J. R. R. Tolkien once suggested that “short cuts make long delays.” While Tolkien was not talking about improving the situation of women in political science, this essay argues that those of us interested in making political science less alienating for women would do well to heed his advice.

As anti-choice adherents have transitioned from a scattered movement in the early twentieth century to an organized political interest group in recent decades (Mohr 1978), American abortion politics has moved to medical rather than political ground. Accordingly, advocates of safe, legal abortion have become mired in interpretative debates over abortion's medical necessity rather than its political value. To be sure, this turn was not the product of a strategic plan hatched by pro-choice feminists, but was foisted upon them by judicial and legislative developments that created political contexts to which they were forced to react. Nonetheless, these medical necessity debates have obscured—and sometimes eclipsed—more forceful political arguments, replacing self-authorizing political claims—such as political and human rights, choice, reproductive freedom, and bodily autonomy—with arguments for abortion's medical necessity.

Heteronormativity has recently emerged as a fully shaped and well theorized concept in numerous fields, and it proves central to sexual politics and the politics of sexuality. In Antigone's Claim (2000), Judith Butler explores the heteronormativity of kinship as structured by the state, and she links this language of kinship to the incest taboo. This article focuses on Butler's politicization of kinship structures in her reading of the figure of Antigone. Because she sees the incest taboo as a social force that maintains heteronormativity by producing a particular configuration of the family, Butler advances the critique of heteronormativity. She does this through both her introduction and explication of the concept of (un)intelligibility and her explicit attention to the “incest born” person. The unintelligibility of the incest-born demands a thoroughgoing reconsideration of the liberal framework of tolerance: The unintelligible cannot be tolerated because they have not even been granted access to the category of the human. By asking us to reconsider kinship outside the defining and dominant terms of heteronormativity and the incest taboo, Butler promotes a distinct conception of politics. She thereby makes a noteworthy contribution to the political project of undoing gender hierarchy.

This article contributes to both the scholarly debates on the controversies over gender quotas and the body of knowledge on framing effects through an investigation of whether national elites, individuals in top positions across 10 sectors of Norwegian society, are susceptible to positive framing of corporate board gender quotas (CBQs). Elites are thought to be more resistant to framing, and their predispositions are found to be stronger and more consistent than those of the general public. However, few, if any, studies have empirically investigated framing effects on national elites. We report on an experiment embedded in a comprehensive survey of Norwegian national elites. The results clearly indicate that elites are susceptible to framing. When exposed to frames highlighting both male dominance among the business elite and the success of CBQs in achieving gender balance on corporate boards, elites were significantly more likely to support gender quotas. Framing effects were primarily found among men, not women, and contrary to expectation, effects were stronger among the business elite. Thus, we should direct our attention to how the framing of issues also influences key stakeholders, and policy makers should consider opposition to gender equality measures as something that has the propensity to change.

Feminist critics of the institution of marriage point to its tendency to reproduce and solidify a gendered division of labor, norms of dependency and protection, and mandated monogamy. While I support the feminist call for a decoupling of state benefits, such as rights to health care and legal proxy, from the institution of marriage in light of discrimination against same-sex couples who are denied the right to marry, in this essay I draw attention to a separate but related issue. I focus here on what I consider one of the most troubling aspects of marriage for feminists, one highlighted by Simone de Beauvoir in her classic and still timely critique of marriage in The Second Sex (1952): the fact that marriage automatically confers bourgeois respectability on its participants. Even as we oppose antigay marriage legislation and recognize that marriage can protect vulnerable parties by guaranteeing health care, equity upon divorce, tax benefits, and so forth, feminists must continue to refuse the bourgeois respectability that is so deeply linked with the institution of marriage. Having the state accord legitimacy to some kinds of intimate relationships and consensual sex, but not others, goes against basic ideas of feminist freedom articulated most convincingly, I argue, by Beauvoir. While arguing this position, however, I will also ask whether only the relatively privileged are able to refuse the bourgeois respectability that marriage promises.

Violence against women politicians is increasingly recognized as an issue that undermines women's presence in politics. Latin America has been at the vanguard of this global discussion. In 2012, Bolivia became the only country in the world to criminalize “political violence and harassment against women.” Several other countries have similar legislation in the works. What explains the emergence of these bill proposals? This article argues that the creation of these bills is the result of three processes: activism at the local level used international norms to propose an innovative solution to a problem; women politicians and “femocrats” worked within the state apparatus to overcome resistance; and international actors worked to foster connections among activists and politicians across the region. In this process, international norms have been transformed, with important implications for women's political representation.

