The Women's Movement Against Sexual Harassment

Author: Carrie N. Baker

The Women's Movement Against Sexual Harassment examines how a diverse grassroots social movement created public policy on sexual harassment in the 1970s and 1980s. The collaboration of women from varying racial, economic, and geographic backgrounds strengthened the movement by representing the perspectives and activism of a broad range of women. Based on interviews and voluminous original research, this book is the first to show how the movement against sexual harassment fundamentally changed American life in ways that continue to advance women's opportunities today.

The Future of Gender

Editor: Jude Browne

"Gender" is used to classify humans and to explain their behaviour in predominantly social rather than biological terms. But how useful is the concept of gender in social analysis? To what degree does gender relate to sex? How does gender feature in shifts in familial structures and demography? How should gender be conceived in terms of contemporary inequality and injustice, and what is gender's function in the design and pursuit of political objectives? In this volume a collection of international experts from the fields of political philosophy, political theory, sociology, economics, law, psychoanalysis and evolutionary psychology scrutinize the conceptual effectiveness of gender both as a mode of analysis and as a basis for envisioning the transformation of society. Each contributor considers how gender might be conceived in contemporary terms, offering a variety of (often conflicting) interpretations of the concept's usefulness for the future.

Justice, Gender, and the Politics of Multiculturalism

Author: Sarah Song

Justice, Gender and the Politics of Multiculturalism explores the tensions that arise when culturally diverse democratic states pursue both justice for religious and cultural minorities and justice for women. Sarah Song provides a distinctive argument about the circumstances under which egalitarian justice requires special accommodations for cultural minorities while emphasizing the value of gender equality as an important limit on cultural accommodation. Drawing on detailed case studies of gendered cultural conflicts, including conflicts over the ‘cultural defense’ in criminal law, aboriginal membership rules and polygamy, Song offers a fresh perspective on multicultural politics by examining the role of intercultural interactions in shaping such conflicts. In particular, she demonstrates the different ways that majority institutions have reinforced gender inequality in minority communities and, in light of this, argues in favour of resolving gendered cultural dilemmas through intercultural democratic dialogue.

Welfare Reform and Sexual Regulation

Author: Anna Marie Smith

Inspired by the political and philosophical interventions of feminist women of color and Foucauldian social theory, Anna Marie Smith explores the scope and structure of the child support enforcement, family cap, marriage promotion, and abstinence education measures that are embedded within contemporary United States welfare policy. Presenting original legal research and drawing from historical sources, social theory, and normative frameworks, the author argues that these measures violate the rights of poor mothers. The author shows that welfare policy has consistently constructed the sexual conduct of the racialized poor mother as one of its primary disciplinary targets. The book concludes with a vigorous and detailed critique of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's support for welfare reform law and an outline of a progressive feminist approach to poverty policy.

Body-Self Dualism in Contemporary Ethics and Politics

Author: Patrick Lee

This book treats the question of what a human person is and the ethical and political controversies of abortion, hedonism and drug-taking, euthanasia, and sex ethics. It defends the position that human beings are both body and soul, with a fundamental and morally important difference from other animals. It defends the traditional position on the most controversial specific moral and political issues of the day.

Women and Politics in Iran

Author: Hamideh Sedghi

Why were urban women veiled in the early 1900s, unveiled from 1936 to 1979, and reveiled after the 1979 revolution? This question forms the basis of Hamideh Sedghi's original and unprecedented contribution to politics and Middle Eastern studies. Using primary and secondary sources, Sedghi offers new knowledge on women's agency in relation to state power. In this rigorous analysis she places contention over women at the centre of the political struggle between secular and religious forces and demonstrates that control over women's identities, sexuality, and labor has been central to the consolidation of state power. Sedghi links politics and culture with economics to present an integrated analysis of the private and public lives of different classes of women and their modes of resistance to state power.

