Despite the gains women have made since the advent of second-wave feminism, womenremain less confident than men of their ability to understand politics. Thisgender gap has remained unchanged for decades, yet it has attracted surprisinglylittle scholarly attention in recent years. This article uses data from the 2000American and 2004 Canadian election studies to assess whether differences inwomen's and men's socioeconomic resources help to explainthe gender gap. We also examine whether there are differences in the ways thatsocioeconomic resources affect women's and men'sself-perceived ability to understand politics. We focus particular attention onthe effects of parenthood on women's confidence in theirunderstanding of politics. Finally, we consider the role of feminism and genderrole conceptions.

This article examines the writings of women who explicitly embrace wifelysubmission, including those who advocate corporal punishment. Through a closereading of primary sources, the article seeks to illuminate the biblicalliteralist theology that underlies the ideology of wifely submission and toexplain the reasons why many heterosexual women find such an ideology appealing.While many readers might be tempted to dismiss such women as antifeminist, thequestion of desire that their writing raises goes to the heart of a majorchallenge faced by contemporary feminist theory, which since the “sexwars” often remains divided between those who accept whatever womenchoose as feminist and those who stand in judgment of other women'schoices. This article uses the case of wifely submission to examine the problemof desire, the concept of consent, and the benefits and limitations of“choice” discourse within feminist theory. It argues for amiddle-ground approach that respects women as agents in their own lives, whilealso engaging them in reflective conversation about desire and itsramifications.

Gender mainstreaming emerged on the European policy scene in the mid-1990s as aninnovative and controversial policy tool for reducing gender inequalities. TheEuropean Union seeks to propagate the practice of gender mainstreaming bothwithin EU institutions and among member states. Feminist scholars and policyelites have discussed and debated gender mainstreaming widely but have yet toconsider how local feminist activists, who could play a central role indiffusing gender mainstreaming, understand, interpret, and respond to thisagenda. This article examines whether and why local feminist movements in twocities in eastern Germany adopt gender mainstreaming into their advocacyagendas. Consideration of the characteristics of the contexts in which localfeminist movements are embedded clarifies the conditions under which socialmovements rally around new policy paradigms.

The global warming backlash, the managed care backlash, the Bush backlash, the corporate backlash, the 9/11 backlash, the Obama backlash, the Clinton backlash, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) bill backlash, the antigay backlash, the immigration backlash, the backlashes against globalization, student testing, the social, economic, and political progress of Latinos, African Americans, and Asian Americans, and, central to this “Critical Perspectives,” the backlash against the feminist movement—these were just some of the many politically related backlashes that appeared when I performed a general Google search of the words: “backlash” and “politics” in July of 2008.

To understand backlash theoretically, we must first carve out an analytically useful term from the cluster of its common political associations. In colloquial usage, “backlash” denotes politically conservative reactions to progressive (or liberal) social or political change (Faludi 1991 is a classic in this vein). Here, however, we attempt a nonideological definition of backlash embedded in a more neutral approach to its study. In colloquial usage, backlash includes acts of genuine persuasion as well as of power. Here, however, we suggest that it may be analytically helpful to confine its meaning to acts of coercive power. We draw on the sociological literature on social movements and countermovements, as well as the political science literature on power, preferences, and interests. We focus mostly on examples drawn from the United States and relating to feminism and gender. We begin where the process of backlash itself begins, with power and a challenge to the status quo.

In this essay, I start to sketch a research agenda about an electoral backlash against women's descriptive representation. Few scholars have considered the possibility of such a backlash. By “backlash,” I mean resistance to attempts to change the status quo. As Jane Mansbridge and Shauna Shames argue in this issue, when actors disadvantaged by the status quo work to enact change, they may be met by a reaction by those seeking to maintain existing power arrangements. In the following pages, I introduce the idea of a backlash against women's representation, propose several preliminary hypotheses about a backlash, and discuss ways of testing them.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the history of women's involvement in liberation struggles and the realignment of gender relations following independence have long been characterized as a kind of gender backlash. Whether national independence from colonial or settler rule was achieved in connection with nationalist movements or armed struggles, the scenarios of gender relations are remarkably similar. Particular groups of women are mobilized during the struggle for national liberation, their issues become part of the liberation movements' agendas, but following the achievement of independence, these same women are rapidly demobilized and the issues they raised during the national liberation struggle get marginalized amid competing and “more urgent” state priorities. Scholars have illuminated the historical and cultural specificities of this pattern in particular cases (Geiger 1997; Kruks, Rapp, and Young 1989; Seidman 1984 and 1999; Tétreault 1992; Urdang 1989). While this pattern fits with colloquial understandings of backlash, identifying the pattern does little to shed light on how state power gets infused with gender meaning in postindependence politics or how these power dynamics evolve.