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Gender In Politics, Sheri L. Kunovich, Pamela Paxton, Melanie M. Hughes

Sociology Research

Women’s political participation and representation vary dramatically within and between countries. We selectively review the literature on gender in politics, focusing on women’s formal political participation.

We discuss both traditional explanations for women’s political participation and representation, such as the supply of women and the demand for women, and newer explanations such as the role of international actors and gender quotas. We also ask whether women are distinctive—does having more women in office make a difference to public policy? Throughout the review we demonstrate that a full understanding of women’s political representation requires both deep knowledge of individual cases such …

Can Developing Women Create Primitive Art? And Other Questions Of Value, Meaning And Identity In The Circulation Of Janakpur Art, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

In this article, I examine the values and meanings that adhere to objects made by Maithil women at a development project in Janakpur, Nepal – objects collectors have called ‘Janakpur Art’. I seek to explain how and why changes in pictorial content in Janakpur Art – shifts that took place over a period of five or six years in the 1990s – occurred, and what such a change might indicate about the link between Maithil women’s lives, development, and tourism. As I will demonstrate, part of the appeal for consumers of Janakpur Art has been that it is produced at …

Women In New England Politics, Paige Ransford, Carol Hardy-Fanta, Anne Marie Cammisa

New England Journal of Public Policy

This essay addresses a serious deficiency in the literature on women and politics in the United States today: the lack of attention to regional variation and, more specifically, the absence of research on women’s representation in New England. This deficiency is particularly troubling since political analysts of all stripes typically portray New England as imbued with ideological, individual, and structural characteristics likely to lead to rates of political representation higher than the nation as a whole. This essay provides a brief history of women in politics for New England as a whole; describes the current status of women at congressional, …

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

In 1990, the New England Journal of Public Policy published a special issue on Women. The subject was women & economic empowerment. The authors found that while women had made significant gains during the 1970s and 1980s in many spheres relating to the workplace, true equity with respect to their male peers was still elusive, and gender bias, despite remedial legislation, continued to be the acceptable norm.

Seventeen years on, another group of women, under the direction of guest editor Sherry H. Penney, herself a contributor to the 1990 journal, looks anew at some of these issues and expands the …

Madame Chair, Jean Miles Westwood

All USU Press Publications

The late Jean Westwood called herself an unintentional pioneer. She did not actively seek or expect to reach what was arguably the most powerful political position any American woman had ever held, chair of the Democratic National Committee. A Utah national committeewoman who time and again had demonstrated her ability to organize effectively and campaign hard, as well as her devotion to reform, Westwood answered George McGovern's call to lead his presidential campaign. In the dramatic year of 1972, she became the first woman to chair a national political party, McGovern lost in a landslide, Nixon was reelected, and a …

Exploring Universal Rights: A Symposium, Jamie Mayerfeld, Brooke Ackerly, Henry Shue, Jack Donnelly, Kok-Chor Tan, Charles Beitz

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Which Rights Should Be Universal? by William J. Talbott. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2005. 232pp.