Political Women: The Women's Movement, Political Institutions, the Battle for Women's Suffrage and the ERA. By Alana S. Jeydel. New York: Routledge. 2004. 223 pp. $125.00.

Resource mobilization theory and, more recently, political process/opportunity theories dominate the study of social movements. The pioneering work of Jo Freeman and Anne Costain uses these theories to explain the emergence and mobilization of the contemporary U.S. women's movement. According to this perspective, women's movements have the incentive to act when their chances for success are high. They take advantage of new opportunities and open new ones for themselves. These opportunities are a function of their internal resources and of external factors, such as governmental structures and rules that provide access. Because the U.S. women's movement often has been more oriented toward changing gender role norms and practices, rather than achieving rights, it has received relatively little attention from political opportunity structure (POS) scholars.