Women Transforming Politics

Contains over thirty essays which explore the complex contexts of political engagement--family and intimate relationships, friendships, neighborhood, community, work environment, race, religious, and other cultural groupings--that structure perceptions of women's opportunities for political participation.

"In November 2007, OneWorld Action brought together 40 women and men from north and south for a unique dialogue - Just Politics: Women transforming political spaces. This report summarises the week's events which explored what difference women in power can make, and how women's involvement in politics can be supported and strengthened. The report focuses on two main themes: 1. Ways to increase women's political participation; 2. Strategies for transforming political spaces."--Executive summary.

* Highlights the interrelations between place, gender, politics, and justice. * Draws upon women's place-based experiences across the globe. In Women and the Politics of Place, Wendy Harcourt and Arturo Escobar analyze women's economic and social justice movements by challenging traditional views. The authors reveal how an interrelated set of transformations around body, environment, and the economy factors into place-based practices of women and how these provide alternative ways of advancement in these mobilizations. The book develops a conceptual framework based on the most current debates in anthropology, geography, ecology, feminist, and development studies. This guides academics, activists, and policymakers toward an understanding of how women are politically negotiating globalization. Also featured are the experiences of women working to defend their homelands on isses such as reproductive rights, land and community, rural and urban environments, and global capital. Written for wide use by academics, students, and practitioners, Women and the Politics of Place bridges the division between academic and activist knowledge with an original analysis of global feminist issues.

Women burst onto the political scene in Africa after the 1990s, claiming more than one third of the parliamentary seats in countries like Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Burundi. Women in Rwanda hold the highest percentage of legislative seats in the world. Women's movements lobbied for constitutional reforms and new legislation to expand women's rights. This book examines the convergence of factors behind these dramatic developments, including the emergence of autonomous women's movements, changes in international and regional norms regarding women's rights and representation, the availability of new resources to advance women's status, and the end of civil conflict. The book focuses on the cases of Cameroon, Uganda, and Mozambique, situating these countries in the broader African context. The authors provide a fascinating analysis of the way in which women are transforming the political landscape in Africa, by bringing to bear their unique perspectives as scholars who have also been parliamentarians, transnational activists, and leaders in these movements.

From the first to one of the most recent--Jeannette Rankin (Montana, 1916) to Hillary Rodham Clinton (New York, 2001)--only two hundred women have ever served in the U.S. Congress. Have these relatively few women changed the predominantly masculine institution in which they serve? Have women as voters, activists, staff, and members made a difference? Edited by Cindy Simon Rosenthal, Women Transforming Congress examines the increasing influence of women on Congress and the ways in which gender defines and shapes Congress as a political institution. Written by women in politics and leading scholars on Congress, the essays in this volume go beyond the limitations of prior research through their diverse analytical approaches and singular historical breadth. The volume follows women on the campaign trail, in committee rooms, in floor debate, and in policy deliberations where previously the focus was on men’s interests and activities. A gallery of photographs showing notable women from their earliest years of involvement with Congress to the present complements the essays.

Second-wave feminism is now in its third decade. The movement that began in the 1960s in the United States has gone through many permutations, continuously emerging in new forms in different parts of the world. Awareness of gender has entered popular culture, redrawn political divisions and impinged on national economies and international institutions.

Since the 1960's, academic and activist women have been challenging the conventional wisdom about political life and the study of politics. Organizing her book by standard political concepts-the mobilization and participation of the mass public; the recruitment, policy preferences, and political style of public officials; agenda-setting; and coalition-building-Janet Flammang subjects these concepts to a withering feminist critique based on the insights of feminist theory and the empirical evidence of hundreds of studies of women's distinctive politics.This book accomplishes four major tasks:It provides a comprehensive critical history of the changing research on politics and the changing nature of the political science discipline.It analyzes the course of women's political activism in the United States.It develops a rich case study of women's politics in Northern California's Silicon Valley, an area once nicknamed "the feminist capital of the nation."It examines coalitions and divisions within the women's movement with sensitivity to minority politics, as in the chapter subtitled, "The Hard Work of Sisterhood.">p>Women's Political Voice records the transformative politics of the women's movement and, simultaneously, urges political scientists to ask new questions and to adopt new methods. Author note: Janet A. Flammang is Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, and Associate Professor of Political Science at Santa Clara University. She is the author or editor of two previous texts on U.S. politics.