Gendering Politics, Feminising Political Science Joni Lovenduski
Joni Lovenduski 2015 First published by the ECPR Press in 2015 Cover: Art by Favianna Rodriguez The ECPR Press is the publishing imprint of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), a scholarly association, which supports and encourages the training, research and cross-national co-operation of political scientists in institutions throughout Europe and beyond. ECPR Press Harbour House Hythe Quay Colchester CO2 8JF United Kingdom All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Typeset by Lapiz Digital Services Printed and bound by Lightning Source British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-910259-14-6 PDF ISBN: 978-1-785521-60-7 EPUB ISBN: 978-1-785521-61-4 KINDLE ISBN: 978-1-785521-62-1 www.ecpr.eu/ecprpress
Introduction The central theme of my research is the way gender is embedded in political institutions, mainly but not exclusively as expressed in patterns of political representation in democracies. In common with other academics of my generation who were interested in politics, I started as a political scientist, though a sceptical and critical one, with a strong commitment to broader notions of social science as an integrated project. Early on I was particularly doubtful about the science part of the term, largely because there were so many competing versions of it around but also because many political scientists almost wilfully adopted the narrowest possible uses of the term. The idea of political science was so contested that the founders of the UK Political Studies Association (PSA) avoided the term, preferring the more anodyne and inclusive Political Studies. I have often thought they might better have chosen the term science and defended it as systematic inquiry, observation and thinking. For me, political science is the systematic study of politics, a project that is impossible without feminism. Why feminism? Feminism was an influence from the earliest stages of my research. My way of studying and thinking about politics was slowly moulded into a fairly consistent approach to problems developed in response to the challenges of concept formation and research design that I encountered and, of course, the other researchers I worked with on different projects. My work covers gendering research into politics and its impact on the theorisation of political representation, the nature of women s and feminist movements, political recruitment, research design including the supply and demand framework for analysing political recruitment, equality agencies, equality strategies and their contexts including especially political parties, all in an increasingly articulated framework of feminist institutionalism. Why politics? The term politics has a number of different meanings that include activities, organisations and conflicts in which the allocations of resources are decided. Harold Lasswell s famous definition which stated that politics is who gets what, when and how is a common starting point. It is both succinct and much criticised. It misses at least two important questions (where and why) and overemphasises outcomes at the expense of process. Even so, it is a good place to start. For me, understanding politics turns on the idea of power and is a matter of understanding the interplays of ideas, institutions and interests that constrain and permit the use of
2 Gendering Politics, Feminising Political Science power in making authoritative effective decisions. In democratic systems, politics is often described in terms of politicians, governments, assemblies, elections and power. Democratic politics and processes that entail political representation and are ultimately a matter of the political arrangements and practices, especially the elections that permit leaders to decide the answers to Lasswell s questions. Authoritative decision making turns on electoral success which is achieved through the competition of ideas and interests organised by political institutions that include the political parties and the media. However, even where there are democratic trappings, all modern political systems are dominated by elites, by the few who have the capacity to manufacture the consent of the many. Such institutional manifestations of politics are the tip of a very substantial iceberg. The central concept, if there is one, is power. For my generation of political scientists, power was a high concept, the essential component of authoritative decisions about public issues located variously in political institutions. Traditionally it was problematised by distinctions between power over, power to, affect, effect, power as a resource or capacity and, of course, distinctions between consent and coercion. But, however articulated, it was always present as a concept that required definition and operationalisation. It is the centrality of power to its concerns that makes political science worthwhile for feminists, a point to which I return in the concluding chapter. The focus on power is what makes political science at its best a worthwhile discipline for feminists. As a political scientist, my understanding of political power emphasises the processes and contexts that sustain dominance of some groups or individuals by others. As a feminist I always consider the gender dynamics of the relationships between the dominant and dominated parties. Today, feminists draw on a range of theories of power, highlighting the foundation of public power in the private sphere and contend that the exercise of power in the state and the economy depends on private arrangements. The gendering of those arrangements conceals the interdependencies of public and private life. But distinctions between public and private life in common articulations of politics have a major effect on the design, membership and agendas of political institutions. These insights are founded in a longstanding feminist understanding of the state. For some time the feminist approach to political power was oblique as scholars worked through the implications of their insights into the smokescreen of the assumed split between public and private life that relegated women mainly to the private sphere. In the 1980s feminists were preoccupied with the state, much engaged in its deconstruction. The early 1990s saw a shift from the notion of the state as a political entity that had knowable boundaries and functions to one of shifting networks of power and dominance (Watson 1990). This change coincided with the institutional turn in political science which saw calls to Bring the state back in (Evans et al. 1985). The subsequent emergence of the new institutionalism brought a new emphasis on the rules (formal and informal)
