Gender, Political Power, and the State: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

Abstract

This panel focuses on gender, political power and the state from historical and contemporary perspectives. Two papers address the transnational intellectual history of feminist political thought and women’s political subjectivity. One examines Danish suffragette periodicals to analyse transnational exchanges and the framing of struggles in other countries, while the other continues the debate about women’s suffrage by looking at how political parties positioned themselves when confronted with proposals to extend voting right and how they navigated the dilemma between satisfying existing constituencies and anticipating future electorates. The other two papers explore different phenomena from a long-term perspective. The first explores the drivers behind the gendered effects of British welfare reform over the past 40 years. The second examines different approaches to reproductive rights in socialist Yugoslavia and revisiting socialist state feminism, reconsidering socialist state feminism and contrasting contemporary rights-based understandings of reproductive freedom with Yugoslavia’s broader framework of reproductive autonomy grounded in social, economic and healthcare provisions. Taken together, the papers examine how political parties, social movements and states have negotiated gendered forms of citizenship, participation and autonomy across different historical contexts.

Title	Details
Suffrage as a Party System Issue: Party Strategies in the Politics of Voting Rights Extension	View Paper Details
On reproductive autonomy: reconsidering the case of Socialist Yugoslavia from the standpoint of contemporary debates	View Paper Details
Gendered Images of Welfare?: The Representation of Women and Gender in Welfare Speeches in the UK House of Commons 1979-2019	View Paper Details
Transnational Feminism and Women as Political Subjects as Framed in Danish Suffragette Periodicals 1907-1915	View Paper Details