We launch Politics & Gender with the conviction that the study of women and politics, and the gendered analysis of politics, benefit and strengthen political science. We hold the reverse conviction as well: the tools of political analysis advance and strengthen our understandings of women and of gender. Politics & Gender is the official journal of the Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association. This new journal is thus situated firmly within the discipline of political science. While we maintain extensive interdisciplinary commitments, our primary purpose is to publish research on women and politics and on politics and its gendered analysis. Gender cuts through every aspect of politics. In Politics & Gender, we seek to represent the full array of questions, issues, and approaches within the discipline. We envision each issue as a showcase of work across all the major subfields of political science, including (but not limited to) political theory, comparative politics, international relations, and U.S. politics. We invite studies that address fundamental questions in politics and political science concerning women and concerning gender, including those that interrogate and challenge standard analytical categories and conventional methodologies.

Feminist criticisms of the Bush Administration distinguish its feminized security rhetoric, which claims to support women's rights in Iraq and Afghanistan, from its actions at home and abroad, which undermine hard-won gains for women. This distinction between words and deeds obscures, on the one hand, the tremendous progress that feminists have made in framing women's rights as an issue that ought to be taken seriously and, on the other hand, the way that this rhetoric is itself a significant form of political action: It aims to influence how Americans will conceptualize the struggle for women's rights. I correct for these problems by developing a political theory of what I call the “framing effect” of rhetoric—its power to shape our worldview. Frames, I suggest, are related to one another dialogically: They build on one another by transposing old rhetorical frames into new contexts. The Bush Administration draws on existing feminist rhetoric, but transforms it by combining it with two other kinds of discourse: a rhetoric of chivalrous respect and a rhetoric of democratic peace. I show that in both rhetorical frames, the Bush Administration bases its concern with women's rights abroad upon the presumption that the women's movement in the United States successfully achieved its goals long ago. My analysis of how current security rhetoric frames women's rights can help us to understand both how the Bush Administration is able to use feminist ideas in new and nonfeminist ways and how we in turn might redeploy the Bush rhetoric so as to challenge the presumption that women at home already enjoy their full rights.The author would like to thank Karen Zivi, Jill Frank, Alison Jaggar, Iris Young, the editors and anonymous reviewers from Politics & Gender, as well as fellow panelists and audience members at the Midwest Political Science Association, the Association for Political Theory, and the Center for Values and Social Policy at the University of Colorado at Boulder for their comments. She would also like to thank Steve Chan for his encouragement. This project was funded, in part, by the University of Colorado at Boulder Graduate School CRCW Small Grant.

Although it is well known that “when women run, they win as often as men,” the literature on women and campaigns suggests that we should see significant differences in races involving male and female incumbents. Do female incumbents face the same competitive environment as their male counterparts in elections for the U.S. House of Representatives? Using the existing literature on the role of stereotypes and gender traits in campaigns, we formulate two hypotheses to explain the relationship between gender and incumbency. The Competition Hypothesis asserts that compared to male incumbents, women running for reelection will face more competition in retaining their seats. The Gender Effect Hypothesis predicts that female incumbents will induce other women to enter the race. On the basis of an analysis of House elections from 1956 to 2002, we find considerable support for both hypotheses. In House elections, female incumbents have a “hidden influence”: Not only do they face more competition but they also increase the participation of female candidates in their own party as well as the opposition party. Although female incumbents win at the same rates as male incumbents, they face a much more competitive environment.