Chapter One Women in Parliament: Making a Difference* with Azza Karam Although women remain significantly under-represented in today s parliaments, they are now looking beyond the numbers to focus on what they can actually do while in parliament how they can make an impact, whatever their numbers may be. They are learning the rules of the game and using this knowledge and understanding to promote women s issues and concerns from inside the world s legislatures. In so doing, they are not only increasing the chances of their own success, but they are also paving the way for a new generation of women to enter the legislative process. How can women maximise their impact on the political process through parliament? What strategies are most useful in increasing their effectiveness? What lessons can women MPs share with those aspiring to enter the field? In what ways have women impacted on political processes? This is our focus in this chapter, as we move from the road to parliament to making inroads in parliament. Making Inroads in Parliament In the Beijing Platform for Action (United Nations 1995), more than 180 governments agreed that Achieving the goal of equal participation of women and men in decision-making will provide a balance that is needed to strengthen democracy and promote its proper functioning. When women in different parts of the world struggled to win the right to vote, they expected that this would inevitably lead to greater women s representation. Their expectations were not always met, as chapters in this volume have illustrated [these refer to the original volume]. Instead, women embarked on another long and difficult struggle to actually get women elected to parliament. Part of this effort involves convincing women voters to support women as their representatives. In most countries, much of the work centres on political parties, the typical channels of entry to national legislatures. Women inside and outside political parties organise and mobilise themselves to change long-established party methods of political recruitment. Once women enter parliament, their struggle is far from over. In parliament, women enter a male domain. Parliaments were established, organised and dominated by men, acting in their own interest and establishing procedures for * Women in Parliament: Making a difference (with A. Karam), in J. Ballington and A. Karam (eds) Women in Parliament: Beyond numbers. A revised edition, Stockholm, International IDEA, 1998, pp. 125-158.
18 Gendering Politics, Feminising Political Science their own convenience. There was no deliberate conspiracy to exclude women. It was, in most cases, not even an issue. Most long-established parliaments were a product of political processes that were male-dominated or exclusively male. Subsequent legislatures are, for the most part, modelled on these established assemblies. Inevitably, these male-dominated organisations reflect certain male biases, the precise kind varying by country and culture. Until recently, this institutional masculinity has been an invisible characteristic of legislatures; it is embedded, pervasive and taken for granted. Only recently have legislatures masculine biases come under scrutiny. Indeed, in most countries, the political role of women in legislatures became a public issue only in the second half of the twentieth century. In 2005, women constitute 16 per cent of members of parliaments (MPs) worldwide. In the Nordic countries, their numbers are highest at 40 per cent, while in the Arab states their representation (as of January 2005) was only 6.5 per cent (Inter-Parliamentary Union 2005). As with previous efforts to try to get women elected to parliament, today women inside parliament are organising, mobilising, motivating and advancing women from inside the world s legislatures. They are devising strategies and taking action to promote issues relevant to women and facilitate changes in legislation. The actual impact women parliamentarians can make will depend on a number of variables that vary from country to country. These include the economic and political context in which the assembly functions, the background, experience and number of the women who are in parliament, and the rules of the parliamentary process. Each of these factors has a significant bearing on the extent to which women MPs can make a difference once elected. Because these factors vary significantly from country to country, it is difficult to make generalisations that are universally relevant regarding how women MPs can maximise their impact. In addition, there is relatively little research and information available on what sort of impact women have made. Underscoring the need for more knowledge and understanding in this particular field of women and decision-making, the United Nations Beijing Platform for Action, together with the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), call for more documentation on women making a difference in politics. 1 Extrapolating from what is available in this field and on the basis of interviews and discussions with women MPs around the world, we have identified some of the strategies and mechanisms women are using and can use to impact on the process. We have formulated a strategy, what we refer to as the rules strategy, to organize and present these ideas. The case studies that follow illustrate some of these strategies in action. Presence The extent of women s impact will depend very much on the number of women in parliament who are motivated to represent women s issues and concerns.
