From the perspective of women's experiences, it is easy to see that democratic representative institutions can be tools of oppression. After all, formal democratic institutions have been either a form of governance that has only ruled over women (e.g., women were formally prohibited from holding elected offices) or a form of governance in which women have ruled and been ruled unequally (e.g., the number of female representatives have been significantly lower than the number of male representatives). Moreover, informal representative institutions, for example, interest groups, do not seem to work for women as well as they do for powerful men (Strolovitch 2007). These facts suggest that democratic representative institutions need to be viewed suspiciously. We should not assume that representative institutions in democracies necessarily benefit all women. We need to recognize how they can divide women, pitting some women's interests and preferences against other women's interests and preferences. Democratic representative institutions can function to preserve the status quo, distributing benefits unjustly among different men and women.

As Women and Politics Research enters its third decade as an organized Section of the American Political Science Association, we begin the third volume of Politics & Gender, the official journal of the Section. Our goal as editors, and the mission of Politics & Gender, has been “to publish the very best work on women and politics, and on gender and politics” (I.1: 2). Across the three volumes of our editorship, we are proud to have established a journal that political scientists worldwide recognize as the standard for politics and gender scholarship. From empirical analyses of women's political representation to feminist theorizing to feminist textual analyses of U.S. security rhetoric and health-care reform, Politics & Gender has sought to publish high-quality work that ranges across methodologies, topics, subfields, and disciplines.

Building on Mark Granovetter's concept of weak ties, we argue that diverse social networks can enhance the propensity of women to vote for a party of the Left. Using data from the 2000 Canadian Election Study, we test two hypotheses: First, the wider the range of women known, the more likely women are to vote for the Left, and second, the wider the range of higher-status women known, the more likely married women are to vote for the Left. We argue that socially communicated cues may be particularly consequential for women because they tend to know less about the parties and their platforms than men do. Accordingly, casual acquaintances can be an important source of new information for women. Women with more diverse ties to other women, we argue, are more likely to encounter women who are voting for the party of the Left and to recognize their shared interest in voting similarly. Our second hypothesis builds on Susan Carroll's argument that women require sufficient autonomy to express their gender-related interests in their choice of party. We argue that married women's political autonomy can be enhanced if their social networks include a range of women who do enjoy such autonomy. Ties with higher-status women can be a source of psychological resources that facilitate voting for a party of the Left. We find support for both of these hypotheses.

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.

In this article we measure the impact of gender on women's legislative behavior by utilizing a unique research design. We compare whether women and men of the same political party represent the same congressional district differently with respect to women's issues. Using bill sponsorship and floor remarks during the 104th to 107th sessions of the U.S. House of Representatives as measures of legislative behavior, we find that female legislators who replace men in the same district introduce more women's issues bills in Congress. Although our conclusion that women legislators represent women's issues more frequently in the House supports existing research, our results do so in a new and more effective way by controlling for the competing explanations of party identification and district opinion as factors determining a legislator's behavior.

This work examines the role of women's organizations in the 2000 elections in Croatia in an effort to understand when and how they play a significant role in promoting democracy and, in particular, the election of female candidates. Croatia offers a crucial case for the study of gender and democratization because it challenges two significant generalizations from the comparative literature on postcommunist transitions: first, that women's organizations have been more likely to succeed in postcommunist countries where democracy has proceeded the furthest and, in particular, where ethno-nationalist conflict and ideologies are least salient; and, second, that widespread opposition to gender quotas in postcommunist countries prevented their use as a tool for promoting women's equality. What conditions were present that facilitated the effectiveness of women's organizations in Croatia in promoting their goal of electing more women? Four factors are key to explaining their success: the organizational strength and unity of women's organizations; the extent of involvement by international organizations and donors; the perceived central role of women's organizations in democratization; and, finally, the character of their alliances with political parties.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Thirteenth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Scripps College, June 2–5, 2005. I would like to thank Lisa Baldez, Karen Beckwith, Charlie Kenney, Carol Lilly, Andrew Halterman, and three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article.

While there has been a significant amount of research on transnational feminist activism at the global level, many feminist transnational advocacy networks are mobilizing within world regions. The lack of attention to the regional level has created a considerable imbalance in research on transnational activism. This article's first objective is to define regional advocacy networks (RANs) as a collection of individuals and organizations from the same world region working together toward a common goal. The article's second objective is to explore the conditions under which RANs are influential. We investigate conditions for RAN success through a case study of an African network that helped create one of the world's most progressive treaties on women's rights, the African Union Protocol to the Charter on Human and People's Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa. From an analysis of primary sources and interviews with key participants, we suggest that three factors are crucial for network success: whether a RAN builds alliances with key politicians and civil servants, whether a RAN is able to participate in the decision-making process, and whether a RAN's goals overlap with the target institution's priorities. The broader implication of our study is that scholars seeking to understand the creation of women's rights commitments, the diffusion of women's rights norms, and compliance with women's rights treaties need to look beyond the international and domestic levels of action to include the regional level in their analyses.