The institution of the family has changed, but U.S. public institutions and policies generally have not kept pace. In response, a number of feminist theorists have argued that we should recognize and support more diverse family forms. They argue that equality, respect for personal autonomy, recognition of diversity, and facilitating relationships of care demand such a move. Building on their work, I explicitly situate the necessity of redefining “family” within a public ethic of care and offer a comprehensive working definition of family that focuses on recognizing relationships that combine intimacy and care. In so doing, I address how to handle biological ties without excluding or marginalizing other bases upon which people form families.The author would like to thank the following individuals for sharing their expertise and comments on earlier versions of this manuscript: Eileen Botting, Fred Dallmayr, Daniel Engster, Neve Gordon, Jyl Josephson, Michael Kirsch, Victor Levy, Hugh Wilson, Christina Wolbrecht, Catherine Zuckert, the editors of Politics & Gender, and the anonymous reviewers. An earlier draft of this piece was presented in Chicago at the 2002 National Conference of the Midwest Political Science Association.

Research on women and representation has argued that women who serve in “skewed” legislatures—that is, legislatures in which women make up less than 15% of the membership—avoid addressing women's interests and are marginalized by other legislators. I argue that women in such legislatures may actually be encouraged to develop legislative agendas that are distinct from those of their male colleagues, and that they may be as successful as their male counterparts. Analyzing data from three state legislatures in four years, I find that even in extremely skewed state legislatures, women are generally more active than men in sponsoring legislation that focuses on women's interests; indeed, in two of the three states, gender differences narrow as the legislature becomes more gender balanced. Second, I find that women are generally as successful as men in passing the legislation that they sponsor, and that in very homogeneous settings, they are sometimes more successful than men. Moreover, little evidence exists that they are less likely to be appointed to leadership positions. Finally, I find that increasing gender diversity within a legislature is accompanied by a greater overall focus on women's issues. I conclude that a “critical mass” is not necessary for substantive representation on the part of individual female state legislators, but that increased diversity may indeed bring about changes in policy outputs that reflect the interests of women.

Is there a common language of gender in political science research? One might expect the answer to be no, given the wide range of ways in which scholars employ the concept of gender in empirical and theoretical research. I maintain, however, that a common language of gender does exist and that we must articulate it in explicit terms in order to advance the way we build knowledge in this field. In this contribution to “Critical Perspectives on Gender and Politics,” I suggest two ways in which to employ “gender” as part of a common language that the subfield can employ for the purposes of empirical political research: gender as a category and as a process.

How do we find gender in data from individuals?

I should start by saying what I mean by gender. I take gender to be, in part, the “values, norms and demands the female human being—precisely because she is female—comes up against in her encounter with the Other” (Moi 1999, 79). And, in part, it is what women and men make of the systematic way social interactions, structures, and institutions are organized around gender.

Since its emergence in the 1970s, feminist scholarship has claimed to be corrective and transformative. Through original research about the experiences of the majority of the world's population, that is, women, feminist scholars have sought to correct omissions and distortions that permeate political science. Through the use of gender as an analytical tool, they have illuminated social and political relations neglected by mainstream accounts, advanced alternative explanations of political phenomena, demonstrated the defects of competing hypotheses, and debunked opposing views. Despite such impressive accomplishments, feminist political science has not become a dominant paradigm within the discipline. Few doctoral programs allow students to develop areas of concentration in feminist approaches to political studies. Few routinely include feminist scholarship in proseminars in American politics, comparative politics, international relations, political theory, public law, or public policy. None requires familiarity with leading feminist scholarship as a criterion of professional competence.

At the 2005 meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Claudine Gay and Wendy Smooth organized a roundtable to reflect on the politics of studying gender. In my intervention there, I argued that pervasive ignorance of what gender is results in misrecognition of the work we do. Most people do not know what it means to study gender. When we say gender they think we mean women, sexuality, feminist theory, an epistemological position, or a political movement. Such misrecognition marginalizes our research, creating problems for publishing and promotion. How can we combat it? By arming ourselves intellectually.

In the wake of 9/11 and the subsequent struggles in Afghanistan and Iraq, gender has become even more obviously important for understanding contemporary world politics, including armed conflict and war. Gender is an explicit structuring principle of contemporary conflicts between Western powers and an Islamist fundamentalism energized by opposition to the freedoms enjoyed by Western women and committed to the imposition of a version of sharia that explicitly denies to women rights equal to men's.

