Full Description
Caught between their female gender and their aspirations in a public sphere founded on the gender role of men, women face a problem that is more intractable than conventional feminist political analysis has fully recognized. In this book, Jennifer Chapman addresses both the substance of the problem and feminist strategies for change.
Male dominance of political elites is virtually universal and yet there is no general theory of recruitment to account for this. Jennifer Chapman uses a rigorous comparative study of political recruitment to show why different models of the process among men produce near-identical results, irrespective of context. She then looks beyond this general pattern to its gender basis, and to strategies for change.
Contents
Part 1 1 GENDER AND RECRUITMENT: THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM 2 MAJOR PARTIES AND RECRUITMENT: THE USA, SCOTLAND AND THE USSR 3 CHANGING THE SELECTORS: NON-PARTISAN RECRUITMENT 4 MINOR PARTIES AND THE GENDER PATTERN Part 2 5 THE RISE OF FEMINISM AND THE PARAMETERS OF CHANGE 6 EQUAL RIGHTS AND SOCIALIST FEMINISM 7 FEMINISM IN PRACTICE: NATIONALIST FINLAND AND REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA 8 GENDER THEORY AND FEMINIST STRATEGY 9 WEST GERMAN GREENS, NORWEGIAN FEMINISTS AND THE ICELANDIC KWENNALISTINN 10 CONCLUSION