Racial disparities in the justice system, particularly as they relate to the death penalty, have received increasing scholarly and public-policy scrutiny recently. Comparatively little attention has been paid to the role of the defendant's sex in cases of violent crime, though research has been conducted on how the victim's sex affects court decisions. This article seeks to extend this line of inquiry by asking how women accused of killing their spouses or nonspousal intimate partners are treated by the judicial system. I present a theoretical framework that elucidates the impact of intersectionality and sexual stratification on structuring outcomes for women defendants in cases of violent crimes. To test implications derived from this framework, I utilize an original data set of homicide cases from Oakland County, Michigan, from 1986 to 1988. I find that female defendants were convicted more frequently than were male defendants, and that there is an interactive effect with race. Further, I find that the conviction rate was higher if the victim was an alleged batterer of the defendant. Finally, my data indicate that sentencing decisions have a clear racial aspect to them. I conclude with suggestions for future research.

The alienation of affection tort, which allows a plaintiff to sue a third party for interfering with the plaintiff's marriage, has been disparaged by many as a relic of women's former status as their husband's property. Despite its archaic roots, the tort as it operates today is in many ways quite modern and addresses some of the problems, expectations, and obstacles of modern American marriage. Furthermore, it fits in with developments in tort law toward more actions for nontangible, nonfinancial damages. Given the tort's history, one might assume that it benefits men, but women also benefit from and use this tort, as demonstrated in a case study of North Carolina, a jurisdiction where the tort is frequently pursued. In its current form, the alienation tort can be reconciled with feminist theory and with women's interests, and should not be abolished without reconsideration.

In 2005, a record nine women served as their state's governor. Of these, eight were elected. A crucial and often difficult step for women to be successful in gubernatorial elections is for them to win the nomination for governor by their political party. From 1976 to 2004, only 79 women have won their party's nomination for governor. The record number of women nominees in a single year is 10, set in 1998 and 2002. Even with these recent successes, women as governors are both fairly rare and an understudied area of political science. In this study, we explore two different explanations for the nomination of women to elected office: the pipeline and sacrificial lamb models. Although some research argues that the sacrificial lamb model is outdated and has been replaced by the pipeline model, we find that both of these models are relevant for the study of female gubernatorial nominations, but in the same way for each political party. By examining gubernatorial election data from 1976 to 2004, we present evidence suggesting that the pipeline model helps to explain the nomination of Democratic women, while the sacrificial lamb model helps to explain the nomination of Republican women. Though preliminary, these findings have important implications for the growing, pro-Democratic, partisan imbalance of women officeholders.

To what extent do women's organizations share a common commitment to organizational participatory democracy? Research suggests that women appear more likely than men to prefer democratic decision-making processes, yet these studies generally compare women's and men's behavior in organizations that are not only numerically dominated by men but that were also initially formed by men. I examine the electoral and policymaking rules of 37 membership-based women's associations in order to determine the extent to which the bylaws of women's groups exhibit the high levels of democracy predicted by the theoretical and empirical literature. I find that levels of democracy in women's associations vary more than research on women's governance would suggest. I then explore factors that influence the observed variation in women's groups. I find that the extent to which a women's group relies on membership dues, the year it was founded, and, to a lesser extent, its size affect how democratically it is structured. I conclude by considering the implications of these findings for the representation of women's diverse political and economic interests.

Since the 1980s, we have witnessed how the gender gap grows and shrinks in various elections; we address how the context in which the election takes place influences the size of the divide. Studying the gender gap in Senate elections allows us to look at multiple elections across time and space to determine when significant electoral gender gaps arise and when they do not. This contrasts with more traditional approaches that focus either on a single presidential election or on a single year's House or Senate elections. We demonstrate that electoral gender gaps arise from campaign-level factors (such as candidate sex, the presence of an incumbent, and the issues raised in the campaign), state-level factors (demographics and politics of the states), and the complex interaction of these factors.We would like to thank the many people who gave us helpful feedback and comments on earlier drafts of this paper, particularly Suzanna De Boef, Susan Welch, Eric Plutzer, the Gender and Politics Working Group at Penn State University, Margaret Conway, the editors of this journal, and our anonymous reviewers. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association.

How can scholars advance the study of gender and politics with over-time research? Scholars often call for more historical research and for more attention to time as a contextual variable. But it is rare that scholars have an opportunity to reflect on the use of time in gender scholarship. What is gained by thinking about time? What is the research agenda for studying gender and politics over time? What methodological approaches are particularly promising? Kira Sanbonmatsu and Claudine Gay invited leading scholars to discuss these questions at a roundtable at the 2007 Midwest Political Science Association meetings. The following essays assess existing scholarship, suggest new research questions, and identify fruitful research approaches. The authors discuss different ways to theorize about time. And they remind us of the dangers of neglecting time in gender research.