Scholars exploring the female representation gap in the U.S. Congress have pointed to district-level differences to explain why some districts regularly field women candidates and elect congresswomen while others almost never do. Specifically, demographic, economic, and political characteristics strongly influence a district's female candidacy, nomination, and election rates. This article asks whether also knowing about a district's religious environment helps us better predict the presence and success of women candidates. My central finding is that religiosity, in general, and the strength of some denominations within a district are strong predictors of where women will run and how well they will compete.

When considering possible conversations, synergies, overlaps, similarities, conflicts, and distinctions between two subfields or “camps” (Sylvester 2010), the question of limits looms large. Where, why, and how are the limits of feminist security studies (FSS) and feminist global political economy (FGPE) currently being drawn, and to what effect? Building upon previous conversations about the relationship between FSS and FGPE, particularly as they were discussed in the Critical Perspectives section in Politics & Gender (June 2015), as well as those about FSS and FGPE more generally, I briefly touch on a few central points regarding the politics of boundary drawing and the practices of feminist research.

The #MeToo movement in Japan is usually considered to have started slowly, and it remains far smaller and quieter compared with those found in the United States or South Korea. Few celebrities or high-profile figures have come forward to support the movement, and even fewer powerful men have been brought down as a result of allegations of sexual assault. The strategy of naming and shaming has rarely been used, but there is collective empowerment through empathy resulting from a nationwide grassroots movement known as “Flower Demo.” This movement has provided victims with a safe space to share their experiences. Those breaking their silence have appeared in various sectors of society, and this has raised the social consciousness of deep-rooted sexism inherent in Japanese society.

The process of selecting cabinet ministers often takes place behind closed doors, including weighing the need to balance or manage factions within the president's party and/or coalition partners; addressing demands for diversity in the cabinet, such as appointment of women or other historically underrepresented groups; sending signals about the administration's policy agenda; and enabling the president to have people he or she trusts close at hand. On the other hand, ministerial exits are usually less private affairs. In some cases they come after weeks of public or congressional scrutiny and criticism of ministers for policy failures or follow extended speculation about who will lose their seat when the president reshuffles the cabinet. Some ministers depart to pursue lucrative private-sector opportunities. Other ministers switch posts but stay in government. How ministers exit can have implications for the administration since a president who is frequently forced to shuffle the cabinet or sack ministers looks ineffective, and comparisons to rats and sinking ships are difficult to avoid in the wake of excessive changes. At the same time, an administration with zero turnover may also not be healthy, as it would suggest that presidents are staidly bound to their initial course of action and unable (or unwilling) to adapt to changing circumstances.

Do elites exhibit gender bias when responding to political aspirants? Drawing on theories of gender bias, group attachment, and partisan identity, I conduct the first audit experiment outside the United States to examine the presence of gender bias in the earliest phases of the political recruitment process. Based on responses from 1,774 Canadian legislators, I find evidence of an overall gender bias in favor of female political aspirants. Specifically, legislators are more responsive to female political aspirants and more likely to provide them with helpful advice when they ask how to get involved in politics. This pro-women bias, which exists at all levels of government, is stronger among female legislators and those associated with left-leaning parties. These results suggest that political elites in Canada are open to increasing female political representation and thus should serve as welcome encouragement for women to pursue their political ambitions.

Whose responsibility is it—that of the individual, society, or both—to meet the needs of citizens and to what degree, how, when, and why? This article investigates this set of inquiries by examining the ongoing debate over sex education in the United States between advocates for the abstinence-only and the comprehensive approaches, conveyed here through their curricula. The debate reflects a broader ideological struggle over how a democratic political community distributes moral responsibility. Personal responsibility is illustrated by abstinence-only curricula, whereas social responsibility is made evident in the comprehensive approach. These approaches establish a dualistic framework for understanding morality that marginalizes politics, deflecting attention away from the moral assumptions behind the gendered distribution of resources in a political community. Collective responsibility, this article argues, provides an alternative moral groundwork and inclusive conceptual perspective that brings politics and the power dynamics of the distributive function within a community into focus. From a collective perspective, the answer to the question “whose responsibility?” then shifts from either the individual or society to both at the same time.

Gender quotas transform comparative politics by reimagining the relationship between citizens and representatives. Gender quotas invite citizens to revisit their expectations of what it means to be represented and what makes a “good” politician. As quotas introduce new norms and emphasize different qualities to be valued in a representative, they provide an opportunity to reappraise the attributes and qualifications of all politicians, including men. Although some quota advocates have been keen to ensure that quota claims focus only on increasing women's presence in politics, the wider debates surrounding quotas have ensured that they go beyond the simple feminization of politics. Arguments in favor of quotas based on gender differences also lead to expectations that quotas will effect wider change and renewal. Quotas thus afford scholars of comparative politics an opportunity to test whether the current actors and rules of the game of politics are necessarily the best and only way of doing things.