Women in Parliament: Making a Difference 19 Feminists often argue that pioneer women parliamentarians became surrogate men that they were socialised into the legislature and became indistinguishable from the men they replaced. We doubt this. Men are known to behave differently when women are absent. Because it upsets gender boundaries, the presence of even one woman will alter male behaviour; the presence of several women will alter it even further. West European experience shows that where women MPs have a mission to effect change even small numbers can produce significant results. While the presence of even one woman can make a difference, it is most likely that long-term significant change will only be realised when there is a substantial number of women in parliament who are motivated to represent women s concerns. Buoyed by their colleagues, women MPs may then elicit the active partnership of their male counterparts. However, change does not simply result from numbers; rather it is a complex process of overcoming resistance to women in which presence is only one part of the necessary mixture. According to Drude Dahlerup, the test that a critical mass of women is present is the acceleration of the development of women s representation through acts that improve the situation for themselves and for women in general. These actions are critical acts of empowerment. Once present in larger numbers, and willing to act together on behalf of women, women MPs can overcome the tokenism phenomenon, that is, move beyond the perception they are subjected to, as well as be enabled to form interactive and strategic partnerships both within the legislatures and outside them. Within the legislatures, a critical mass makes it easier to cross party lines, and particularly to reach out to their male colleagues the other half of an important equation for social transformation. Their presence as a critical mass also multiplies the possibilities and extent of their outreach to civil society organisations, which, in turn, enhances the momentum required in impacting on the legislature and its policies. In her studies of women MPs in Scandinavia and elsewhere, Dahlerup found that women politicians worked to recruit other women and developed new legislation and institutions to benefit women. As their numbers grew it became easier to be a woman politician and public perceptions of women politicians changed (Drude 1988; see also Lovenduski 2005). In 2005, Mercedes Mateo Diaz found in her study of Belgian and Swedish legislators that as the presence of women MPs increases so does their social representativeness (Mercedes 2005). When the numbers of women were low, at around 15 to 20 per cent, women MPs were less like women voters than male MPs are like male voters. The differences are due to distortions caused by recruitment procedures that were designed to select suitable men. To succeed in such processes women have to display male qualifications ; hence they are more likely to have characteristics associated with male MPs. For example, they may have careers in male-dominated professions such as business or law. To display such characteristics they may have sacrificed domestic lives, and hence are less likely than men or women in the general population to have children. However, as the proportion of women in parliament
Chapter Two Westminster Women: The Politics of Presence* with Pippa Norris The rising tide of women in elected office has raised expectations about their role as political leaders. Some hope, and others fear, that this development could alter the predominant political culture, the policy agenda, and the representation of women s interests in public life. This growth has occurred in many democracies and it is exemplified by dramatic developments at Westminster where the June 1997 election saw the entry of 120 women members into the UK House of Commons (18 per cent), double the number elected in 1992. This trend forms part of a larger phenomenon evident in the United Kingdom during the late-1990s where growing numbers of women entered other legislative bodies, thereby becoming 37 per cent of the Scottish Parliament and 40 per cent of the Welsh Assembly, 24 per cent of British MEPs in the European parliament, 16 per cent of the House of Lords, and 27 per cent of local councillors (see Figure 2.1). The change experienced in Britain represents part of a larger shift in cultural attitudes towards the political and social roles of women that has been sweeping through many postindustrial societies (Norris and Inglehart 2003). What are the political consequences that flow from this development? And, in particular, did the entry of a substantial number of women MPs in the 1997 election, and their subsequent re-election in 2001, alter the predominant culture at Westminster? This chapter compares survey evidence drawn from a representative sample of almost 1,000 national politicians in Britain (including parliamentary candidates and elected members) to examine whether women leaders display distinctive attitudes and values which have the capacity to make a substantive difference for women s interests. The first part briefly explains the theoretical framework based on the politics of presence and outlines a model to test it empirically. Three sources of evidence are available to examine the theoretical claims. We argue that, given the serious constraints on back bench activities at Westminster, behavioural measures, such as roll-call data based on legislative voting rebellions, provide an unduly limited yardstick for examining the capacity of women politicians to offer a distinctive contribution to politics. Self-reported measures taken at face value without independent verification, such as interviews where women politicians claim to act for women, are equally suspect given the electoral self-interest embodied in such claims. In contrast, cultural measures provide the most suitable, systematic and reliable evidence, where any gender * Westminster women (with P. Norris), Political Studies, 2003, 51(1), pp. 84 102.
