Politics,+Gender,+and+Concepts

Summary by Namalie Jayasinghe


 * Pamela Paxton: Chapter 3: Gendering Democracy **

**__ Measuring Democracy __** · Operationalizing democracy is difficult as women’s suffrage are often deliberately excluded or simply overlooked. Some authors justify such exclusion by saying that women are “far less important” in the history of democratization – male suffrage and class is more important, · There are three ways you can go about measuring democracy – (1) specifying the date when a country completed its transition to democracy, (2) measuring the stability of democracy over some time period, and (3) measuring the level of democracy in any single year. All three operationalizations can exclude women so then what does this mean? o Omitting women can shift transition dates to democracy far back. For example, the date to when women gained suffrage was 1920, compared with the original transition date of 1870 o Polity – Switzerland receives a perfect 10 on the democracy scale but women did not achieve suffrage in Switzerland until 1971 o Masks substantial changes in the size of the electorate · How do you go about measuring democracy that is gendered? Move away from dichotomous measures towards graded measures · When should women be included in the definition of democracy? When the first country granted women suffrage (1893)? Or when women in the US achieved suffrage (1920)? **__ Causal Relationships __** : Decision to exclude women from measurements of democracy can affect the (1) descriptions of the emergence of democracy, (2) estimates of the age or regional prevalence of democracy and (3) understanding the causes of democratization · ** Emergence of democracy ** : What happens when you add women? Countries are delayed in becoming democracies · ** Age and regional prevalence of democracy ** : democracy is actually young if we include women suffrage. Plus the inclusion of women weakens the dominant place of the West in early democratization, since some less developed nations became female-inclusive democracies before some industrialized nations · ** Causes of democracy ** : explaining female suffrage will force us to consider whether theories of democratization are universal or whether we need to formulate new theories **__ Conclusion __** : If you look at how democracy is measured, women are not included, which is not cool. It is not enough to have women included in a stated definition – have to include women in all parts of conceptualization – especially operationalization. With gendered measurement, we may have to reassess and expand explanations of democratization. Need to add the suffrage of women into measures of democracy. ** Karen Celis – Chapter 4: Gendering Representation ** Gendering representation is a feminist research praxis that describes, analyzes and explains the gendered dimensions of political representation. Its central question regards the inclusion and exclusion of women and gender in various dimensions of representation **__ Gendering Representation __** : consists of describing, analyzing and explaining the gendered nature of the “who” and the “what” of political representation. Representatives, representation and representativeness are and have always been gendered; gendering representation concerns the investigation of the gendered character of these concepts. **__ Political Representation __** : representation is the making present of something o someone who is not literally present through an intermediary (principal-agent). Subjects most have control over the representative and not solely the other way around. · To counter lack of representativeness of the political institutions, parity laws and quotas have been applied in progressively more countries to break through barriers **__ Gendering Substantive Representation __** : refers to representation of women’s interests and gendering the general interest. · First thought of it as a “private distribution of labor”, like giving birth, then moved more towards female values, behavior and psyche. Now getting away this essentialist image of the woman – women’s interests are undefined and context-related so cannot be represented as a group with shared interests and opinions. · Critical mass theory – women will make a difference if they have the numerical strength · Politics of presence theory – the possibility that women are represented increases when women are present – shared gendered life experience (I know what women are going through because I am also a woman), which will enable a “politics of transformation”. There are problems with this – not all women think and want the same things… **__ Empirical Questions __** · But do women represent women? Some studies find that there is a connection between a representative that is a women and voting for women, other studies discard the existence of such as a connection and that party affiliation seems to be the most influential factor. · Does a critical mass of women MPs influence women’s substantive representation? Meaning do women make a difference once they constitute a critical mass? There’s not a lot of proof on this score. · Women’s movements and women’s policy agencies might be more effective in gendering substantive representation than female legislators are; institutional change and mobilization more important than increasing the number of descriptive representatives in parliament. · Western geographical roots of research tradition – substantive representation operationalized to reflect the needs, interest and concerns of western women ** Diane Sainsbury – Chapter 5: “Gendering the welfare state” ** Concept of the welfare state – captured the increasing involvement of the state in social provision Feminist scholars identified a major gap in welfare state research. Most feminist studies were limited to a single nation upon which the analysts drew universal conclusions and there was a general neglect of the important of national contexts as a variable. As a result, country specificities were conceived as intrinsic features of the welfare state rather than welfare state variations. ** Three major strategies to gender comparative welfare state research: ** 1. Utilization of existing constructs to analyze gender and the welfare state 2. Refashioning constructs to enable a meaningful analysis of gender 3. Development of new analytical frameworks and concept dimensions ** Should we highlight gender separately or build gender into existing frameworks? **  · Highlighting gender separately: Emphasizes the gender division of labor and its key components – care and paid work · Building gender in: Ann Orloff’s work to build gender into existing mainstream constructs, such as the power resources school. Women’s disadvantaged position in terms of commodification necessitated two new dimensions: first dimension was access to paid work, second dimension is the capacity to form and maintain an autonomous households ** Concept dimensions and operationalizations ** · Gender stratification dimensions – gender differentiation and gender inequality o Gender differentiation is seen in separate programs for labor market and family needs and in claiming benefits on the basis of the tradition division of labor between the sexes o Gender inequality refers to differences in benefit levels stemming from the gender division of labor · Important to clarify the steps in operationalizing the dimensions so that research findings contribute to the accumulation of generalizable knowledge. ** Impact on the concept ** The gendering of comparative welfare state research has altered the concept of the welfare state in several ways · Brought in a series of dimensions that have broadened the concept with respect to the nature of social provision, social rights and the bases of entitlements · Clarified the underlying commonalities and scope of variation in welfare state outcomes. Commonalities include gender segregation and inequalities in the labor market, disparities in benefit income and imbalances in responsibilities for unpaid work · Brought in new determinants of welfare state development into focus – gender cultures and family values as a determinant of gender policy outcomes; women’s organizing and the role of women as political actors in the construction of social provision; and religion as a political force is a decisive variable
 * __ Argument: __** Even though the concept of democracy is gendered in principle, women are not actually included in practice as measures of democracy often fail to include women as political participants.