This journal, Politics & Gender, rests on the presumption that gender, like race, class, and ethnicity, exists as a discrete category of political identity and political analysis. We can learn things about politics, in other words, by focusing on the ways in which the differences between men and women become relevant to politics. Research on gender, like research on race, class, and ethnicity, has earned independent standing within political science. For many scholars, gender constitutes the primary focus of their research. Looking through a gendered lens has given birth to a large body of scholarship. Gender has its own research sections in our professional associations and its own journals. Political scientists can and regularly do consider the effect of gender independently from other variables in their research.

In Canada, as in the United States, the postwar welfare regime recognized the citizenship of the male breadwinner while women, for the most part, remained second-class citizens. This was reflected, inter alia, in Canada's child-care policy, a federal-provincial cost-sharing arrangement that provided subsidies to low-income families able to demonstrate their need, rather than as a public service available to all those who want and need it. While this meant that the Canadian state did not guarantee the right to affordable child care, these intergovernmental arrangements also offered feminists opportunities to challenge federal policy at the provincial and local level. This article examines child-care politics in Toronto, Canada's largest city and the first one in Canada to have a municipal child-care program. It shows how, in the 1970s, Toronto began to break with the liberal assumptions that characterized its past policies. Toronto's child-care program also posed a potential challenge to the national and provincial regimes. This, however, required the movement to secure changes at the provincial and/or federal level, which it thus far has failed to do.

Women continue to be underrepresented in politics. A contemporary focus on inequality, however, belies the remarkable changes that have occurred in women's political representation, participation, and impact over time. Thus, scholars are increasingly calling for longitudinal theory and research that focuses on change across time. In this essay, we advocate moving to a longitudinal approach, which, we argue, has four broad implications for theories on women and politics. First, in shifting from a static to a longitudinal perspective, we may find greater support for existing theories that have to date generated only weak or mixed empirical evidence. Second, in contrast, we may also identify limitations of documented findings, which may not generalize broadly across time. Third, some theories imply over-time processes but have never been modeled as such. Thus, a longitudinal approach promises new, and potentially more rigorous, hypothesis testing of existing theories. Finally, theorizing over time may generate new explanations for stasis, growth, or decline in women's political representation or participation that have not, to date, been considered.

This study tests the hypothesis that collective descriptive representation has important benefits for strengthening and legitimizing democratic society. Specifically, we test whether increased proportions of collective female descriptive representation in the statehouse and the presence of a female state executive are important to female citizens' attitudes toward government responsiveness, or external efficacy. We hypothesize that an increase in female collective descriptive representation in the legislative and state executive branches of government will increase female citizens' external efficacy but will be unimportant to males. We pooled American National Election Studies (ANES) data from 1988 to 1998 and used ordered probit techniques to test the hypothesis. In addition to our main independent variable of interest, our model includes state political culture, dyadic descriptive representation, dyadic substantive representation, sociodemographics, political participation, strength of partisanship, and electoral dummy variables as controls. Our results confirm that higher levels of collective female descriptive representation promote higher values of external efficacy for female citizens, suggesting that collective female descriptive representation has important benefits to a democratic society.An earlier version of this article was presented at the American Political Science Association's Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California, August 30–September 2, 2001, and the International Society of Political Psychology, Seattle, Washington, July 1–4, 2000. We would like to thank the following people for their comments and support: Anthony Coveny, Randall Partin, and Cherie Maestas.

The post-civil rights era has left an important dilemma in U.S. politics. Despite the fact that the United States has become more integrated across racial and gendered lines since the 1960s, inequality, particularly economic inequality, has grown. Although much of that inequality continues to fall along racial, gender, and class lines, the opportunities afforded by the “rights revolution” have also created an important heterogeneity of privilege within marginal groups. As social scientists, how best can we identify the sources and results of this inequality? More specifically, how can we better understand the crosscutting political effects of both marginalization and privilege within and among groups in U.S. society? I contend that intersections theory may be a useful place to begin, and that the idea of intersectionality could provide a fruitful framework with which to understand issues of inequality in the post-civil rights era. Such a framework would help address some of the theoretical problems that sometimes arise within empirical work on marginal groups in political science and, ideally, allow scholars to understand better how experiences of marginalization and privilege affect the shape and character of American political life.

We argue that since the term state feminism first appeared in the 1980s, it has gone through three stages of development, becoming a formal concept useful in cross-national analysis in the last stage. Scholars first used the term loosely to describe a range of state activities with a gender/women's issues focus. Next, the concept became associated with the study of women's policy agencies. Most recently, a group of comparative gender and policy scholars—the Research Network on Gender Politics and the State (RNGS)—has developed systematic nominal and operational definitions of state feminism to study if, how, and why women's policy agencies make alliances with women's movements within the state to achieve feminist outcomes.