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A Feminist Approach to Quotas and Comparative Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 August 2013

Denise Walsh
Denise Walsh*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
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Extract

Mainstream comparative politics (CP) rarely attends to gender scholarship. Conventional wisdom urges gender scholars to speak to the broader concerns of CP to avoid this marginalization. But feminist concerns are broader than those of CP. Feminism promotes changes in power relations to advance “justice for women and everyone” and offers tools for assessing injustice (Weldon 2011, 443). In contrast, CP promotes stability and order that benefits elites; it values predictive models over usefulness (Clarke and Primo 2012). How can feminist quota scholars address their broader concerns and speak to CP? I argue that we need to lead with feminism. Doing so not only ensures that our work will address broader concerns, but also ensures that we will have insights to offer CP that demonstrate the value of feminist analysis. Leading with feminism, I evaluate whether legislative quotas for women change the political dynamics sustaining gender injustice. I find that they rarely do so. I then draw on feminist quota scholarship to highlight the limits of CP toward democracy and institutional change to demonstrate the value of feminist analysis. I conclude with suggestions on how to advance a feminist agenda in the discipline.

Type
Critical Perspectives on Gender and Politics
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , September 2013 , pp. 322 - 328
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2013 

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