New Research on Gendered Political Institutions
| Published date | 01 June 1996 |
| DOI | 10.1177/106591299604900211 |
| Date | 01 June 1996 |
| Author | Sally J. Kenney |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
445
FIELD
ESSAY
New
Research
on Gendered
Political Institutions
SALLY
J.
KENNEY,
UNIVERSITY
OF
MINNESOTA
This
essay
reviews
four
texts
that
analyze
women
in
political
institutions
in
order
to
develop
a
more
general
theory
of
gendered
institutions.
Scholar-
ship
on
women
in
political
institutions
will
be advanced
by
continuing
to
look
beyond
the
confines
of the
traditional
subfields
of
political
science,
drawing
on
interdisciplinary
work
in
feminist
theory,
critical
race
theory,
and
the
sociology
of
work.
Gender
should
be
theorized,
not
as a
word
that
is
interchangeable
with
sex,
but
as
a
continuous,
variable,
and
tenacious
process
that,
while
usually
leading
to
women’s
disadvantage,
is
challenged,
negotiated,
subverted,
and
resisted.
Such
scholarship
should
explore
how
masculinity,
work,
and
politics
are
intertwined.
Before
the
resurgence
of
the
second
wave
of
the
women’s
movement,
political
scientists
usually
ignored
women
as
voters,
activists,
and
elites
(Shanley
and
Schuck
1974).
In
the
1970s,
feminist
political
scientists-a
beleaguered
few
who
were
nevertheless
less
isolated
than
their
predecessors-began
to
aug-
ment
the
rare
studies
that
documented
women’s
political
behavior.
They
be-
gan
to
correct
the
distortions
of
women’s
political
activities
while
criticizing
the
omission
of
women
from
research
in
the
discipline.
This
compensatory
political
science
documented
women’s
political
activities
while
simultaneously
calling
into
question
women’s
exclusion
from
political
life.
Feminists
were
dissatisfied
with
accounts
that
explained
the
absence
of
women
by
pointing
to
flaws
in
women
themselves-their
conservatism,
lower
levels
of politicization,
or
biological
limitations
(Bourque
and
Grossholz
1974).
Instead,
they
bran-
dished
democratic
theory
to
call
into
question
the
legitimacy
of
political
struc-
tures
that
systematically
exclude,
subordinate,
and
erase
the
value
and
potential
contributions
of the
majority
of
its
citizens.
By
centering
the
focus
on
women,
these
pioneers
successfully
shifted
the
question
of
inquiry
from
&dquo;what’s
wrong
NOTE:
Special
thanks
to
Martha
Chamallas
for
recommending
readings,
for
her
careful
editorial
comments,
and
her
support.
Thanks
also
to
John
Geer
for
his
comments
and
encouragement,
and
to
Dierdre
Wendel
Blunt
and
Amy
Lynch
for
research
assistance.
446
with
women&dquo;
to
&dquo;what’s
wrong
with
the
system.&dquo;1
The
texts
this
essay
reviews
carry
that
debate
still
further.
By
exploring
women’s
integration
in
four
very
different
political
institutions,
these
works
reformulate
the
simplistic
and
lim-
iting
question,
&dquo;Are
women
legislators,
foreign
policy
advisors,
or
lawyers
different
from
men?&dquo;
They
instead
began
to
explore
how
political
institutions
are
gendered.
They
go
beyond
cataloguing
the
attributes
of
the
exceptional
women
in
male-dominated
institutions
and
go
beyond
counting
the
women
at
various
levels
to
explore
the
gendered
culture
of
the
institutions
as
well
as
how
the
particular
institutions
interact
with
the
larger
political
culture.
&dquo;The
term
’gendered
institutions’
means
that
gender
is
present
in
the
processes,
practices,
images
and
ideologies,
and
distributions
of
power
in
the
various
sectors
of
social
life&dquo;
(Acker
1992:
567).
Focusing
on
gender
within
and
outside
of
political
institutions
leads
femi-
nist
political
scientists
to
rethink
the
conventional
political
science
paradigm
(Nelson
1989).
Long
excluded
from
the
intellectual
life
of the
discipline,
femi-
nists
learned
from
colleagues
in
other
disciplines
who
were
also
exploring
questions
of
gender
(and,
in
the
cases
of
anthropology,
history,
sociology,
and
literature,
had
been
doing
so
longer).2
The
infusion
of
ideas
from
other
disci-
plines
as
well
as
feminists’
immersion
as
activists
in
the
women’s
movement
led
them
to
redefine
what
constituted
politics
(Fowlkes
1987;
McClure
1992;
Sapiro
1991).
To
understand
how
the
political
system
excluded,
erased,
and
oppressed
women,
one
needed
to
examine,
for
example,
the
sexual
division
of
labor,
sexual
violence,
and
the
construction
of
gender
identity
in
child-
hood-topics
that
moved
political
scientists
beyond
the
arenas
of
legislatures,
voting
booths,
and
cabinet
meetings.
The
interdisciplinary
group
of
women’s
studies
scholars,
meanwhile,
was
moving
beyond
thinking
of
women
as
a
monolithic
group
to
reconceptualizing
gender
as
a
category
of
analysis
(Acker
1992).
Research
on
women
who
were
neither
white,
middle-class,
Western,
nor
heterosexual
undermined
fragile
generalizations
that
masked
differences
among
women.
The
construction
of
gender,
the
anti-essentialists
argued,
op-
erates
differently
according
to
race
and
class.
Moreover,
shifting
the
focus
1
For
a
summary
of
the
subfield
see
Carroll
and
Zerilli
(1993).
For
a
bibliography
see
Kelly
and
Fisher
(1993).
Carroll
(1979)
demonstrates
how
political
science
exagger-
ated
differences
between
women
and
argued
that
women’s
absence
from
politics
was
a
function
of
their
sex-role
socialization.
2
Bernice
Carroll
(1980)
raised
the
question
early
on
as
to
why
there
was
so
little
fruitful
interaction
within
political
science
of
feminists
with
different
ideological
commitments
compared
to
other
disciplines.
See
Hawkesworth
for
a
definition
of
gender
as
an
ana-
lytical
category
(1994:
97-98),
and
Peterson
(1992:
9).
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