Defending Life

Author: Francis J. Beckwith

Defending Life is the most comprehensive defense of the prolife position on abortion ever published. It is sophisticated, but still accessible to the ordinary citizen. Without high-pitched rhetoric or appeals to religion, the author offers a careful and respectful case for why the prolife view of human life is correct. He responds to the strongest prochoice arguments found in law, science, philosophy, politics, and the media. He explains and critiques Roe v. Wade, and he explains why virtually all the popular prochoice arguments fail. There is simply nothing like this book.

Messengers of Sex

Author: Celia Roberts

Since the early twentieth century, hormones have commonly been understood as 'messengers of sex'. They are seen as essential to the development and functioning of healthy reproductive male and female bodies; millions take them as medications in the treatment of fertility, infertility and ageing. However, in contemporary society, hormones are both disturbed and disturbing; invading our environments and bodies through plastics, food and water, environmental estrogens and other chemicals, threatening irreversible, inter-generational bodily change. Using a wide range of sources, from physiology textbooks to popular parenting books and pharmaceutical advertisements, Celia Roberts analyses the multiple ways in which sex hormones have come to matter to us today. Bringing feminist theories of the body into dialogue with science and technology studies, she develops tools to address one of the most important questions facing feminism today: how is biological sex conceivable?

The Feminist Avant-Garde

Author: Lucy Delap

In the early twentieth century the term 'feminist' was used by self-consciously 'modern' men and women, to distinguish their ideas from those of 'the women's movement', and even to adopt anti-suffrage positions. In the first major study of twentieth-century feminism as an Anglo-American phenomenon, Lucy Delap offers a new perspective on the politics of gender during this period. Delap explores the intellectual history and cultural politics of Anglo-American feminism in a way that challenges the reader to re-think the nature of both the 'avant-garde' and 'feminism'. Focusing on the development of transnational feminisms within Edwardian and interwar print culture, feminist political argument is placed at the centre of an account of modernism, highlighting some unexpected and often uncomfortable components, including the feminist fascination with individualism and egoism; ambivalence over World War One; utopian thinking and captivation by the idea of 'the simple life'; anti-Semitism; sexual radicalism; and ideas about 'the superwoman'.

Same-Sex Marriage and the Constitution

Author: Evan Gerstmann

The revised and expanded second edition of Same-Sex Marriage and the Constitution makes the case that the Constitution has long protected the right to marry, and that this protection includes the right to marry a person of the same gender. No other book makes this argument. This book addresses other issues, such as why same-sex marriage is completely different, both practically and constitutionally, from polygamy and incest, and it debunks the myth that pro–same-sex marriage decisions have created a backlash against either gays and lesbians or the Democratic Party.

Gender and the Constitution

Author: Helen Irving

We live in an era of constitution-making. New constitutions are appearing in historically unprecedented numbers, following regime change in some countries, or a commitment to modernization in others. No democratic constitution today can fail to recognize or provide for gender equality. Constitution-makers need to understand the gendered character of all constitutions, and to recognize the differential impact on women of constitutional provisions, even where these appear gender-neutral. This book confronts what needs to be considered in writing a constitution when gender equity and agency are goals. It examines principles of constitutionalism, constitutional jurisprudence, and history. Its goal is to establish a framework for a "gender audit" of both new and existing constitutions. It eschews a simple focus on rights and examines constitutional language, interpretation, structures and distribution of power, rules of citizenship, processes of representation, and the constitutional recognition of international and customary law. It discusses equality rights and reproductive rights as distinct issues for constitutional design.

After Identity

Author: Georgia Warnke

Social and political theorists have traced in detail how individuals come to possess gender, sex and racial identities. This book examines the nature of these identities. Georgia Warnke argues that identities, in general, are interpretations and, as such, have more in common with textual understanding than we commonly acknowledge. A racial, sexed or gendered understanding of who we and others are is neither exhaustive of the ‘meanings’ we can be said to have nor uniquely correct. We are neither always, or only, black or white, men or women or males or females. Rather, all identities have a restricted scope and can lead to injustices and contradictions when they are employed beyond that scope. In concluding her argument, Warnke considers the legal and policy implications that follow for affirmative action, childbearing leave, the position of gays in the military and marriage between same-sex partners.

