The Gender of Informal Politics

The Gender of Informal Politics
Author: Janet Elise Johnson
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2017-09-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3319602799

This book argues that the primary political obstacle holding women back in the twenty-first century is a bait and switch promising but simultaneously undercutting gender equality. Through a comparison of Russia and Iceland, the book shows how this revised form of male dominance came about, how it constrains feminisms, and how activists are beginning to fight back. It argues that while feminist movements have made it harder for most countries to maintain formal rules discriminating against women, economic liberalization strengthened male-dominated elites in informal institutions. These elites offer women prominent roles as policymakers and in non-governmental organizations, but then box them in with little room to represent women’s interests. Activists’ attempts to shame countries for ignoring problems such as violence against women result in new laws, but, lacking the necessary funding and enforcement, violence and inequality intensify. Explaining this paradox is the principal focus for social scientists, policymakers, and activists concerned with gender equality, women's social inclusion, and human rights.

Gender and Informal Institutions

Gender and Informal Institutions
Author: Georgina Waylen
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2017-05-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1786600048

The book takes up the challenges of gender equality in informal institutions though a feminist institutionalist lens.

Talking about Politics

Talking about Politics
Author: Katherine Cramer Walsh
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2004
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780226872186

Whether at parties, around the dinner table, or at the office, people talk about politics all the time. Yet while such conversations are a common part of everyday life, political scientists know very little about how they actually work. In Talking about Politics, Katherine Cramer Walsh provides an innovative, intimate study of how ordinary people use informal group discussions to make sense of politics. Walsh examines how people rely on social identities—their ideas of who "we" are—to come to terms with current events. In Talking about Politics, she shows how political conversation, friendship, and identity evolve together, creating stronger communities and stronger social ties. Political scientists, sociologists, and anyone interested in how politics really works need to read this book.

Recoding the Boys' Club

Recoding the Boys' Club
Author: Daniel Kreiss
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2020-08-18
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0197535976

The #MeToo movement has catalyzed an international discussion about the routine challenges women face in their professional lives as a result of male-dominated industries and office cultures. These include well-documented cases of sexual harassment and assault, but also unequal opportunities, unequal pay, sexist stereotypes, and a devaluation of women's labor. While these are problems women face in all industries and at all levels, the political and technology sectors are particularly rife with them. Recoding the Boys' Club is a ground-breaking deep-dive into the work experiences of women in the political technology field in the United States. Political technology sits at the intersection of two fields dominated by men--politics and technology--and has become a cornerstone of operations in political campaigns and political institutions more generally. Drawing on a unique dataset of 1004 staffers working in political technology on presidential campaigns from 2004-2016, analysis of hiring patterns during the 2020 presidential primary cycle, and interviews with 45 women who worked on 12 different presidential campaigns, this book reveals the underrepresentation of women in political technology, especially leadership positions, as well as the struggle women face to have their voices heard within the "boys' clubs" and "bro cultures" of political technology. It chronicles the gendered expectations women face to provide emotional labor, stereotypes about women's competencies that shape their opportunities, the ways in which women's ideas are discredited, and the formal and informal forms of exclusion in campaign culture--leading to widespread feelings of "imposter syndrome" among women in this environment. These issues are often compounded by a mentality that the well-being of staffers must come secondary to the goals of the campaign, despite what campaigns might profess publically about gender and labor. Since these campaigns are important entry and training points for the wider field of political technology, the gendered inequities encountered within them have implications for women's professional experiences and careers long after campaigns have ended. This book aims to help political practitioners create more gender equitable and inclusive workplaces, ones that value the ideas and skills of all those who work to get candidates elected.

Where Women Run

Where Women Run
Author: Kira Sanbonmatsu
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2010-02-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0472025651

Why don’t more women run for office? Why are certain states more likely to have female candidates and representatives? Would strengthening political parties narrow the national gender gap? Where Women Run addresses these important questions through a rare and incisive look at how candidates are recruited. Drawing on surveys and case studies of party leaders and legislators in six states, political scientist Kira Sanbonmatsu analyzes the links between parties and representation, exposing the mechanism by which parties’ informal recruitment practices shape who runs—or doesn’t run—for political office in America. “Kira Sanbonmatsu has done a masterful job of linking the representation of women in elective office to the activities of party organizations in the states. She combines qualitative and quantitative data to show how women are navigating the campaign process to become elected leaders and the changing role of party organizations in their recruitment and election. It is a significant contribution to the study of representative democracy.” --Barbara Burrell, Northern Illinois University “Sanbonmatsu has produced an excellent study that will invigorate research on the role of political parties and the recruitment of women candidates. Using a variety of methods and data sources, she has crafted a tightly constructed, clearly argued, and exceedingly well-written study. A commendable and convincing job.” --Gary Moncrief, Boise State University “Sanbonmatsu offers important insights in two neglected areas of American politics: the role of political parties in recruiting candidates and the continued under-representation of women in elected office. Connecting the two subjects through careful qualitative and statistical methods, insightful interpretation of the literature and interesting findings, the book is a significant new addition to scholarship on parties, gender, and political recruitment.” --Linda Fowler, Dartmouth College Kira Sanbonmatsu is Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University and Senior Scholar at the Eagleton Institute of Politics’ Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP). She was previously associate professor at Ohio State University. She is the author of Democrats, Republicans, and the Politics of Women’s Place.

