Karen Celis

Sarah Childs

Can Conservatives represent women? Descriptively of course, they do. Conservative parties and organisations are increasingly feminised; conservative women sit in many of the world’s parliaments; a few women have led conservative parties; and there are, and have been, Conservative Prime Ministers. But whether these women actually stand for women, act for women and re-gender representation is likely to invite greater contestation. Contributors to this edited collection address head-on the puzzle of conservative women who engage in gendered political representation but do so within a conservative setting. Individual chapters examine women’s participation as conservative movement and party members, supporters, candidates, leaders, legislators and ministers – in countries ranging from Europe, the US, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Turkey and Morocco. Assessment is made of the nature of their representational contribution, and the relationship they have with conservative women’s views in society.

Gender, Conservatism and Political Representation

Popular consensus has long been that if "enough women" are present in political institutions they will represent "women's interests." Yet many believe that differences among women--women disagreeing about what is in "their interest"--fatally undermine both the principle and the practice of women's group representation. In this book, Karen Celis and Sarah Childs redress women's poverty of political representation with a new feminist account of democratic representation. Rather than giving up on women's group representation, Celis and Childs re-think and re-design representative institutions, taking women's differences--both ideological and intersectional--as their starting point. Feminist Democratic Representation considers a broad spectrum of contemporary problematics--abortion, prostitution/sex work, Muslim women's dress, and Marine Le Pen--to discuss women's under- and misrepresentation and the "good, bad and the ugly" representative. As problem-driven scholars firmly grounded in feminist and democratic empirical and theoretical political science, Celis and Childs imagine what good representation for women in all their diversity could look like--representation as it should be. To realize this ideal in today's established representative democracies, they present a second-generation feminist design for parliaments and legislatures, underpinned by a re-thinking of feminist and democratic principles. Celis and Childs conceive of representation as a mélange of dimensions, and they shift the focus in women's group representation from feminist outcome to feminist process. Inclusive, responsive, and egalitarian representation for all women demands a new category of representatives in parliaments: the "affected representatives of women" who are epistemologically and experientially close to differently affected women. Affected representatives passionately advocate within political institutions, and publicly hold elected representatives to account. Feminist processes of representation have wide effects and deepen relationships between women and their democratic institutions. Against the more fashionable tide of post-representative politics, Feminist Democratic Representation argues not simply for more, but significantly better, representation.

Feminist Democratic Representation

Can Conservatives represent women? Descriptively of course, they do. Conservative parties and organisations are increasingly feminised; conservative women sit in many of the world's parliaments; a few women have led conservative parties; and there are, and have been, Conservative Prime Ministers. But whether these women actually stand for women, act for women and re-gender representation is likely to invite greater contestation. Contributors to this edited collection address head-on the puzzle of conservative women who engage in gendered political representation but do so within a conservative setting. Individual chapters examine women's participation as conservative movement and party members, supporters, candidates, leaders, legislators and ministers - in countries ranging from Europe, the US, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Turkey and Morocco. Assessment is made of the nature of their representational contribution, and the relationship they have with conservative women's views in society. 'This book contributes greatly to our knowledge about gender and political representation, not only because it fills a gap in the literature on feminism and conservatism but also, most importantly, because it challenges feminist taboos about the role of conservative women as acting for women. The detailed empirical analysis disentangles what some scholars would consider an oxymoron - feminism and conservatism - and identifies the diversity of women's interests beyond stereotypes. In this way, the book provides a more conceptually refined and empirically grounded notion of what women's interests, claims, and issues actually are, while improving existing understandings of the relations between substantive and descriptive representation.' Emanuela Lombardo, Universidad Complutense de Madrid '"Agenda-setting" may be an overused claim - but it's richly deserved this time. In Gender, Conservatism and Political Representation, Karen Celis, Sarah Childs and their distinguished contributors break new ground - empirically and conceptually - in the study of the gendered dimensions of political parties of the Right, including the descriptive, substantive and symbolic representation of women. Timely and authoritative.' Fiona Mackay, University of Edinburgh 'This book offers a completely new perspective on an old question: How is politics gendered? In chapters that are rich, well-structured, conceptually sharp and empirically rich, the authors of Gender, Conservatism and Political Representation analyse the many gendered faces of conservatism across the globe, challenging not simply gender scholarship, but also mainstream political science understandings of political representation.' Mieke Verloo, Radboud University Nijmegen

Popular consensus holds that if "enough women" are present in political institutions they will represent "women's interests," however, such generalized assumptions are frequently queried on theoretical grounds and consistently shown to be conditional in practice. In this book, Karen Celis and Sarah Childs address women's poverty of political representation with a new feminist account of democratic representation. Celis and Childs rethink and redesign representativeinstitutions, taking ideological and intersectional differences as their starting point. Inclusive, responsive, and egalitarian representation for all women demands a new category of representatives in parliaments: the "affected representatives of women," those who are epistemologically andexperientially close to differently affected women. Affected representatives advocate within political institutions and publicly hold elected representatives to account, transforming representational effects, deepening relationships between women and their democratic institutions.

Georgina Waylen

Johanna Kantola

S. Laurel Weldon

As a field of scholarship, gender and politics has exploded over the last fifty years and is now global, institutionalized, and ever expanding. The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics brings to political science an accessible and comprehensive overview of the key contributions of gender scholars to the study of politics and shows how these contributions produce a richer understanding of polities and societies. Like the field it represents, the handbook has a broad understanding of what counts as political and is based on a notion of gender that highlights masculinities as well as femininities, thereby moving feminist debates in politics beyond the focus on women. It engages with some of the key aspects of political science as well as important themes in gender and feminist research (such as sexuality and body politics), thereby forging a dialogue between gender studies in politics and mainstream political science. The handbook is organized in sections that look at sexuality and body politics; political economy; civil society; participation, representation and policymaking; institutions, states and governance as well as nation, citizenship and identity. The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics contains and reflects the best scholarship in its field.

Karen Celis

Books

Your next favorite book is out there