Political Women and American Democracy

Author: Christina Wolbrecht

What do we know about women, politics, and democracy in the United States? The last thirty years have witnessed a remarkable increase in women’s participation in American politics and an explosion of research on female political actors, and the transformations effected by them, during the same period. Political Women and American Democracy provides a critical synthesis of scholarly research by leading experts in the field. The collected essays examine women as citizens, voters, participants, movement activists, partisans, candidates, and legislators. The authors provide frameworks for understanding and organizing existing scholarship; focus on theoretical, methodological, and empirical debates; and map out productive directions for future research. As the only book to offer “state of the field” essays on women and gender in U.S. politics, Political Women and American Democracy will be an invaluable resource for scholars and students studying and conducting women and politics research.

Gender and Health

Author: Chloe E. Bird

Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference

Author: Brooke A. Ackerly

From the diverse work and often competing insights of women’s human rights activists, Brooke Ackerly has written a feminist and a universal theory of human rights that bridges the relativists’ concerns about universalizing from particulars and the activists’ commitment to justice. Unlike universal theories that rely on shared commitments to divine authority or to an ‘enlightened’ way of reasoning, Ackerly’s theory relies on rigorous methodological attention to difference and disagreement. She sets out human rights as at once a research ethic, a tool for criticism of injustice and a call to recognize our obligations to promote justice through our actions. This book will be of great interest to political theorists, feminist and gender studies scholars and researchers of social movements.

Feminist Methodologies for International Relations

Editor: Brooke A. Ackerly

Why is feminist research carried out in international relations (IR)? What are the methodologies and methods that have been developed in order to carry out this research? Feminist Methodologies for International Relations offers students and scholars of IR, feminism, and global politics practical insight into the innovative methodologies and methods that have been developed - or adapted from other disciplinary contexts - in order to do feminist research for IR. Both timely and timeless, this volume makes a diverse range of feminist methodological reflections wholly accessible. Each of the twelve contributors discusses aspects of the relationships between ontology, epistemology, methodology, and method, and how they inform and shape their research. This important and original contribution to the field will both guide and stimulate new thinking.

Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism

Author: Brooke A. Ackerly

Drawing on theoretical insights from Third World women's activism, Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism develops democratic theory as a critical theory relevant to dealing with real world inequalities. Brooke Ackerly examines the methods by which real world feminist activists have criticized society, and argues that their activities show how feminist theory can move beyond its theoretical impasse toward articulating social criticism with critical teeth. Her book will be of interest to political and social theorists, and to students and scholars of women's studies, feminism, and human rights.

Diverse Communities

Author: Barbara Arneil

Diverse Communities is a critique of Robert Putnam's social capital thesis, re-examined from the perspective of women and cultural minorities in America over the last century. Barbara Arneil argues that the idyllic communities of the past were less positive than Putnam envisions and that the current 'collapse' in participation is better understood as change rather than decline. Arneil suggests that the changes in American civil society in the last half century are not so much the result of generational change or television as the unleashing of powerful economic, social and cultural forces that, despite leading to division and distrust within American society, also contributed to greater justice for women and cultural minorities. She concludes by proposing that the lessons learned from this fuller history of American civil society provide the normative foundation to enumerate the principles of justice by which diverse communities might be governed in the twenty-first century.

The Gender of Constitutional Jurisprudence

Editor: Beverley Baines

Describing the constitutional rights of women in twelve countries, the contributors to this collection draw on a wide range of legal cases covering issues such as abortion, sexual harassment, employment discrimination, sexual abuse, pornography, family relationships, access to health and social assistance benefits, and electoral rights, among others. Their analysis reveals how essentially male judges decide cases that are mainly about women's equality claims. The volume's comparative perspective provides readers with the basis for independent pursuits of constitutional equality for women.

Why Women Protest

Author: Lisa Baldez

This book compares two ideologically opposed examples of women's movements in Chile. It studies the women who mobilized against the democratically elected government of President Salvador Allende (1970-1973) and those who mobilized against the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). The study documents and explains the similarities that exist between these two very different movements in terms of the moment at which they emerge and the way in which they frame their demands.

