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.

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

Over the last two decades our understanding of the relationship of gender, politics and the state has been transformed almost beyond recognition by the mutual interrogation of feminism and political science. This volume provides an overview of this dynamic and growing field, which reflects both its expanding empirical scope and the accompanying theoretical development and debate. The first three essays focus primarily on conceptual and theoretical issues: the meaning of 'gender'; the state's role in the construction of gender within the public and private sphere; and the political representation of gender differences within liberal democracy. The remaining six provide analyses of more concrete issues of state policy and participation in differeing national political contexts: abortion politics in Ireland; the local politics of prostitution in Britain, the impact on women's political participation of economic change in China, Latin America and political change in Russia, and the gender impact of state programmes of land reform.

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.

Drawing from the work of internationally renowned scholars from the Research Network on Gender, Politics and the State (RNGS), this study offers in-depth analysis of the relationship between state feminism, women's movements and public policy and places them within a comparative theoretical framework. Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Finland, Austria, Belgium, Canada, and the U.S. are all discussed individually.

Six areas of research of the subjects of women, gender and politics are debated: social movements, political parties, elections, political representation, public policy, and the state.

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.