the voices and ability to produce knowledge by women of color. Postcolonial scholars have shown how this same dynamic works in relation to the global political order. Because the United States and Europe have been the dominant political powers in the world at this point in history, their languages, their political ideas, their ways of generating knowledge and their ideas about political science as a discipline tend to follow their influence in the world. Inasmuch as academic disciplines are recorded and perpetuated through writing, language and publication, distribution becomes important. At the turn of the 21st century, the English language is by far the most ubiquitous international academic language. Other European languages may compete to some extent – Spanish, French, German – and most people in the world may speak Chinese, but publications in English and some European languages prevail in international circuits related to political science or gender and politics, whether it be conferences, books, journals or library collections. This does not mean that knowledge is not being created in non-English languages as Mendoza details in her chapter on Latin America, but it does mean that that knowledge has difficulty being published and distributed internationally.

### Agenda for the Future: Bridge-building and the New Synthesis

While scholarship or knowledge production usually is not the only agent of change, certainly it has a role to play. As indicated above, the problems that the field of gender and politics addresses are often outside the accepted boundaries of what political science understands as "political." The field itself has helped the discipline of political science as a whole recognize that knowledge production is political and that the very boundaries defining a discipline are also political as they compartmentalize, confine and legitimate knowledge production and its distribution. Yet, political science in its focus on questions of power, policy making and governance also has much to offer that other disciplines do not. The agenda for field of gender and politics consequently calls for less emphasis and concern about disciplinary boundaries, more attention to the unspoken (and perhaps unintended) biases of the field and its language and more interdisciplinary cooperation and exchange.

A second agenda item for this century speaks to the need to address the power imbalances with regard to knowledge production in the world. The discipline of political science is Eurocentric as is the field of gender and politics. This reflects the power hierarchy of the global order. Those universities and publication houses located in Europe, North America and the Old British Commonwealth countries dominate. Their languages are the international languages. Their publications not only are more numerous within their own borders, but they travel beyond their national borders to spread their forms of knowledge in places without such resources. Another major agenda item, therefore, is to do what can be done by academic and activist knowledge producers to address this problem. On one level this involves listening, learning new languages, traveling, conferencing, engaging in collective research, building networks and building trust among gender and politics scholars from different parts of the world. This currently is occurring among scholars in the South, among scholars in various regions such as Africa, Asia, South America, and between North and South scholars. More, however, needs to be done to give voice to the scholarship of women in the South and to encourage scholars in the North to become more knowledgeable and more informed about regions in the Majority world. More translation of texts is particularly important as English and other European languages are a major support for the current global knowledge production hierarchy and a barrier to new ways of thinking, new ideas, and new solutions to problems.

### References


# Index

African Gender Institute 72 African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD) 60, 65, 66 Afrobarometer 70 Afro-descendent 36, 41, 43, 48 Alliance for Progress 43 alter-knowledge 50 American Political Science Association 22, 25, 46 Amerindian 36, 41 anglosphere 38-42, 55 apartheid 70 Association of African Political Studies (AAPS) 68

Bretton Woods 18

campaigns and party politics in India 99 capitalism 16-17 care chains 183 Chican@s 48, ftnt 48 coloniality of knowledge 33-35, 42, 48 coloniality of power 42 Convention to Eliminate all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) 88 Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA) 60, 68-69

decolonial 48 decolonial knowledge 50 dependency theory 136 difference feminism 205 discipline 11, 15, 22-28, 31, 42, 70-73, 223- 226

Electoral Institute of South Africa (EISA) 72 electoral systems 78, 84, 87, 111, 118 empowerment 79-81 Equal Pay Act of 1963 19 equality – difference debate 30, 204-205 equality – difference model 30 equality feminism 205 Eurocentrism/Eurocentric 22-23, 223, ftnt 13

factors impacting women's representation in Europe 110-112 *Feminist Africa* 73 feminist movements 33 feminist political economy 182-185 feminist post colonial theory 136 feminist post modernism 136 feminist standpoint theory 136 feminist theory 26, 54-55, 71, 136, 151 feminization of the labor force 16, 156-157, 183 femocrats 151, 188 field 11, 15, 29, 31, 223 first wave feminism 18, 50 flexible production 17, 183