42 Gendering Politics, Feminising Political Science Figure 2.1: Women in Public Office, UK 140 Women MPs in the UK Parliament, 1918 2001 120 120 118 Number of Women 100 80 60 40 20 0 1918 2 1 1922 8 1923 1924 1929 4 14 15 9 1931 1935 1945 1950 1951 24 17 24 29 26 21 25 23 1955 1959 1964 1966 1970 1974 27 19 23 1974 1979 1983 1987 1992 41 60 1997 2001 % Women in different kinds of Public Office in the UK, January 2000 50 40 33 37 39 40 % Women 30 20 16 18 24 27 10 0 House of Lords House of Commons European Parliament Local Councillors Government Posts Scottish Parliament Public Appointments Weish Assembly
Westminster Women: The Politics of Presence 43 differences in attitudes and values can be regarded as a necessary, although not sufficient, condition for women representatives to act for women as a group. If women and men MPs share similar attitudes and values, then it seems unlikely that the election of more women backbenchers has the potential to make any sort of substantive policy difference, whether through legislative votes, parliamentary activities, or influencing the policy process behind the scenes. We theorise that the values of women and men politicians can be expected to prove similar on many traditional left-right issues that have long divided British party politics, but that they can be expected to display the most significant contrasts towards the key issues that most directly affect women s ability to lead an independent life. The second part describes the data and measures, including the British Representation Study survey of 1,000 candidates and members conducted in the 2001 general election. The third part examines the evidence for gender differences concerning five scales measuring attitudes and values that commonly divide British party politics. The results confirm that once we control for party, there are no significant differences among women and men leaders across the value scales measuring support for the Free Market economy, for European Integration and for Traditional Moral values. Yet on the values and attitudes that are most closely related to women s autonomy namely the Affirmative Action and the Gender Equality scales women and men express significantly different values within each party. This pattern persists even after controlling for other social variables that commonly influence attitudes, such as age, education and income. The conclusion summarises the main findings and considers why and under what conditions they may have important consequences. Theoretical Framework The flourishing and extensive literature on women and public office has developed two central strands. The first focuses on descriptive representation, seeking to identify the reasons why so few women are elected to legislative bodies and the importance of barriers such as the electoral system, the role of party recruitment processes and the resources and motivation that women bring to the pursuit of elected office (see Darcy et al. 1994; Lovenduski and Norris 1993, 1996; Norris and Lovenduski 1995). Descriptive representation can be regarded as intrinsically valuable, for example Mansbridge (1999) argues that for African-Americans and for women, both historically disadvantaged social groups, the entry of representatives into public office improves the quality of group deliberations, increases a sense of democratic legitimacy, and develops leadership capacity. The second approach pursues the related question of whether, if elected, women will make a difference in legislative life and political leadership, or if they will offer substantive representation of women (Diamond 1977; Thomas 1994; Norris 1996; Tremblay 1998; MacDougal 1998; Carroll 2001; Swers 2001). Feminist theorists suggest that the presence of women in the House of Commons offers possibilities that women are not just standing as women but also acting for women as a group (Phillips 1995; Lovenduski 1997). This argument is commonly heard when
44 Gendering Politics, Feminising Political Science it is assumed that, due to their particular life-experiences in the home, workplace and public sphere, women politicians prioritise and express different types of values, attitudes and policy priorities, such as greater concern about childcare, health or education, or a less conflictual and more collaborative political style (see, for example, Brooks et al. 1990; Perrigo 1996; Phillips 1995, 1998; Short 1996; MacDougal 1998). Although these issues are of long-standing theoretical interest, in Britain until recently there have been so few women serving in most levels of public office that it seemed premature to ask what impact they may have on the policy process. The changing situation during the 1990s, however, calls for these issues to be re-examined. How might such a distinctive contribution be identified and tested? The theoretical framework in this study draws on accounts of the politics of presence developed by Phillips (1995, 1998). Acknowledging that mechanisms of accountability (the politics of ideas) are necessary to representative democracy, Phillips argues that women have a distinctive group identity based upon shared common interests on issues such as abortion, childcare or equal opportunities in education and the labour force. There is nothing particularly novel about these type of claims, after all the analogy can be drawn with many other groups which have sought to secure legislative representation within established or separate parties to articulate and defend their interests. Such a process is exemplified in the early twentieth century by the creation of the British Labour Party by trade unions to advance collective labour organisations and the legal right to strike (Pelling 1968). Acknowledging that men and women have complex sets of interests that both diverge and overlap, and that women as a group are far from monolithic, Phillips points out that... the variety of women s interests does not refute the claim that interests are gendered.... The argument from interest does not depend on establishing a unified interest of all women: it depends, rather, on establishing a difference between the interests of women and men (Phillips 1995: 68). If, however, women are divided by predominant crosscutting cleavages, such as those of social class, region, ethnicity or religion, and by ideological divisions between left and right, then these factors may override any common or shared interests associated with gender. Indeed, the classic account of the evolution and consolidation of parties in Western Europe, by Lipset and Rokkan (1967), argued that other cleavages in the electorate were the primary building blocks of party competition including those dividing the core and periphery regions, Catholics and Protestants, and workers and the bourgeoisie. Lipset and Rokkan assumed that any residual differences between women and men were subsumed under these primary social cleavages. Before we can test the claims of the politics of presence thesis it is necessary to establish a clear definition of women s interests. Although this concept is common, it remains controversial in feminist scholarship. As Wängnerud notes, problems include the relationship between objective and subjective interests, as well as the relationship between gender and other social divisions like race and class (Wängnerud 2000: 68). Defined broadly, if women s interests are understood to include all political issues where women and men may disagree, for
