Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-cfpbc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T13:13:52.837Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

“Which Men?” How an Intersectional Perspective on Men and Masculinities Helps Explain Women's Political Underrepresentation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2018

Sarah Childs
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
Melanie Hughes
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh

Extract

Progress toward gender equality in politics is striking. With the help of electoral gender quotas in more than 130 countries, women's national legislative representation more than doubled in the last 20 years. Other historically marginalized groups—racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, immigrants, and indigenous peoples—are also increasingly making their way into our parliaments. Political institutions are, then, more inclusive today than they have ever been. Yet equal representation has not been fully realized: some marginalized groups have seen a decline, and men from dominant social and economic groups—hereafter “elite men”—remain numerically dominant. Globally, there are no known cases in which elite men do not hold a disproportionately high share of positions in national elective office (Hughes 2015).

Type
Critical Perspectives on Gender and Politics
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Celis, Karen, Erzeel, Silvia, Mügge, Liza, and Damstra, Alyt. 2014. “Quotas and Intersectionality: Ethnicity and Gender in Candidate Selection.” International Political Science Review 35 (1): 4154.Google Scholar
Childs, Sarah. 2004. New Labour's Women MPs: Women Representing Women. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Childs, Sarah, and Webb, Paul. 2012. Sex, Gender and the Conservative Party: From Iron Lady to Kitten Heels. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Connell, Raewyn, and Messerschmidt, James W.. 2005. “Hegemonic Masculinity Rethinking the Concept.” Gender & Society 19 (6): 829–59.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1989. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscriminiation Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989 (1): 139–67.Google Scholar
Heath, Oliver. 2015. “Policy Representation, Social Representation and Class Voting in Britain.” British Journal of Political Science 45 (1): 173193.Google Scholar
The Hindu. 2015. “Women's Reservation Bill: The Story So Far.” March 7. http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/womens-reservation-bill-the-story-so-far/article6969294.ece (accessed April 5, 2018).Google Scholar
Htun, Mala. 2004. “Is Gender Like Ethnicity? The Political Representation of Identity Groups.” Perspectives on Politics 2 (3): 439–58.Google Scholar
Hughes, Melanie M. 2011. “Intersectionality, Quotas, and Minority Women's Political Representation Worldwide.” American Political Science Review 105 (3): 604‒20.Google Scholar
Hughes, Melanie M. 2015. “Single-Axis Politics: Explaining the Persistent Political Overrepresentation of Men from Majority Racial and Ethnic Groups.” Presented at the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, Warsaw, Poland, March 29–April 2.Google Scholar
Jaffrelot, Christophe, and Verniers, Gilles. 2014. “The Representation Gap.” Indian Express, July 24. http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/the-representation-gap-2/ (accessed March 22, 2018).Google Scholar
Jensenius, Francesca R. 2016. “Competing Inequalities? On the Intersection of Gender and Ethnicity in Candidate Nominations in Indian Elections.” Government and Opposition 51 (3): 440–46.Google Scholar
McCall, Leslie. 2005. “The Complexity of Intersectionality.” Signs 30 (3): 17711800.Google Scholar
Randall, Vicky. 2006. “Legislative Gender Quotas and Indian Exceptionalism: The Travails of the Women's Reservation Bill.” Comparative Politics 39 (1): 6382.Google Scholar
Smooth, Wendy. 2011. “Standing for Women? Which Women? The Substantive Representation of Women's Interests and the Research Imperative of Intersectionality.” Politics & Gender 7 (3): 436–41.Google Scholar