Over the course of the last thirty years, women have made significant strides toward gender equity in politics. The percentage of women serving in state legislatures has risen from 8.1% in 1975 to more than 24% in 2013 (CAWP 2013). Not surprisingly, this increase of women in politics has sparked many questions and much research about the impact of women in public office (Carroll 2001). While this body of scholarship has investigated such important and diverse topics as legislative strategies (Reingold 1996), conversational dynamics (Kathlene 1994; Pearson and Dancey 2011), and legislative effectiveness (Anzia and Berry 2011; Volden, Wiseman, and Wittmer 2013), the substantive effects of having women in office have garnered the most attention.

In 1997, an unprecedented number of female MPs—120—were elected to the UK House of Commons, doubling the numbers of female representatives overnight. Of these, 101 came from a single party: Labour. They entered a political institution that had hitherto been massively male-dominated (even in 1997, their number counted less than 20%) and famed for its historic traditions dominated by masculinized structures and norms (Lovenduski 2005; 2010). Many of the newly elected Labour women were known to each other, having already shared experiences of passing through their party's internal selection processes over the preceding years. Many broadly shared the same views of what the Labour party should stand for, ideologically speaking, and most were attitudinally feminist (Childs 2004). The mass media at the time of the general election, and thereafter, routinely constituted them as a collective entity—Blair's Babes—and the specifically right-wing media regularly subjected them to highly gendered criticism (Childs 2008, 140–165).

Women's representation in elected and appointed positions is often seen as a matter of justice and equity (Burrell 1997). Beyond symbolic representation, many believe that a greater presence of women in institutions that have traditionally been controlled by men can facilitate the attention to issues that disproportionately affect women (Dahlerup 1988; Dodson and Carroll 1991; Kanter 1977). As the election of women has grown in the past decade, researchers have shown a renewed interest in understanding under what conditions women's descriptive representation can produce more effective substantive representation of women's interests. A number of feminist scholars argue that increasing the descriptive representation of women in legislatures is essential to remedy existing inequalities suffered by women (Mansbridge 1999). But electoral practices aimed at increasing women and minorities in office, such as majority-minority districts or gender quotas throughout European and Latin American countries, have produced varied results concerning the substantive representation of women and minority interests. Understanding the electoral and institutional features that strengthen or attenuate women's representation, therefore, merits further study.

Recent research finds that states with more women involved in government are also less prone to corruption (Dollar, Fisman, and Gatti 2001; Swamy et al. 2001). But a review of experimental evidence indicates that “women are not necessarily more intrinsically honest or averse to corruption than men” in the laboratory or in the field (Frank, Lambsdorff, and Boehm 2011, 68). Rather, the attitudes and behaviors of women concerning corruption depend on institutional and cultural contexts in these experimental situations (Alatas, Cameron, and Chaudhuri 2009; Alhassan-Alolo 2007; Armantier and Boly 2008; Schulze and Frank 2003). If women's inclination toward corruption is contextual, then what are the contexts in which we would expect female involvement in government to fight corruption? The answer is important to understand where gender equality initiatives present a cost-effective and politically feasible approach to cleaning up government.

Do strong and active political parties enhance women's representation, or do they contribute to the ongoing inequality in men's and women's candidacy rates? Studies have examined this question by looking at a variety of measures of party strength, focusing particularly on the role parties play in candidate emergence. For qualified individuals in the pool of potential candidates, being encouraged to run for office by a political actor is the most important step in considering a candidacy (Lawless and Fox 2005). Such encouragement is especially important in increasing the typically lower political ambition among women in the candidate pool (Fox and Lawless 2010). Yet the limited research examining the effects of party recruitment on men's and women's candidacies finds negative (Niven 1998; 2006) or no (Sanbonmatsu 2006) effects of recruitment on women's representation. Some studies even find evidence that parties more often run female than male candidates as “sacrificial lambs” in unwinnable races (Carroll 1994; Stambough and O'Regan 2007).