Westminster Women: The Politics of Presence 45 example, in their attitudes towards the deployment of armed forces, the protection of the environment, or the desirability of a strong and effective welfare safety net, then it becomes unclear how to define the boundaries of women s interests. Instead it seems preferable to adopt a strong but narrower definition of women s interests since such a formulation will improve its possibilities for effective theorising and measurement. In line with Wängnerud (2000: 70), we define women s shared interests to be in those policies that increase their autonomy. The recognition of such interests is a process of politicisation that can be treated as a number of steps in which (1) women are recognised as a social category, that is the gender neutrality of politics is contested; (2) the inequalities of power between the sexes are acknowledged; and, (3) policies to increase the autonomy of women are made. In her analysis of interview data on successive cohorts of Swedish legislators, Wängnerud shows how each step influences the political process and concludes that women s presence in the Riksdag has brought about a shift of emphasis whereby women s interests have become more central in politics. She found differences in attitudes between women and men across a wide range of issues and showed how these differences provoke political changes that lead to an increased legislative sensitivity to women s interests by all politicians. Wängnerud shows that the articulation and mobilisation of such interests in the Riksdag is the work of women politicians (Wängnerud 2000). We recognise that the effects of women s presence in politics do not happen automatically but exist and become explicit under certain conditions. Instructive here is the work of Rosabeth Moss Kanter (1977) on gender relations within industrial corporations. Kanter s argument is that the size of a minority matters. Uniform groups contain only men or only women. Skewed groups contain a large imbalance of men or women, up to about 15 per cent of the minority group. Tilted groups contain about 15 40 per cent of the opposite sex. Lastly, balanced groups contain 40 50 per cent of each sex. Kanter suggests that once a group reaches a certain size somewhere in the tilted group range the minority starts to assert itself and from this assertion there eventually follows a transformation of the institutional culture. This argument implies that rather than steady evolution, there is a critical tipping point that depends upon numbers. When a group remains a small minority within a larger society its members are tokens who will seek to adapt to their surroundings, conforming to the predominant rules of the game. They will not act to increase the size of their group. If anything their various available strategies ( queen bee, assimilation and so on) will tend to keep the number of tokens appropriately and conveniently small. Once the group reaches a certain size, however, their available strategies change and lead to a qualitative shift in the nature of group interactions, as the minority starts to assert itself and thereby transform the institutional culture, norms and values. Kanter fails to explain why change in the relative numbers of women and men leads to institutional, cultural or policy change. Such effects are not a simple result of increasing numbers, they are an effect of the processes of mobilisation that are made possible by the presence of women in a traditionally masculine institution. In the language of feminist scholarship it is an effect of gender, defined as the socially ascribed characteristics of women and men.
Deeds and Words Gendering Politics after Joni Lovenduski Edited by Rosie Campbell and Sarah Childs
R. Campbell and S. Childs 2014 Cover image courtesy and thanks to Ila Grimalidi http://www.ilariagrimaldi.it/ First published by the ECPR Press in 2014 The ECPR Press is the publishing imprint of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), a scholarly association, which supports and encourages the training, research and cross-national cooperation of political scientists in institutions throughout Europe and beyond. ECPR Press University of Essex Wivenhoe Park Colchester CO4 3SQ UK All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Typeset by ECPR Press Printed and bound by Lightning Source British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Hardback ISBN: 978-1-907301-52-0 PDF ISBN: 978-1-910-259-31-3 www.ecpr.eu/ecprpress
Contributors PETER ALLEN is a Lecturer in British Politics at Queen Mary, University of London. His research focuses on political behaviour and representation, and he has published work in journals including Political Studies, Parliamentary Affairs and The Political Quarterly. FAITH ARMITAGE is a Research Associate on the ERC-funded programme, Understanding Institutional Change: A Gender Perspective at Manchester University. Faith uses the expenses and debating regimes in the parliaments of the United Kingdom and South Africa to explore these concepts. This work builds on previous research that Faith has conducted on ceremony and ritual in parliaments. ROSIE CAMPBELL is a reader in politics at Birkbeck, University of London. She has written widely on gender and British politics. Her book Gender and the Vote in Britain was published in 2006 and she has recently written on the politics of diversity, women voters responses to public spending cuts and what voters want from their parliamentary candidates, published in the British Journal of Political Science, Party Politics and Political Studies. Rosie is Vice Chair of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a member of the 2015 British Election Study s advisory board. KAREN CELIS is research professor at the Department of Political Science, and affiliated to RHEA (Centre for Gender and Diversity) of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. From 2007 till 2013 she was Co-convenor of the Standing Group on Gender and Politics of the European Consortium for Political