Women's Movements Facing the Reconfigured State

Editor: Lee Ann Banaszak

How have women's movements responded as state governments delegated power to transnational organizations like the European Union? Have they facilitated the shifts in state policy responsibilities to subnational governments, independent agencies, and the private sector? This study examines how women's movements have contributed and responded to changes in state powers and policy responsibility in North America and Western Europe. The international scholars contributing to this volume identify movement changes that include greater engagement with the state, specific policy-making ventures and challenges to national governments.

Gender and Elections

Editor: Susan J. Carroll

Gender and Elections offers a systematic, lively, multi-faceted account of the role of gender in the electoral process through the 2004 elections. This timely, yet enduring, volume strikes a balance between highlighting the most important developments for women as voters and candidates in the 2004 elections and providing a more long-term, in-depth analysis of the ways that gender has helped shape the contours and outcomes of electoral politics in the United States. Individual chapters demonstrate the importance of gender in understanding and interpreting presidential elections, voter participation and turnout, voting choices, congressional elections, the participation of African American women, the support of political parties and women's organizations, candidate communications with voters, and state elections. Without question, this book is the most comprehensive, reliable, and trustworthy resource on the role of gender in electoral politics.

Employment and the Family

Author: Rosemary Crompton

Rates of employment amongst mothers of young children have risen rapidly in recent years. Attitudes to gender roles have changed, and both employers and governments have had to adjust to new realities. But some argue that recent changes in employment relations are making work more family 'unfriendly'. What are the real consequences of change? Rosemary Crompton explores the origins and background of this radical shift in the gendered division of labour. Topics covered include the changing attitudes to gender roles and family life, the gendered organisational context, and recent changes in employment relations and their impact on work-life articulation. A comparative analysis of Britain, France, Norway, Finland, the United States and Portugal provides an assessment of the varying impact of state policies, and the changing domestic division of labour. Crompton draws on original research and situates her findings within contemporary theoretical and empirical debates.

The Gender Division of Welfare

Author: Mary Daly

The Gender Division of Welfare is an ambitious study that raises interesting and important questions concerning the relationship among welfare states, gender differentiation and social inequality. The book traces the consequences of different welfare state and social policy arrangements for women and men and the households in which they live. Mary Daly examines the British and German welfare states showing that both countries differ markedly in the measures they have instituted in various areas.

The Dignity of Resistance

Author: Roberta M. Feldman

This comprehensive case study chronicles the four decade history of Chicago's Wentworth Gardens public housing residents' grassroots activism. It explores why and how the African-American women residents creatively and effectively engaged in organizing efforts to resist increasing government disinvestment in public housing and the threat of demolition. Through the inspirational voices of the activists, Roberta Feldman and Susan Stall challenge portrayals of public housing residents as passive and alienated victims of despair.

War and Gender

Author: Joshua S. Goldstein

Gender roles are nowhere more prominent than in war, yet our understanding of the relationship between gender and war is confused. Joshua Goldstein analyzes the near-total exclusion of women from combat forces, through history and across cultures. He concludes that killing in war does not come naturally for either gender, and that gender norms often mold men, women, and children to the needs of the war system.

Sex and the State

Author: Mala Htun

As Argentina, Brazil, and Chile made transitions from democratic to authoritarian forms of government (and back), they confronted challenges posed by the rise of the feminist movement, social changes, and the power of the Catholic Church. This study explores the patterns of gender-related policy reform in these countries and reveals their implications for the peoples of Latin America. In addition, it offers a broader understanding of the logic behind the state's role in affecting private lives and gender relations everywhere.

Same-Sex Marriage

Author: Kathleen E. Hull

Rising Tide

Author: Ronald Inglehart

The twentieth century gave rise to profound changes in traditional sex roles. This study reveals how modernization has changed cultural attitudes towards gender equality and analyzes the political consequences. It systematically compares attitudes towards gender equality worldwide, comparing almost 70 nations, ranging from rich to poor, agrarian to postindustrial. This volume is essential reading to gain a better understanding of issues in comparative politics, public opinion, political behavior, development and sociology.