Gender Advocacy Program 72 gender and comparative poltiics 150 gender and development (GAD) 152-154 gender and education in India 95-96 gender and global governance 185, 188 gender and politics 224, 226-227 gender and postcolonial studies 154-155 gender and security studies 176-177 gender and United Nations Peacekeeping 179-182 Gender and Women's Studies Network 72- 73

gender biased concepts 14 Gender Education and Training Network (GETNET) 72 gender equality research 225 gender gap 145-147 gender mainstreaming 127, 151, 180-182, 187-188 gender studies 34, 50, 60-62 gendered division of labor 16 gendered protector/protected logic 177-179 globalization and democratization 158 globalization and gender 155-157

hispanosphere 38-41, 54 hyphenation model 30, 201-202, 204, 225

increases in political representation in Europe 112-114 indigenous 48-50 Intercultural University of Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities 49 *International Feminist Journal of Politics* 149 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 18 intersectional analysis 21 intersectionality 136-137 IPSA International Political Science Association 22-25 IPSA Research Committee on Gender, Globalization and Democratization (RC52) 24 IPSA Research Committee on Women, Politics and Developing Nations (RC07) 24 IPSAs Research Committee on Sex Roles and Politics (RC 19) 23, 156

Keynesian 17-19 knowledge creation/production 12, 13, 15, 25-27, 33, 228-229

labor markets 16 Lacanian 211 liberal feminism 201, 205, 225 liberal theory 140

Marshall Plan 43 Marxist/marxism 43, 225-226 Marxist feminism *see Socialist/Marxist feminism*

mestizo 36


neoliberalism 19, 21, 43-44, 47


Panchayati Raj system 85-86 & ftnt 84 Panchayats (PRIs) 89 patriarchal structures 83, 91-92 patriarchy and the war system 178 pluriversity 34, 47 point zero position 37 political representation of women/gender representation 107-108, 125-127 political science 22, 33-34, 39, 42, 46, 69-70, 226 *Politics and Gender* (journal) 149-150 politics of presence 12, 135 politics of representation 211 *Politikon* 71, 73 postcolonial 26, 29, 69, 136, 184, 210-211 post-Fordist production 17 postmodern 38 postmodern feminism 30, 205 post-structuralist feministm 205, 225 professionalization 11, ftnt 3 proportional representation (List PR) 111 psychoanalytic feminism 201 public/private 14-15, 19, 59, 92-93, 136, 148 purdah 93

questioning the category of woman 141-142 quotas 84-91, 110, 123-127, 152

radical approaches 225-226 radical feminism 19, 201 radical feminist theory 136

ranking European states by women's political representation 114-121 religious constraints/barriers in India 93 Research Network on Gender Politics and the State (RNGS) 108,152 reservations in India 84 & 84, ftnt 4 second wave feminism 18-21, 50, 202 sex work 183-184 shadow dialogue/presence 27, 34, 37 single member plurality system (SMP) 111 single transferable vote (STV) 118 ftnt. 4, 118, 119 Socialist/Marxist feminism 30, 201, 205 Socialist feminism 19, 30, 136, 225-226 South African Association of Political Studies (SAAPS) 71-72 South Asia 28, 77-78, 82 state organized capitalism 19, 21 strategies to break barriers 84 structural adjustment policies (SAPs) 18, 68, 152, 156 subaltern other 34 Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with Developing countries (SAREC) 61 Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) 61

Theology of Liberation 47 third stage of colonialism 67 Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 19 United Nations Development Program (UNDP) 52

UNESCO 22

UNIFEM 187


United Nations World Conferences on Women 20, 51, 157, 159

USAID 51

violence in South Asian politics 98-99

women and development (WAD) 152, 224 Women In Development (WID) 27, 59, 66, 152, 224 Women in Nigeria (WIN) 65 Women's movements 15, 18-19, 21, 25 Women's political representation in South Asia 99-102 Women's Studies programs 52-53, 66-67, 204 World Bank 18, 44-45, 157, 187-189 World Trade Organization (WTO) 44-45 World War II 16, 22

# Notes on Contributors

*Jane H. Bayes* is a Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institute of Gender, Globalization, and Democracy at California State University, Northridge. She also is the Director of the International Social Science Council's Research Committee Network on Gender, Globalization and Democratization. Her teaching and research interests are in the areas of gender and politics, political economy, and globalization and gender. She is a co- author of Women, Democracy, and Globalization in North America (2006) and coeditor of Globalization, Gender, and Religion; The Politics of Implementing Women's Rights in Catholic and Muslim Contexts (2001) and Gender, Globalization and Democratization (2001).