Research. She is co-editor (with Georgina Waylen, Johanna Kantola and Laurel Weldon) of the The Oxford Handbook on Gender and Politics (Oxford University Press, 2013). SARAH CHILDS is Professor of Politics and Gender at the University of Bristol. Books include Sex, Gender and the Conservative Party (2012); Gender and British Party Politics (2008). Articles on women MPs, representation, critical mass, and conservatism, and gender and representation, have been published in Political Studies, Politics and Gender, Parliamentary Affairs and Party Politics. She is currently researching gendered institutions with the UK Parliament and political parties. In 2009 10 she was Special Adviser to the UK Parliament s Speaker s Conference on representation and in 2014 to the APPG Women in Parliament Inquiry. DRUDE DAHLERUP is Professor of Political Science, University of Stockholm, Sweden and graduated from University of Aarhus in Denmark. She has written extensively on gender and politics, the history of the women s movements
xii Deeds and Words: Gendering Politics and gender equality policies. She has worked as a consultant for international organisations to countries on how to empower women in politics, on quota systems and electoral systems (in Sierra Leone, Cambodia, Tunisia, Kosovo, China, Egypt, Bhutan). Among her recent publications are Women, Quotas and Politics (ed. Routledge, 2006), and Breaking Male Dominance in Old Democracies (with Monique Leyenaar, Oxford University Press, 2013). Drude Dahlerup is one of the 20 members of the UN Global Civil Society Advisory Group to the executive director of UN Women. ANA ESPÍRITO-SANTO (PhD, European University Institute, 2011) is an invited assistant professor at ISCTE-IUL (Lisbon University Institute), Department of Political Science & Public Policies. Her main current research interests are gender and politics and comparative politics. She is the co-author of several book chapters and an article in West European Politics (2012). YVONNE GALLIGAN is Professor of Comparative Politics at Queen s University Belfast where she is also the founding Director of the Centre for Advancement of Women in Politics. Among her publications are States of Democracy: Gender and Politics in the European Union (ed. Routledge, 2015), Politics and Gender in Ireland (ed. with Fiona Buckley, Taylor and Francis, 2014), Gender Politics and Democracy in Post-Socialist Europe (with Sara Clavero and Marina Calloni, Barbara Budrich Publishers, 2007), and Sharing Power: Women, Parliament, Democracy (ed. with Manon Tremblay, Ashgate, 2006). MERYL KENNY is Lecturer in Government and Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Leicester. Her research focuses on gender and political recruitment, and feminist institutionalism. Recent publications include Gender and Political Recruitment: Theorizing Institutional Change (Palgrave, 2013). MONA LENA KROOK is Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University. Her first book, Quotas for Women in Politics: Gender and Candidate Selection Reform Worldwide (Oxford University Press, 2009), received the American Political Science Association Victoria Schuck Award for the Best Book on Women and Politics in 2010. She is also co-editor of The Impact of Gender Quotas (Oxford University Press, 2012), exploring the impact of quotas beyond numbers in Western Europe, Latin America, Asia/theMiddle East, and Sub- Saharan Africa. FIONA MACKAY is Professor of Politics and Dean of the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests include women s political representation, and gender and institutions. She founded and co-directs FIIN: Feminism and Institutionalism International Network (www. femfiin.com). Her most recent book is Gender, Politics and Institutions: Towards a Feminist Institutionalism (co-edited with Mona Lena Krook, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
ROSA MALLEY did her doctorate at the University of Bristol as part of the Gendered Ceremony and Ritual in Parliaments research project. Her thesis looked at parliamentary culture at Westminster and the Scottish Parliament and the substantive representation of women. AMY G. MAZUR is Professor of Political Science at Washington State University and an Associate Researcher at SciencesPo, Paris. Her recent books include: Politics, Gender and Concepts (editor with Gary Goertz, Cambridge University Press, 2008); and The Politics of State Feminism: Innovation in Comparative Research (with Dorothy McBride, Temple University Press, 2010). She is currently co convener (with Joni Lovenduski) of the Gender Equality Policy in Practice Project. DOROTHY E. MCBRIDE is professor emerita of political science at Florida Atlantic University. With Amy Mazur, she was co-director of the Research Network on Gender, Politics and the State (RNGS) and co-author of The Politics of State Feminism: Innovation in Comparative Research (Temple University Press, 2010). She is co-author with Janine Parry of the forthcoming Women s Rights in the USA: Policy Conflicts and Gender Roles 5th Ed. RAINBOW MURRAY is Reader (Associate Professor) in Politics at Queen Mary University of London. Her research on gender, politics and representation has been published in journals such as the American Political Science Review, Political Research Quarterly, European Journal of Political Research and Politics & Gender. She is the author of Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France (Palgrave, 2010) and the editor of Cracking the Highest Glass Ceiling: A Global Comparison of Women s Campaigns for Executive Office (Praeger, 2010). PIPPA NORRIS is the McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, ARC Laureate Fellow and Professor of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, and Director of the Electoral Integrity Project. Honors include the Johan Skytte and the Karl Deutsch awards. She has published more than 45 books in comparative politics (many in translation). Those for Cambridge University Press include Political Representation (with Joni Lovenduski, 1995), as well as Why Electoral Integrity Matters (2014), Making Democratic Governance Work (2012), Democratic Deficits (2011), Cosmopolitan Communications (with Inglehart, 2009), Driving Democracy (2008), Radical Right (2005), Sacred and Secular (with Inglehart, 2004, 2010, winner of the 2005 Virginia Hodgkinson Research Prize), Electoral Engineering (2004), Rising Tide (with Inglehart, 2003), Democratic Phoenix (2002), Digital Divide (2001), and A Virtuous Circle (2000) (winner of the 2006 Doris A. Graber prize for the best book in political communications). Details: www.pippanorris.com
