Sixteen essays by international contributors present detailed case studies exploring the government agencies designed to further feminist goals in Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the US. Paper edition (unseen), $24.95. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc.

Addressing essential questions of women's movement activism and political change in Western democracies.

A critique of concepts has been central to feminist scholarship since its inception. However, while gender scholars have identified the analytical gaps in existing social science concepts, few have systematically mapped out a gendered approach to issues in political analysis and theory development. This volume addresses this important gap in the literature by exploring the methodology of concept construction and critique, which is a crucial step to disciplined empirical analysis, research design, causal explanations, and testing hypotheses. Leading gender and politics scholars use a common framework to discuss methodological issues in some of the core concepts of feminist research in political science, including representation, democracy, welfare state governance, and political participation. This is an invaluable work for researchers and students in women's studies and political science.

How can women maximise their political influence? Does state feminism enhance the political representation of women? Should feminism be established in state institutions to treat women's concerns? Written by experts in the field, this 2005 book uses an innovative model of political influence to construct answers to these and other questions in the long-running debate over the political representation of women. The book assesses how states respond to women's demands for political representation both in terms of their inclusion as actors and the consideration of their interests in the decision making process. Debates on the issue vary from country to country, depending on institutional structures, women's movements and other factors, and this book offered the first comparative account of the subject. The authors analyse eleven democracies in Europe and North America and present comprehensive research from the 1960s to the present.

Most Western democracies established women's policy agencies to improve the status of women by the 1990s. One of the book's key questions is how have women's policy agencies been able to develop, maintain or enhance their roles in the transformed political context and how have women's movements adapted to change in twelve states.

The Centrality Of The Question Of Agency For Feminists, Both In Relation To Practical Organisation And To Historical Reconstruction And To Historical, Needs Elaboration.The Study Of Women At Times Is Perceived, Often Unconsciously, As A Threat To The Established Social Order: It Articulates Faith In Action, Interrogation And Change. It Often Raises Fundamental But Uncomfortable And Inconvenient Questions. It Subverts Established Images And Genres, Socially Valuable Norms And Concepts. Gender Studies Have Modified Existing Concepts And Created New Theoretical Frameworks And Methodologies.A Self- Questioning And Rigorous Approach Can Help Constitute Gender Studies As A Genuinely Oppositional Genre Which Will Change The Nature And Character The Social Science. There Is A Need To Challengers Received Wisdom, To Question Established Assumptions, And To Ask Nuanced Questions.This Work Provided Authoritative Information On Pros And Cons Of Feministic Studies.