In person icon Gender and the Executive

Abstract

Papers and titles: Karen Beckwith (Case Western Reserve) ‘Comparing Women’s Executive Success and Failure’ Jennifer Curtin (Auckland) ‘Women and Executive Appointment: Symbolic or substantive outcomes?’ Susan Franceschet (Calgary) ‘Studying Women’s Impact in Different Political Arenas’ Fiona Mackay (Edinburgh) ‘Gender and the Scottish Executive’ The international, comparative scholarship on gender and politics has to date focused predominantly on the presence and impact of women in parliament (Childs 2004, Dahlerup 2006) and women’s policy agencies (McBride Stetson and Mazur 2005, Outshoorn and Kantola 2007), as well as opportunities provided for feminist women by federal political systems (Chappell 2002, Hausmann, Sawer and Vickers 2010) and devolution (Mackay 2006). Gender and politics scholars have identified the need to broaden the analysis to a range of political actors in different institutional sites (e.g. Celis et al 2008), but further theoretical and empirical work is required. In parliamentary systems, executive government – the cabinet system or the core executive – is identified as the primary locus of political power and the driver of policy change (Smith 1999, Weller 2007). Yet research on the (under)recruitment of women to executive government as prime ministers, ministers, senior bureaucrats and special advisors, as well as their capacity to operate in that site remains underdeveloped (but see Annesley and Gains 2010, Bauer and Tremblay, forthcoming, Davies 1997, Jalalzai 2008). Similarly, little has been written on the crucial relationship between the presence of women / feminists in the core executive and policies to promote gender equality (but see Annesley and Gains 2010, Atchison and Down 2009, Curtin 2008). This panel brings together four of the best contributions on gender and the executive and in so doing makes a theoretical and empirical contribution to the developing scholarship. Keywords: Executive, gender, policy change References: Annesley, C. and Gains, F. (2010) ‘The Core Executive: Gender, Power and Change’, Political Studies doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2010.00824.x Atchison, A. and Down, I. (2009) ‘Women Cabinet Ministers and Family-Friendly Social Policy’ Poverty and Public Policy 1(2). Bauer, G. and Tremblay, M. (2011 forthcoming) Women in Executives: a global overview London: Routledge. Celis, K., Childs, S., Kantola, J. and Krook, M. (2008) ‘Rethinking Women’s Substantive Representation’, Representation, 44 (2), 99–110. Chappell, L. (2002) Gendering Government. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Childs, S. (2004) New Labour’s Women. London: Routledge. Curtin, J. (2008) ‘Women, Political Leadership and Substantive Representation: the case of New Zealand’ Parliamentary Affairs 61(3), 490-504. Davis, R. H. (1997) Women and Power in Parliamentary Demcoracies, University of Nebraska Press Hausmann, M. Sawer, M. and Vickers, J. (eds) (2010) Federalism, Feminism and Multilevel Governance London: Ashgate Jalalzai, F. (2008) ‘Women Rule’, Politics and Gender, 4 (3), 205–31. Mackay, F. (2006) ‘Descriptive and Substantive Representation in New Parliamentary Spaces’, in M. Sawer, M. Tremblay and L. Trimble (eds), RepresentingWomen in Parliament. London: Routledge, pp. 171–87. McBride Stetson, D. and Mazur, A. (eds) (1995) Comparative State Feminism. London: Sage. Outshoorn, J. and Kantola, J. (eds) (2007) Changing State Feminism. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Smith, M. J. (1999) The Core Executive in Britain. London: Macmillan. Weller, P. (2007) Cabinet Government in Australia, 1901-2006 Sydney, University of New South Wales.

Title	Details
Gendering Governance, Practicing Gender: Every day Life at the Top in British Government	View Paper Details
Women in Politics in Post-Communist Romania. A Case Study on Cabinets Between 1990 and 2010	View Paper Details
Women in the Polish Executive: Gender and Politics in a New Democracy	View Paper Details
Views from ‘Above the Glass Ceiling’: Women Elites, Gender Power and Political Office	View Paper Details
Studying Women’s Impact in Different Political Arenas	View Paper Details