xiv Deeds and Words: Gendering Politics JOYCE OUTSHOORN is Professor Emeritus of Women s Studies at the University of Leiden, where she is affiliated to the Institute of Political Science. She is editor of The Politics of Prostitution (2004), Changing State Feminism (2007) (with Johanna Kantola), European Women s Movements and Body Politics (forthcoming). Her work has been published in Public Administration Review, Social Politics, Acta Politica, Journal of Comparative Public Policy, European Journal of Women s Studies and Sexual Research and Social Policy. She was coconvenor of the Research Network on Gender, Politics and the State (RNGS) and one of the project leaders of the Feminism and Citizenship (FEMCIT) project. Her research interests are women s movements, women s equality policy, and body politics, notably abortion and prostitution. VICKY RANDALL is Emeritus Professor of Government at the University of Essex. She has published widely on gender-related issues in politics, with books including Women and Politics, Women in Contemporary British Politics (with Joni Lovenduski) and The Politics of Child Daycare in Britain. Her current research focuses on older people s political participation but with a continuing interest in relevant gender differences. JENNIFER RUBIN is vice president of RAND Europe and director of the division s Communities, Safety & Justice research programme. While at RAND Rubin has led research with and for a range of EU, British, and wider European institutions, agencies, departments, and foundations. In addition to leading research, Rubin has served as social scientific advisor to projects funded by European foundations; has been invited to contribute to Dutch, British, and US home affairs policy papers; and has contributed to TEDx events, consultations, and roundtables in the UK, US, and EU.
Foreword Albert Weale People sometimes deny that political science should be value-free because they think it should be value-relevant. But this is to confuse two quite different things. Value-relevance is the principle that the topics worth studying are those that are important. Value-freedom is the principle that, when studying important topics, we should not allow wishful thinking to interfere with our understanding. Identifying the causes of political processes and outcomes is to be guided by the best evidence available, not by what we hope or expect to be true in advance of research. Among her many virtues, Joni Lovenduski has never confused value-relevance and value-freedom. She has been responsible for producing some of the best political science we have on the subject of women and politics, exemplifying the principle of value-relevance. Yet she has pursued her understanding even when the results show the facts to be more complicated than at first sight we might think. For example, she once showed that female candidate non-selection in UK constituencies is at least as much a function of supply of women excluding themselves than of demand of bias against women by constituency parties. For many it would have been more convenient to have discovered the crucial role of prejudice on the demand side rather than reluctance on the supply side. Joni stuck with the evidence, just as she helped uncover the fact that younger women were less sympathetic to descriptive political representation than older women, despite their also rejecting traditional feminine roles. With further research, she later came to a different view about the relative importance of supply, but the change reflected the evidence. A commitment to value-relevance also means a commitment to work for practical improvement. At a time when the academy is being urged to make an impact on the quality of social and public life, Joni stands as an exemplar of what it means to bring the results of one s research to bear on fundamental political questions, for no one can deny the importance of political representation. In this volume a number of women who have been active in politics witness to the esteem in which she is held in the world of practice just as her academic colleagues witness to her role in the world of scholarly research. In seeking to understand the barriers that have existed to women securing political office, Joni has not avoided the hard work of comparative inquiry, using cross-national evidence to explore the relationship between political institutions and gender politics. She has never been content with reciting generalities, but has explored how debates about gender in politics interact with dominant ideologies of the state and to what effect. Good comparative empirical work requires good team work. Had Joni been born in an earlier generation, I sense that she might have been an activist in the US
2 Deeds and Words: Gendering Politics garment workers union, with its slogan: organise, organise! In modern political science cross-national comparative work means organisation, with its need for a careful definition of problems, an ability to raise funds, insistence on deadlines being met by collaborators and the knack of seeing how the whole can become more than the sum of its parts. Joni would be the first to acknowledge that without her international network she could not have accomplished what she has; in this volume the members of her network honour her for her role in making their combined work possible. The same qualities of cooperation and commitment to the cause of political science have led people on many occasions and in many contexts always to insist on including Joni on important committees whether as an Executive member of the U.K. s Political Studies Association or of the European Consortium of Political Research or whether as a panel member in the UK s Research Assessment Exercise. In all these important roles she has displayed that most valuable of combinations, independence of mind together with a willingness to work with others to find common solutions to pressing problems. Listing these qualities makes it seem as though Joni embodies only the austere and puritanical virtues commitment to a cause, intellectual integrity in research and administrative ability in organisation. Yet is there another political scientist who so evidently takes such pleasure in the senses, whether in the complex tastes of Italian cooking (always to be accompanied by fine wine) or the sights and smells of the garden or the back and forth of conversation? To hear her speak of how to cook a joint of meat is to understand how much intelligence enhances pleasure. To talk face to face with her is to understand how conversation can move from intellectual rigour to political engagement and then to the intimacies of personal friendship that is rooted in trust and good judgement. To contribute to this volume is to mark the achievements of a fine scholar but also the personal qualities of the warmest of friends.