Over the past fifteen years, concerns related to immigration and the integration of immigrants have risen to the forefront of European politics (e.g., Givens and Luedtke 2005; Guild, Groenendijk, and Carrera 2009). As anti-immigrant nationalist parties have gained ground, European governments have closed borders and even deported immigrants en masse. At the same time, countries throughout the European Union (EU) have increasingly stressed the importance of the social, economic, and cultural integration of immigrants. As immigration has become increasingly politicized across Europe, many governments have restructured themselves. Some countries have created new cabinet ministries designed to focus on immigration and immigrant integration. Other countries have assigned new immigration-related tasks to existing political bodies. In the face of new or radically transformed governance structures, one important question emerges: To what extent do women serve in immigration ministry leadership?

The now well-developed literature on gender quotas focuses mainly on two areas: the causal mechanisms that can be advanced to explain the adoption, diffusion, and effectiveness of political gender quotas worldwide (Baldez 2004; Dahlerup 2006; Krook 2006; 2009; Krook, Lovenduski, and Squires 2009; Krook and O'Brien 2010; Lovenduski 2005; Meier 2012); and the benefits, as well as the dangers, that this “fast track” to gender equality can have for women's substantive representation and for politics in general (Celis and Childs 2012; Celis et al. 2008; Childs and Krook 2009; Dahlerup 1988; Franseschet, Krook, and Piscopo 2012; Franseschet and Piscopo 2008; Kittilson 2005; Phillips 1995; Squires 2001). Most studies on gender quotas approach “women” as a group defined by a single axis of oppression and the quotas' consequences for gender equality broadly. The growing literature on intersectionality, however, calls attention to the internal heterogeneity of the category “women” and the fact that gender relations are embedded in race or class relations, forming a “matrix of domination” rather than a single axis of oppression (Collins 1990). But the question of how gender quotas relate to intersectionality has remained, until now, much less investigated.

What does a political commitment to gender equality mean in the context of fatherhood? In what ways should the state support or compel fathers so as to affect greater gender equality? If there is any consensus on these questions in the gender literature, then it is that existing family leave policy—even the most progressive—has fallen short of a satisfactory answer. Typically, this failure is understood either in economic terms—that policy provision is simply inadequate in scale—or in terms of individual preferences that should be encouraged to change. Indeed, both of these approaches intend to incentivize men to take up more caring duties, a theme that has become central to the politics of gender equality (Gornick and Meyers 2008; Haas and Rostgaard 2011; Hobson 2002; Kamerman and Moss 2009).

Since the development of modern survey methods, political scientists have identified gender-based differences in the political behavior of men and women. Early research found women to be less politically engaged than men and to be more likely to vote for right-wing parties (Lipset 1963). Beginning in the 1980s, however, these differences in political participation dissipated, and the gender-based pattern in vote choice was reversed (DeVaus and McAllister 1989; Inglehart and Norris 2000). These gender differences in political behavior, and the many others that could be added here, are commonly referred to as “gender gaps.”

The use of electoral gender quotas—both nationally-mandated and party-based—has generated a large and growing body of research examining these policies. The rapid development of this literature stems from the widespread nature of this phenomenon, with quotas being adopted in more than half of all countries worldwide—nearly all within the last 20 years. The “first generation” of quota research focused primarily on mapping the contours of these measures, theorizing elements of quota design, paths to quota adoption, and reasons for variations in quota effects on the numbers of women elected. While such studies continue to remain important, scholars increasingly recognize that quotas are not simply about increasing the number of women in politics. This has led to the emergence of a “second generation” of quota research, examining their impact on legislative diversity, policy-making behavior, public opinion, and mass mobilization. In contrast, non-gender scholars have generally been slow to respond to these developments, despite the potential for quotas to shape a variety of political dynamics—and thus to illuminate trends in relation to many key debates in comparative politics.

Worldwide, politicians devote increasing attention to the sociodemographic representativeness of political institutions. The underrepresentation of specific groups (and of women in particular) in political institutions is a democratic problem (Phillips 1995). To counter the lack of representativeness of political institutions, measures have been adopted to increase the influx of female politicians in parliaments and governments. Among others, quota regulations have been implemented in several countries in recent years (Dahlerup 2007; Krook 2007).