*Breny Mendoza* (Ph.D. Cornell University) is a native of Honduras and a professor of Gender & Women's Studies at California State University, Northridge. She has published several articles in both English and Spanish on topics related to transnational feminisms, Latin American feminisms, decolonial feminisms, and mestizaje. Her more recent work focuses on the coloniality of knowledge and democracy. She has published a book in Spanish on the Honduran feminist movement *Sintiéndose mujer, pensándose* (Editorial Guaymuras, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, September, 1996); and she is co-editor of *Rethinking Latin American Feminisms* (Latin American Studies Program, Cornell University, Volume 5, August 2000). Her book, *Pensamiento Feminista Latinoamericano De Otro Modo,* will be published in 2012 by En la Frontera, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

*Amanda Gouws* is Professor of Political Science at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa She holds a PhD from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in the USA. Her specialization is South African Politics and Gender Politics. Her research focuses on women and citizenship, the National Gender Machinery and representation. She is the editor of *(Un)Thinking Citizenship: Feminist Debates in Contemporary South Africa.* (UK: Ashgate and Cape Town: Juta, 2005). She is a Board Member of the African Gender Institute at the University of Cape Town. In 2007 she was the Edith Keeger Wolf Distinguished Visiting Professor at Northwestern University, USA. In 2011 she was selected as a Fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation Centre in Bellagio, Italy, where she was working on a book on the Women's Movement in South Africa.

*Ranjana Kumari* is a prominent activist and scholar and widely regarded as a leading force in the women's rights movement in India. A PhD in Political Science from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Ranjana Kumari is the author of 12 books, including the world famous, *Brides are not for Burning* (1989) and *Women in Decision Making* (1992). Her most recent book, *Reign She Will: Women's Strife for Political Space* (2011), is a cogent look at women's claim for power throughout India. Ranjana Kumari is the director of Centre for Social Research, a women's rights organization in New Delhi, India and the president of Women Power Connect, India's only lobbying organization focused on gender issues. She is the Coordinator of the South Asia Network Against Trafficking (SANAT) in Persons and is also a member of the Indian Governments National Mission for Empowerment of Women, the Central Advisory Board (statutory body) on "Pre Conception and Pre Natal Diagnostic Tests Act, 2001", and the Central Advisory Committee for Prevention of Trafficking in Women and Children.

*Monique Leyenaar* is Professor of Comparative Politics at Radboud University of Nijmegen, Netherlands. She specialises in electoral behavior, political reform, political and social participation (citizens' juries), comparative political systems, gender and politics, local politics and decision-making processes. Currently she is a member of the Dutch Electoral Council, the Council for Public Administration and in the recent past has served as an advisor and consultant to the Dutch Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs, the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European Commission and the Irish government on issues concerning gender mainstreaming, citizen's participation, gender equality plans, electronic voting and democratization. She was elected to the Executive Committee of the European Consortium for Political Research and has served as chair of its Workshop Committee. She has published numerous articles in scholarly journals on electoral reform, women's political participation and representation and is the author of *The Political Empowerment of Women: The Netherlands and Other Countries* (2004).

*Elisabeth Prügl* is Professor of International Relations at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, where she directs the Institute's Programme on Gender and Global Change (PGGC). Her research focuses on gender politics in global governance. She has published on the regulation of women's work in the International Labor Organization and the European Union, on gender mainstreaming, and on feminist theory in International Relations. Her current research probes the relationship between feminist knowledge and gender expertise.

*Mary Hawkesworth* is Professor of Political Science and Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University. Her teaching and research interests include feminist theory, women and politics, contemporary political philosophy, philosophy of science, and social policy. Her most recent works include *Political Worlds of Women: Activism, Advocacy, and Governance in the 21st Century and Other Countries* (2004*).* (2012); *War & Terror: Feminist Perspectives* (2008); *Globalization and Feminist Activism* (2006); and *Feminist Inquiry: From Political Conviction to Methodological Innovation* (2006). She is currently serving as the Editor of *Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society*.

*Marian Simms* currently is the Executive Director for Social, Behavioural and Economic Sciences of the Australian Research Council, on leave of absence from Deakin University, where she was Head of the School of History, Heritage and Society and Chair in Australian Studies from 2009-2011. Her research interests are in the fields of gender studies and political science with particular focus on political communication, elections, gender policies and politics, areas in which she has published 5 authored and co-authored books, 9 edited and co-edited books, and over 80 articles and chapters. She has received grants and awards from the Australian Research Council, the National Committee for the Centenary of Federation and the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization. Marian Simms is the past President of the Australian Political Studies Association, and currently is the coeditor of the *Australian Journal of Political Science*.