Feminist Political Science and Feminist Politics (original) (raw)
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For most of the twentieth century, political science was complicit in the absence of women from public office. This started to change in the 1970s as feminists began to reframe the absence of women not as a ‘condition’ but as a problem to be addressed by political science as well as political actors. This chapter examines the original assumptions found in political science concerning women’s political participation and the way these were challenged by feminist critiques. A male-dominated profession had failed to take account of how the gendered distribution of power contributed to exclusion. The chapter then looks at how feminist political scientists contributed to the promotion of new norms and strategies through transnational standard-setting institutions, as well as through engaging with laggard political institutions in the English-speaking democracies.
Feminist political analysis: Exploring strengths, hegemonies and limitations
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Austerity politics, war at the borders of the European Union, the rise of nationalisms, populist parties in Europe, islamophobia, and the refugee crisis, call for discussions about the theories and concepts that academic disciplines provide for making sense of the societal, cultural and political transformations of the time. Such undertakings need to avoid the tendency within increasingly professionalized disciplines to become self-referential, thus narrowing their analytical and imaginative capacities (Brown, 2002). In this article, we focus on the capacities of feminist political analysis to undertake these tasks. By political analysis-borrowing from Colin Hay (2002)-we mean the diversity of analytical strategies developed around 'the political'. Since the political has to do with the 'distribution, exercise, and consequences of power', political analysis focuses on the analysis of 'power relations' (Hay, 2002: 3) and the contestations arising around them. Gender and politics has become a vibrant subfield of political science. Feminist approaches to political analysis applied and developed in this subfield, explore, first, how power relations are gendered since they reproduce gender norms and biases that create hierarchies between women and men (Hawkesworth, 1994). Secondly, feminist approaches show how 'the political' includes gender issues formerly considered 'personal' (Pateman, 1983). This thinking often implies a personal commitment to the political project of gender equality that moves feminist scholars to link theory and practice in their daily work (Celis et al., 2013). The interest in transformative political praxis marks feminist political analysis as both an empirical and normative project. At the same time, feminist analyses have their limitations, which This is the post version of the article, which has been published in Feminist Theory. 2017, 18(3),
Gender Quotas in British Politics: Multiple Approaches and Methods in Feminist Research
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Recent methods textbooks contain chapters of sections on feminism as an approach to political research. Feminist scholars themselves, however, often express great ambivalence towards the possibility of presenting one single feminist perspective within political science. In fact, many treat methodologies as 'justificatory strategies' and simply employ those most suited to addressing the particular issue at hand. In this sense, we argue, there is no distinctive feminist methodology, but there is a distinctive feminist approach to methodology and methods. More specifically, feminist research is driven by substantive political problems and is thus open to the deployment of a broad range of methodological frames. To establish this claim, we survey the recent research produced by feminist political scientists on gender quotas in British politics, paying close attention to the specific approaches and methods applied by individual scholars. We discover a distinctive willingness on the part of feminists to employ various theoretical frames and to explore possibilities for synthesizing or juxtaposing methods in innovative ways. Rather than perceiving this to be a weakness, undermining any notion of an overarching 'feminist' perspective, we suggest that this methodological eclecticism is a strength, signalling the ability of feminist researchers to produce multifaceted research findings. Indeed, recent feminist work on British politics should be taken as a model of good practice in political research.
Gender and Politics: The State of the Art
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Over the last two decades, but particularly in the last 10 years, research into sex, gender and politics has become an established sub-field of political science. This article opens with some reflections on the position of 'women and politics' scholars and research within the British political science community. It then moves on to reflect upon the burgeoning literature on women's political representation. In particular, it questions the way in which the relationship between women's descriptive and substantive representation has been operationalised and investigated in empirical research, namely through the concept of critical mass. Seeking to reframe these debates, the article suggests that future research should focus not on the question of when women make a difference, but on how the substantive representation of women occurs. Gender and politics 3 scholars, mostly women, 4 are increasingly visible in the profession at both senior and junior levels. 5 The PSA Women and Politics specialist group is the second most active in the PSA with a membership of approximately 60, 6 and its Annual Conference routinely attracts more than 40 women, impressing overseas visitors. 7 There are also strong and, in some cases, long-standing international contacts. Relationships are forged and maintained at the personal level and through conferences, such as the 'Women and Westminster Compared' Conference held in Ottawa in 2004; research networks, such as the ECPR Women and Politics Standing Group; and specialised women and politics projects, such as RNGS
This paper is intended to contribute to ongoing discussions about the desirability, or undesirability, of an alliance between feminists involved in the study of politics and the 'new institutionalisms' (Mackay and Meier 2003; Mackay, Krook and Kenny 2010; Krook and Mackay 2010). In developing our position we would like to make clear that we do not see ourselves as involved in marking out 'our turf'. Rather, we want to suggest that methodologies matter politically and therefore that theoretical debates ought to be considered at this level-that is, they ought to be considered in terms of the forms of politics they make possible. Because of our conviction that 'institutionalisms' of whatever kind impose rigidities on the political landscape in ways that hamper progressive politics, we are uneasy about recommendations that feminists makes alliances with the new institutionalisms. This paper lays out, in a preliminary form, political reasons for steering clear of all 'institutionalisms' as modes of explanation along with other conventional political science paradigms.