State action to curtail the spread of the coronavirus has meant advising, and sometimes mandating, houses of worship to close to in-person worship. While mostly cooperative, the religious response has been varied and has exposed a hardened, defiant core. Informed by gendered religious worldviews, religious defiance is led by men and disproportionately supported by men. In this article, we document the extent of the defiance as of late March 2020 with our survey data and then investigate how gendered religious worldviews serve to track men to public roles and women to private ones. We attempt to confirm the nature of these effects with a gendered nationalism item and parallel gender gaps in political participation.

Using individual-level data from three Lithuanian legislative elections (2008, 2012, 2016), this article investigates voter bias in an open-list proportional representation system in which parties rank candidates but voters are able to fully influence the rank order through preferential voting. This study examines the average effects of and variation in gender bias among voters of different parties. Most importantly, it also investigates how party cues interact with gender cues—that is, whether discriminatory tendencies vary by a candidate's party-determined viability. After establishing that there is no evidence of elite bias in favor of or against women candidates, with the exception of the Social Democrats and a few other parties, I demonstrate that, on average, female Lithuanian politicians receive approximately 7% fewer preferential votes than their male counterparts. In addition, the models predict that gender bias is most pronounced against the female candidates who are best placed to enter parliament. Finally, I demonstrate that Social Democratic voters are, on average, the most undisposed toward female candidates, correcting for positive elite bias toward female candidates from the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party, while voters of the Homeland Union party (conservatives) strongly prefer women politicians.

As Americans’ trust in their government—most specifically Congress—has declined over the past half century, it has become increasingly important to answer the question of who does or does not trust government and why. Trust research tends to take for granted that sex affects trust—most studies control for it—but results have been mixed. This could be because researchers have been looking at the wrong aspect of gender, relying on the traditional distinction of sex rather than an alternative—the non-sex-specific distinction of feminine personality traits. These traits are communal in nature, and as such, they may lead to higher levels of trust in government. This article analyzes the potential effect of femininity, demonstrating that feminine personalities are significantly more trusting of our governing institutions than nonfeminine personalities.

The Australian news media used the metaphor of the gender war(s) to describe Julia Gillard's political strategies and speech acts in the final nine months of her term as that nation's first woman prime minister. In particular, the metaphor was mobilized in response to Gillard's October 9, 2012, parliamentary speech on sexism and misogyny. Based on a critical discourse analysis of the gender wars allegory as it was applied to Gillard by three Australian newspapers, my article analyzes the meanings revealed by metaphoric constructions of the former prime minister's speeches as unusual and unjust forms of political warfare. I argue that the trope of the gender wars cast Gillard's political tactics as a violation of deeply held cultural norms about appropriate behavior on the so-called political battlefield, and it worked both to discipline Gillard for raising issues of sexism and gender inequality in politics and to bracket gendered power relations out of everyday understandings of political competition.

Previous research shows that candidate sex serves as a heuristic that lessens the informational burden of political decision making. Building upon this research, we investigate the heuristic effects of candidate sex on the decision to turnout to vote in an election. We posit that by providing ideological and nonideological information about the candidates, candidate sex serves as an informational shortcut that reduces the costs associated with voting and enhances the likelihood of voting in elections when a female candidate is present. Our expectations are supported, even after controlling for a variety of individual-, candidate- and district-level characteristics that are correlated with turnout. Individuals are more likely to turnout in elections featuring a woman candidate, and consistent with our expectations, these effects are especially strong for female Democrats, whose sex and party heuristics convey a consistent “liberal” cue. Our research offers theoretical and empirical contributions to the literature on gender, candidate heuristics, and voter turnout.

A considerable body of research has analyzed the influence of the women's movement, changes in women's political representation, and policies promoting women's interests in the developing world. However, we know comparatively less about the degree to which the attitudes and behaviors of the mass public mirror these national patterns. This article explores the evolution of gender differences in citizens' political interest, civic engagement, and support for women in politics in the Dominican Republic over 1994–2004, a period important for the country's democratization as well as one of significant changes in gender-related discourse and policies. We find evidence of a shift from a traditional gender gap to a modern gender gap, but the explanations for changes in women's views are distinct from those of men. We find that sociostructural factors, particularly age and education, and cues from political elites have significantly different effects on men versus women. Women's levels of political interest and support for equality in political participation are more fixed in their youth, whereas men's levels evolve through middle age. The evidence also indicates that reducing the gender gap in political interest would significantly narrow gender differences in civic activism. Most notably, men appear to be more easily swayed by elite cues that favor or oppose women's political participation; women's support for equal participation is much less susceptible to reversals in elite support. The consolidation of advances in gender equity thus depends significantly on contextual factors such as elite discourse.