It Takes a Candidate

Author: Jennifer L. Lawless

This important work constitutes a systematic, nationwide empirical account of the effects of gender on political ambition. Based on data from the Citizen Political Ambition Study, a national survey of 3,800 "potential candidates" conducted by the authors, it relates these findings: --Women, even at the highest levels of professional accomplishment, are significantly less likely than men to demonstrate ambition to run for elective office. --Women are less likely than men to be recruited to run for office. --Women are less likely than men to consider themselves "qualified" to run for office. --Women are less likely than men to express a willingness to run for a future office. According to the authors, this gender gap in political ambition persists across generations, despite contemporary society's changing attitudes towards female candidates. While other treatments of gender in the electoral process focus on candidates and office holders, It Takes a Candidate makes a unique contribution to political studies by focusing on the earlier stages of the candidate emergence process and on how gender affects the decision to seek elective office.

State Feminism and Political Representation

Editor: Joni Lovenduski

How can women maximize their political influence? Does state feminism enhance the political representation of women? Should feminism be established in state institutions to treat women's concerns? Developed by field experts, this 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 in terms of their inclusion as actors, as well as the consideration of their interests in the decision making process.

The Politics of Prostitution

Editor: Joyce Outshoorn

Revealing how women's movements in Western Europe, North America and Australia have affected politics on prostitution and trafficking of women since the 1970s, this study asks why they are successful in some countries but failures in others. The contributions written by an international team of experts are based on original sources. The final chapter utilizes comparative analysis to determine the factors that make women's movements and agencies successful, presenting an argument for "state feminism".

America's Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage

Author: Daniel R. Pinello

America's Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage chronicles the evolution of the social movement for same-sex marriage in the United States and examines the political controversies surrounding gay people's quest for access to the civil institution of marriage. The book focuses on the momentous events that began in November 2003, when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared unequivocally that the state's conferral of marriage only on opposite-sex couples violated constitutional principles of respect for individual autonomy and equality under law. The decision both triggered a political backlash of national proportion and prompted officials in San Francisco, Multnomah County (OR), Sandoval County (NM), and New Paltz (NY) to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The volume relies on in-depth interviews to provide an insider account of how courts, politicians, and activists maneuver and deal with a cutting-edge social policy issue, as well as real-life narratives about everyday people whom the debate immediately affects.

Multicultural Jurisdictions

Author: Ayelet Shachar

Can the state respect cultural differences while protecting the rights of vulnerable group members, in particular women? Shachar argues that it is both theoretically needed and institutionally feasible. Rejecting prevalent solutions to this "paradox of multicultural vulnerability", Multicultural Jurisdictions argues for enhancing minorities' autonomy, while providing viable legal-institutional solutions to intra-group rights violation. This new "joint governance" approach reduces the injustice between minority groups and society, while enhancing justice within them. This book will interest students of political and social theory, law, religion, institutional design, and cultural and gender studies.

Feminist International Relations

Author: Christine Sylvester

Christine Sylvester examines the history of feminists' efforts to include gender relations in the study of international relations. Tracing the author's own "journey" through the subject, as well as the work of the other leading feminist scholars, the book examines theories, methods, people and locations which have been neglected by conventional scholarship. It will be of interest to scholars and students of International Relations, Women's and Gender Studies, and Postcolonial Studies.

The Politics of Sexual Harassment

Author: Kathrin S. Zippel

Sexual harassment, in particular in the workplace, is a controversial topic which often makes headline news. What accounts for the cross-national variation in laws, employer policies, and implementation of policies dealing with sexual harassment in the workplace? Why was the United States on the forefront of policy and legal solutions, and how did this affect politicization of sexual harassment in the European Union and its member states? Exploring the way sexual harassment has become a global issue, Kathrin Zippel draws on theories of comparative feminist policy, gender and welfare state regimes, and social movements to explore the distinct paths that the United States, the European Union and its member states, specifically Germany, have embarked on to address the issue. This comparison provides invaluable insights on the role of transnational movements in combatting sexual harassment, and on future efforts to implement the European Union Directive of 2002.