Julie Shayne's book focuses on the complex relationship between revolution and feminism. It examines women's contributions to revolutions and how revolutions relate to the emergence and consolidation of a feminist agenda. The book constitutes an important contribution to our understanding of the role women play in revolutionary movements and how their experiences subsequently can transform society. Shayne presents an original, incisive analysis of three types of revolutionary experiences that she categorizes as negotiated (El Salvador), partial (Chile), and successful (Cuba).

The well-known analytical distinction drawn by Nancy Fraser between social movement struggles for recognition and those for redistribution is put to the test in this collection of essays drawn from a wide array of historical and case studies. In one sense, these are empirical studies that set out to confirm or to refute the analytical utility of distinguishing between economic and cultural injustice. If that premise alone bound the collection, it would be of limited interest. In another more expansive sense, these essays treat social movements as struggles for power and voice in political contexts, struggles that take shape in an always changing political landscape. Their strategies are determined more within the exigencies of politics than by fixed identities or visions of justice. The essays take a kind of political turn away from analytical and normative concerns that drive a great deal of the literature on social movements. It is perhaps overstating it a bit, but only a bit, to say that these essays disclose the fact that both recognition and redistribution are consequences of successful social movements, rather than their starting points. To be successful, social movements must act like any other collectivity by gaining power before they can secure justice.

The National Organization for Women (NOW) is in many ways the archetypal social movement organization (SMO), and it is unquestionably the premier SMO of the second wave of the women's movement. The story of NOW's founding has been told and retold many times, in part because it seems to embody many of the factors that scholars tell us are crucial for social movement (and thus, SMO) emergence: political opportunity (among other things, the creation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), communication networks (such as the U.S. and state-level Commissions on the Status of Women), patrons (e.g., organized labor), resources (via growing numbers of professional and working women), and so on.

Much of the scholarship on the modern Civil Rights Movement has recaptured dramatic and poignant events through eyewitness accounts and oral narratives—from letters, speeches, newspaper editorials, press releases, and photographs that summon vivid images of fire hoses and police dogs, peaceful protestors and violent rioters. The conventional approach (or master narrative) of civil rights history has focused almost exclusively upon the individual personalities and grassroots organizations that led the fight for equal protection under the law, desegregated lunch counters, and the right to vote in local and national elections. Rather than broaden and deepen our understanding of individual and collective forms of resistance, however, such an approach often simplifies and distorts a much more complex history of black militancy and activism in the United States. Most people come to associate the modern Civil Rights Movement with the famous names, places, and events that made headlines during the turbulent 1950s and 1960s—the murder of Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi; Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott; Daisy Bates and the Little Rock Nine; Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the March on Washington; Bob Moses and Freedom Summer; Gloria Richardson and the Cambridge Movement; and Fannie Lou Hamer at the 1964 National Democratic Convention—and not the ordinary men and women who risked their lives in the face of mob violence.

This is perhaps the first comprehensive book on the subject of gender in Africa from a microeconomic perspective. Targeted toward upper-level undergraduates and graduate students, it provides an overview of many of the key debates among economists regarding gender and development. Although the book covers Africa as a whole, it also draws on insights based on extensive fieldwork Michael Kevane conducted in Burkina Faso and Sudan.

In this intriguing, multilayered, and eloquent work situated in the Indian landscape, Nivedita Menon argues that “rights,” when bound up with law, are not in the service of emancipatory politics but rather of hegemonic projects, such as patriarchy and capitalist modernity, that legitimize only particular ways of being and doing. Rights are socially constructed and contextualized within particular moral universes, yet they lose their transformative potential when encapsulated in and institutionalized by the law, which is an exacting, universalizing discourse that fixes meanings and identities. Although feminists are increasingly invested in legal redress, any appeals to democracy, equality, and justice through the law, may have reached their discursive limits, requiring a renewed feminist emphasis on political struggle.

List of contributors.