We draw on a comprehensive dataset of metadata about journal articles substantively related to gender and politics published in 37 political science journals through the end of 2023, including Politics & Gender, to characterize and compare trends over time and the most prominent topics addressed by these journals. We show that the volume of work published by Politics & Gender has increased over time, has become increasingly quantitative in nature, and tends to focus on questions related to women running for political office and the nature of women’s political representation. These patterns closely reflect broader tendencies in the gender and politics research published by general-interest political science journals. Other journals dedicated to research on gender and politics tend to publish more qualitative research on topics including care work, the diffusion of equality norms, and conflict.

The popularization of intersectionality within political science, feminist scholarship, and activism has constituted nothing less than a paradigm shift (Hancock 2007a). Politics & Gender has been a critical actor in enabling change within our discipline. However, this development has been hard won and there remains much to be done to operationalize intersectionality in line with Black feminist theory, and to center women of color and other intersectionally marginalized groups within scholarship. This article both traces the evolution of intersectional approaches within Politics & Gender over two decades and articulates pathways for future gender and politics research which aims to employ intersectionality. We employ quantitative and qualitative analysis of articles’ foci on different inequality structures and categories, their methodological approaches, and how they employ the concept of intersectionality. Subsequently, we argue in favor of approaches which center rather than include diverse intersectionally marginalized groups, emphasize the normative commitments of Black feminist theory to transformative justice rather than liberal inclusion, analyze intersectional structures and institutions as well as individual experience and identity, treat the constitution of categories and groups as contextual and contingent, dare to address the dangers of “women” as a theoretical starting point, and challenge fundamental raced-gendered assumptions of liberal democracy.

This essay highlights the impact of Politics & Gender on the discipline’s understanding of how gender shapes the preferences, behavior, and motivations of voters. It provides descriptive information about the prevalence of research on gender and voting in the journal, along with the proportion of articles dedicated to women voters across different regions globally. The bulk of the essay focuses on the substance of this research — drawing out major themes and identifying significant contributions within each theme — and it concludes by offering a future research agenda on gender and voting.

In its first twenty years, Politics & Gender has played a key role in the development of a robust and thriving literature on electoral gender quotas. This article reviews the 76 articles published on this topic in the journal between 2005 and 2024. It first takes a chronological view, analyzing publication patterns over time to show how the field has expanded through research articles, Critical Perspectives essays, book reviews, and Notes from the Field. As part of this survey, it identifies publications that have been particularly influential in shaping knowledge on quotas and their various impacts. The article then takes a thematic view, showing how work published in Politics & Gender has advanced knowledge in the fields of comparative politics and international relations. It focuses on five main literatures: candidate selection, electoral reform, political careers, policy-making processes, and stereotypes and public opinion. The final part of the article reflects on the broader integration of quota research into political science. Quota scholars are increasingly publishing their work in top disciplinary journals, at the same time that quotas have attracted growing interest among authors who would not consider gender to be a central axis of their research program. The article concludes by advocating a dual strategy of engaging debates at multiple levels and across intellectual arenas.

We are delighted to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Politics & Gender. This achievement signals an inflection point in the maturity of the subfield of women, gender, and politics research, and provides us with an opportunity to reflect on the role that the journal has played in the discipline of political science.

Much has changed since 2007–2010 when I co-edited the journal Politics & Gender (P&G) with Kathleen Dolan. In this essay, I reflect on the changes in the journal and the subfield of a comparative politics of gender. Dolan and I were the second team to edit the journal, following in the footsteps of the inaugural editors Karen Beckwith and Lisa Baldez. The journal was finding its footing at the time, and increasing submissions was a key concern. This year, on its 20th anniversary, we can celebrate that the journal, like the subfield of gender and politics, has flourished and matured. The number of articles published by the journal has multiplied exponentially and the quality of articles has improved significantly. Moreover, the journal has demonstrably helped shape the subfield of a comparative politics of gender in ways that I outline below.

I, Mary Caputi, was humbled and honored to be offered the editorship of Politics & Gender, a position that I filled between 2016–19. With my hard-working associate editors Sun Young Kwak, Steve Gonzales, and Timothy Kaufman-Osborn, we strove to build upon the journal’s already strong reputation as an agenda-setting academic publication that offers cutting-edge scholarship in all areas of gender studies. Because the relationship between “politics and gender” is so rich and complex, we tried to faithfully represent the depth and variety of interplay in our scholarly articles, Critical Perspectives contributions, Special Issues, and our choice of books to be reviewed. As a team, the task of editing the journal sent us on an enlightening journey that proved both challenging and educational. Throughout my tenure, I learned a great deal about my own field of contemporary feminist theory, and about how gender is studied in other subfields of political science and other academic disciplines across the university.

In the 20 years since the founding of Politics & Gender, gender and politics scholarship has coalesced into a distinct body of research and community of scholarship (Sawer 2025; Tripp 2025). The research published in this journal and others cuts across the traditional political science subfields, methodological approaches, and regional boundaries. While engaging with different topics and parts of the larger discipline, gender and politics research distinguishes itself through its turning around a shared understanding that gender plays a critical explanatory role in our political worlds – whether that be in the gendered ways that politics is enacted or the gendered consequences of political actions. There is a shared language of scholarship amongst researchers.

As this article is being finalized, US President Donald J. Trump has taken numerous executive actions to challenge gender identity; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs; and the rights of marginalized populations broadly. These xenophobic, anti-gender political agendas are gaining momentum worldwide (Ayoub and Stoeckle 2024). My hope is that these brief words inspire future politics and gender scholars to apply their research skills to challenge these heteropatriarchal policies that so often reinforce sexism, racism, and homophobia in the name of nationalism. When the Politics & Gender journal began in 2005, the justification question underlying much of its existence was “Does gender matter?” In 2025, if one is to measure the importance of gender by the amount of resistance to gender inclusive policies and feminist advances, one could easily argue that not only does gender matter-but it matters even more.