Half a decade into a new global economic crisis, most policymakers, pundits, and scholars discuss the situation in nongendered ways, carting out long-standing criticisms of bloated states or of neoliberalism, despite powerful feminist critiques. At the same time, feminist scholars, particularly those within feminist political science (FPS) studying advanced democracies, have been struggling with a “central paradox . … The widespread formal adoption and development of … gender equality … initiatives … [but] their partial and variable institutionalization in terms of impact on institutional practices, norms, and outcomes” (Mackay, Monro, and Waylen 2009, 254–55). In this article, we make a case for a feminist theory of political corruption that can help explain both the economic crisis and this paradox of “strong equality policy, weak practice.”

Gender quotas transform comparative politics by reimagining the relationship between citizens and representatives. Gender quotas invite citizens to revisit their expectations of what it means to be represented and what makes a “good” politician. As quotas introduce new norms and emphasize different qualities to be valued in a representative, they provide an opportunity to reappraise the attributes and qualifications of all politicians, including men. Although some quota advocates have been keen to ensure that quota claims focus only on increasing women's presence in politics, the wider debates surrounding quotas have ensured that they go beyond the simple feminization of politics. Arguments in favor of quotas based on gender differences also lead to expectations that quotas will effect wider change and renewal. Quotas thus afford scholars of comparative politics an opportunity to test whether the current actors and rules of the game of politics are necessarily the best and only way of doing things.

When women run for office, they win at the same rate as men. A significant body of research substantiating this claim has been touted by scholars and women's groups alike. “Gender neutral” outcomes, however, mask important sex differences in congressional candidacies. Indeed, extensive research has revealed a gender gap in political ambition: women are more hesitant to run for office and are more concerned about their credentials and viability than similarly situated men.

The “personal vote” refers to “that portion of a candidate's electoral support which originates in his or her personal qualities, qualifications, activities, and record” (Cain, Ferejohn, and Fiorina 1987, 9). The presence of a personal vote in an electoral system means that the person up for election matters, not just the candidate's party. Cain, Ferejohn, and Fiorina go so far as to refer to it as “relationships between the represented and representatives,” claiming that these relationships are more “personal, particularistic, and idiosyncratic than in other kinds of systems” (8, emphasis mine).

What is feminist about feminist evolutionary theory, and how valid is the feminist evolutionary analytic approach for understanding violence against women globally? What has evolutionary analysis got to do with legal enclaves, pluralism, and inequitable family law, and how do they cause violence? And, moreover, is legal change, specifically adopting and diffusing similar liberal family status laws worldwide, the best strategy for ending pervasive and egregious violence against women? Valerie M. Hudson, Donna Lee Bowen, and Perpetua Lynne Nielsen's article, “What Is the Relationship between Inequity in Family Law and Violence against Women? Approaching the Issue of Legal Enclaves” (Politics & Gender. 2011. 7 (4): 453–92) raises theoretical, empirical, and praxeological questions for feminist scholars of politics and international relations that this Critical Perspectives section takes up with essays from six contributors selected from an open call for papers.

The diffusion of gender quotas reflects the legitimation of the normative principle of women's equality in public life. Legislative gender quotas, whether adopted through top-down elite decision making or through bottom-up feminist activism, are frequently justified via appeals to norms of inclusion and fairness. These democratic ideals of women's full representation and participation have indeed gained traction: Over the past two decades, quotas have extended beyond legislatures to public institutions, such as cabinets and executive agencies, and to state advisory councils, subnational governments, labor union directorates, and corporate boards. Such diffusion signals a profound gendering of public space and leadership, a transformation initiated by states assuming active roles as the guarantors—rather than mere promoters—of equality.

By definition, gender mainstreaming is the process by which a gendered perspective (male and female) is integrated into the fabric of our communities, institutions, and lives (United Nations 1997). We live in a society defined by our values of equality, social justice, and opportunity. In order for these values to permeate into our everyday lives, we must address issues of “separateness” that still seem to prevail in our institutions, particularly in our political science curricula. Di Stefano (1997, 204) presented gender as “a socially constructed and politically enforced notion of what it means to be male or female” and argues that this gendered lens is “political because it has the power to impose meaning and value to our activities and social relationships.” Mainstreaming is a transition from a male-defined curriculum to a more gender-balanced curriculum that better reflects the improved status of women in society.