Gender, Informal Institutions and Political Recruitment

Gender, Informal Institutions and Political Recruitment
Author: E. Bjarnegård
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2013-02-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137296747

Parliaments around the world are still overwhelmingly populated by men, yet studies of male dominance are much rarer than are studies of female under-representation. In this book, men in politics are the subjects of a gendered analysis. How do men manage to hold on to positions of power despite societal trends in the opposite direction? And why do men seek to cooperate mainly with other men? Elin Bjarnegård studies how male networks are maintained and expanded and seeks to improve our understanding of the rationale underlying male dominance in politics. The findings build on results both from statistical analyses of parliamentary composition worldwide and from extensive field work in Thailand. A new concept, homosocial capital, is coined and developed to help us understand the persistence of male political dominance.

Gender, Politics and Institutions

Gender, Politics and Institutions
Author: M. Krook
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2010-12-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0230303919

Political institutions profoundly shape political life and are also gendered. This groundbreaking collection synthesises new institutionalism and gendered analysis using a new approach - feminist institutionalism - in order to answer crucial questions about power inequalities, mechanisms of continuity, and the gendered limits of change.

Negotiating Gender Equity in the Global South (Open Access)

Negotiating Gender Equity in the Global South (Open Access)
Author: Sohela Nazneen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2019-03-04
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1351245600

The fact that women have achieved higher levels of political inclusion within low- and middle-income countries has generated much speculation about whether this is reaping broader benefits in tackling gender-based inequalities. This book uncovers the multiple political dynamics that influence governments to adopt and implement gender equity policies, pushing the debate beyond simply the role of women’s inclusion in influencing policy. Bringing the politics of development into discussion with feminist literature on women's empowerment, the book proposes the new concept of ‘power domains’ as a way to capture how inter-elite bargaining, coalitional politics, and social movement activism combine to shape policies that promote gender equity. In particular, the book investigates the conditions under which countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia have adopted legislation against domestic violence, which remains widespread in many developing countries. The book demonstrates that women’s presence in formal politics and policy spaces does not fully explain the pace in adopting and implementing domestic violence law. Underlying drivers of change within broader domains of power also include the role of clientelistic politics and informal processes of bargaining, coalition-building, and persuasion; the discursive framing of gender-equitable ideas; and how transnational norms influence women’s political inclusion and gender-inclusive policy outcomes. The comparative approach across Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Ghana, India, and Bangladesh demonstrates how advancing gender equality varies by political context and according to the interests surrounding a particular issue. Negotiating Gender Equity in the Global South will be of interest to students and scholars of gender and development, as well as to activists within governments, political parties, nongovernmental organizations, women’s movements, and donor agencies, at national and international levels, who are looking to develop effective strategies for advancing gender equality.

Politics Embedded

Politics Embedded
Author: Stefanie Strulik
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2014
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3643801637

As a contribution to the anthropology of democracy, this book examines a local governance reform in India - focusing particularly on the 33% women's quota entailed. It highlights the interrelatedness of "doing gender" and "doing politics" and delineates the transformations of gendered political spaces and the shifting boundaries within which women of various castes and classes negotiate the meanings of politics. The book investigates the vernacularization of democracy and analyzes local politics as socially embedded - a framework that allows the frictions and contradictions of local politics to be explained without having to take recourse to dichotomies of "traditional vs. modern" or "formal vs. informal" politics. (Series: Anthropology / Ethnologie - Vol. 53)

Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time

Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time
Author: Adele Bardazzi
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2021-09-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9783030451622

This edited collection investigates the relationship between gender and authority across geographical contexts, periods and fields. Who is recognized as a legitimate voice in debate and decision-making, and how is that legitimization produced? Through a variety of methodological approaches, the chapters address some of the most pressing and controversial themes under scrutiny in current feminist scholarship and activism, such as pornography, political representation, LGBTI struggles, female genital mutilation, the #MeToo movement, abortion, divorce and consent. Organized into three sections, “Politics,” “Law and Religion,” and “Imaginaries,” the contributors highlight formal and informal aspects of authority, its gendered and racialized configurations, and practices of solidarity, resistance and subversion by traditionally disempowered subjects. In dialogue with feminist scholarship on power and agency, the notion of authority as elaborated here offers a distinctive lens to critique political and epistemic foundations of inequality and oppression, and will be of use to scholars and students across gender studies, sociology, politics, linguistics, theology, history, law, film, and literature.