**The market:** The gender aspect fits into literature that criticizes the assumption that economics and markets are not based on rational actors in a controlled environment. Because of gender inequalities market actors have unequal bargaining power. State decisions about the market, such as liberalization will have unequal impacts on women. **The public and the private spheres:** The distinction between public and private in economics and policy-making is problematic because it does not entirely capture how women participate in society. In many cultures, women’s labor is in the home, which is “private.” When studies distinguish between public-private, “private” usually encompasses economic activity, but excludes this household household level work. Also, in the public sphere study unintentionally recognizes politics mostly as it relates to men, because men’s work is traditionally outside of the home. “Private” issues involving women like domestic violence traditionally do not enter public, politicized life. **The state:** There are a couple ways in which feminist scholars engage with the state in their studies. First, there was a polarizing debate between those who view the state objectively as a neutral body that facilitates bargaining between groups and those who saw the state as its own entity that oppresses women. The debate dissipated when scholars began considering multiplicity in how the state relates to women’s issues. Scholars also look at how specific state institutions relate to women, such as the electorate, bureaucracy and legal frameworks. **Policy networks:** Given that governance literature recognizes the diminished role of the state, networks of people interested in different policies become more important. Gendered analyses must consider how power dynamics of gender (as well as race and class) play out within networks and what that power balance implies for policy outcomes. Within this perspective scholars analyze the importance of how women’s movements interact with actors in other dimensions and levels. **Overview:** Given the close link between the theory and practice of development, the terminology and concepts you use to define development will have serious impacts on the way that development schemes are implemented. Development studies had an original gender bias that excluded women from economic and political calculation. Furthermore, development is a complex term that means different things in different contexts, making operationalization laborious and inconclusive. Staudt examines the process of conceptualizing development //at the state-level// and argues that the concept is not useful to understanding why there are differences in international //wellbeing// and/or //quality of life//, particularly between men and women. **Geography of development:** States vary so widely in their size, populations, vulnerability to changes in global economy, accountability, and cultural multiplicity. Development goes beyond political science into anthropology, area studies, sociology, economics and history. The implications of this disciplinary complexity are particularly important given the highly political context within which development activities operate. Clarity in terminology will help communicate research and realities between academics and practitioners. **Context and terminology, historical perspective:** //She is making the point that the terminology/meaning you use determines how development plays out.// The concept of development was born out of the mid 20th century context of decolonization, capital-socialist divide, pervasive racism and male domination, traditional-modern divide. The First, Second and Third World terminology came from the economic paradigms of capitalism, socialism and mixed/non-aligned, respectively. Developing economies are largely agricultural where women do the bulk of the labor. However this female labor was not acknowledged in policy such as loans. Research in this area by Boserup and Tinker initiated the term //women in development//, and catalyzed economic analysis of the informal sector. **New dimensions arising from a gendered concept of development:** //When gendered concepts were included into development studies, the nature of development began to change.// Other terminology was //Growth and Equity// which made development analysts look at differentiated impacts and access for men and women, //Basic Human Needs// which focused attention on the poorest and most materialistically needy, and the //Poverty Reduction// approach combined income data from the equity literature and the needs data to produce a new focus on strategies to reduce poverty. Reducing poverty requires necessary conditions of economic growth and/or income redistribution, and a consequence is that power relations will change. The raised awareness about gender and development in the 80s coincided with economic regime change to a neoliberal capitalist paradigm and globalization that made gaps between rich and poor greater and aggravated gender-based poverty. In the mid-80s the term, gender was embraced by academics, international organizations and development consultants, because it was less political than ‘women’, and invites comparison between genders long class, race/ethnicity and region. Thus the term //gender and development.// **How to operationalize gender-based development research:** There are many ways but quantitative analysis is most popular with practitioners, but some indicators are difficult to measure like domestic violence, and large-N data in poor countries may be unreliable. Household level data should be disaggregated to show wealth differences between male and female occupants. There are also the UNDP’s Human Development Index, Gender Development Index, and Gender Empowerment Measure for which data are inconsistent. **Travel-ability of gendered development:** Some measures and concepts may not apply to all cultures. **Causal relationships:** Usually women, categories of women and/or gender power relationship are the dependent variable, but could also be the independent variable.
 * Georgina Waylen, “Chapter 6: Gendering Governance,” in Gary Goertz and Amy G. Mazur, eds., //Politics, Gender, and Concepts// (Cambridge UP, 2008)**
 * Summary by Caroline Chumo for CRS November 8, 2010**
 * Overview:** Unlike other gendered topics in the volume, governance is a new sub-field with a limited theoretical and methodological frame. Waylen’s essay examines the core dimensions of governance, reviewing how the literature incorporates a gender analysis. Governance is a “sticky,” “catch-all” phrase describing literature in comparative politics looking at formal rules and behind the scenes rules in shaping political life, power relations in political life in state and social groups, and the development context. However, gender as a factor is not holistically considered, but can be integrated into theorizing and empirical work within the not-yet-mature governance literature about markets, the state, public-private spheres, policy networks. She shows how to operationalize gender analysis using some examples from literature about global governance from IR/IPE.
 * Governance context and history:** Two research approaches: governance as practice and governance as theory. In general governance is a new field since the 1990s and so it is a good time for gendered perspectives to contribute to theory building. Governance is studied at a variety of levels, the state, non-state actors, social groups, nationally and transnationally. Its study does this with a variety of approaches that emphasize different aspects, namely structures (hierarchy, markets, networks, state/society relative roles) and process (participation, accountability, control), horizontal (interstate) and vertical (non-state actors, global economy, multi-level government) links, and society and the state (117-120).
 * How to “gender” governance studies:** The concept of governance does not need significant reworking. Its inherent emphasis on power relationships, multiple levels, and forums of interaction between interest groups, and global economic relations with the state and domestic sectors already lends itself to including gender in the analysis (120-122).
 * The 4 dimensions of governance:**
 * Operationalizing gendered global governance in IR/IPE:** Global governance is about how international organizations interact with social movements and states to impact the world economy and politics. The scholarship in this area has various dominating strands: views of global governance as an opportunity for elites (states) to monopolize economic flow, a mechanistic view of global governance as a regulator for economy, and a view about democratization of both international and domestic institutions, a view of state-market relations in light of globalization. Gendered analysis of global governance has measured women’s activism and movements, processes of gender mainstreaming in international human rights and economic institutions, and actual implementation of mainstreaming objectives.
 * Deborah Staudt, “Chapter 7: Gendering Development,” in Gary Goertz and Amy G. Mazur, eds., //Politics, Gender, and Concepts// (Cambridge UP, 2008)**
 * Summary by Caroline Chumo for CRS November 8, 2010**