Introduction: Deeds and Words Rosie Campbell and Sarah Childs This edited collection could have taken the standard scholarly framework a series of discrete but nonetheless linked chapters that provide a state of the art review of the sub-discipline of gender and politics. It would in this format, at least in our view, have done a valuable job for students of gender and politics, and would have been a fine tribute to Professor Joni Lovenduski, the pioneering gender and politics scholar in whose honour this book (a kind of Festschrift) is published. In so doing, it would also show how gender and politics scholarship speaks to the rest of political science, revealing that (male) gender has always been present in political science, and demonstrating how a re-gendering (feminising) of the discipline changes both what is studied and how it is studied; transforming our understanding of the political. But feminist gender and politics research, whilst about these and other things, is also about more than academic outputs; it is about changing the world; about being of use beyond academia. As such the overarching narrative of Deeds and Words is the crucial role played by critical actors and ideas in politics and political science, and in feminising politics. It is for this reason that each academic contributor has been asked to reflect on the interaction between academic research and the practice of politics in the individual chapters. It is also why we have invited a series of leading practitioners of politics whether Members of Parliaments, party professionals, political actors in civil society or the state, and gender activists to reflect on how their activities, strategies and, or campaigns, have benefited from interaction with gender and politics scholarship and scholars. Our reasoning is straightforward; whilst the British Suffragettes and suffragists in the early 20 th century demanded deeds (for their words had failed to persuade the male political establishment to give them the vote); deeds and words very much went together in the late 20th century and should continue to do so in the 21st. We think this for two reasons: first feminist academics frequently are, and seek to be, both scholars and activists; secondly, as understandings of gender relations have become more sophisticated, addressing for example, issues of intersectionality and the complexity of power and its variation across space and time, feminist praxis demands engagement with ideas and debates. Feminising politics Feminising politics refers both to the (1) integration of women and (2) women s concerns into politics (Lovenduski 2005). The former refers to the presence of women s bodies in our institutions, whether these are political organisations, movements or parliaments. The latter refers to the inclusion on the political
4 Deeds and Words: Gendering Politics agenda of women s perspectives, issues and interests, noting that these are contested concepts. 1 In both its dimensions feminisation reveals the gendered (read: masculinised) nature of politics: that men are nearly everywhere (all bar two lower houses in the world) over-represented in our formal political institutions (Murray 2012; www.ipu.org), and that the political agenda largely reflects men s perspectives and concerns, and or fails to acknowledge that women may well have different attitudes even when they share concerns with men. In this book authors consider how electoral politics has been feminised over the last few decades. Vicky Randall (Chapter One) charts the development of the sub-discipline of gender and politics over the last couple of decades. We do not seek to reproduce Randall s analysis here. However we reiterate the claim that whilst gender and politics research started with the simple counting of women s bodies in our electoral institutions, today gender and politics scholars are also very much focused on a wider range of foci: women s substantive representation (when representatives act for women), and albeit to a lesser and more recent extent, symbolic representation (Campbell and Wolbrecht 2006; Celis et al. 2007; Childs and Lovenduski 2012; Dovi 2007; Dovi 2010; Lovenduski et al. 2005; Meier and Lombardo 2012). In addressing the descriptive, substantive and symbolic representation of women, Chapter authors frequently emphasise the importance of context spatial and temporal. A comparative approach importantly permits a more comprehensive understanding of what is going on and why. And even when scholarship is of a single case a comparative perspective throws more light, revealing causal and mediating factors. Many of our contributors, in common with much contemporary gender and politics research, also employ new institutional and, or feminist institutional approaches (Krook and MacKay 2010; Lovenduski 1998). These investigate institutional rules and norms, architecture and spaces, conventions and practices, and explore how changing gender relations can re-gender institutions (Lovenduski 1998). Making a difference: The feminist imperative 2 In addition to presenting the latest research on gender and politics, Deeds and Words, examines how feminist academics have influenced the real world of politics impact that is frequently overlooked within the wider academy. Universities in the UK became an important site for feminist politics after the peak of the second wave of feminism in the 1970s. Indeed, in the face of spending cuts in the 1980s, and alongside a depressingly successful media backlash, feminist academics in British university departments worked with the women s movement to keep women s issues on the political agenda. Pioneering feminist political scientists including Joni Lovenduski, Judith Evans, Annie Phizacklea, 1. What constitutes women s issues and interests has generated extensive debate, see Critical perspectives, Politics and Gender, 2012 for recent contributions. 2. This section draws on Campbell and Childs 2013.