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“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 

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