Ela Rossmiller __Chapter 10: Women’s Movements, feminism, and feminist movements,__ Dorothy E. McBride and Amy G. Mazur Main Point: This chapter clarifies the terms “women’s movement” and “feminist movement” and discusses their operationalization. 1. The conceptualizations of women’s movements, feminism and feminist movements are theoretically significant particularly as they relate to democracy and democratization (representation and participation of women), the state and states (its nature and its quality as a target of women’s action and generator of policies affecting women), social movements (of which women’s movements are assumed to be a subset), women and politics (women as citizens, elected representatives, and public officials), gender and power, and transnational activism and global issues. 2. Women’s movements a. Conceptualization: “A women’s movement means collective action by women organized explicitly as women presenting claims in public life based on gendered identities as women.” (p. 226) b. Every aspect of the definition is necessary. Especially note its emphasis on specific actors engaged in a specific discourse. c. Operationalization: “To be identified as women’s movement discourse, all three of these elements must be present: identity with women as a group; explicitly gendered language about women; and representation of women as women in public life.” (p. 230) d. Women’s movements are not a subset of social movements. “Social movements” are understood to necessarily include contentious or disruptive tactics (Tarrow, 1994), whereas women’s movements may or may not include such tactics. (232-234) e. The concept of “women’s movements” does not include top-down mobilizations of women by political leaders as seen during revolutions in the USSR, Iran, Cuba, and Bolivia. (239) 3. Feminist movements a. Conceptualization: “The feminist movement is composed of women’s movement actors presenting a particular women’s movement discourse, feminism, in social and public arenas.” (p. 235) b. Note that they are not the same as women’s movements, but are a subset of women’s movements. There are women’s movements that are not feminist, and some actors in women’s movements (especially in the global South) even resent Western feminism for its ethnocentrism. (235) c. Operationalization Part 1: Feminist discourse must include all of these characteristics: “identity with women, being explicitly gendered, representing women, improving the position of women, challenging the subordination of women to men, and challenging gender hierarchies.” (238) d. Examples: “Proposals to help women change their position in society; demands for choice, autonomy, gender equality, and gender equity; or claims that would undermine the structures that maintain male priviledge.” (238) 4. Do these concepts travel? a. Specific indicators are likely to vary according to the context (229, 239) b. Advice: “Look for the women’s movement, not the feminists.” (240)
 * Gary Goertz and Amy G. Mazur, eds., //Politics, Gender, and Concepts.// Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.**