Introducing the Feminist Academic Critical Actor: The Subject and Analyst of FI Research

The concept of critical actors (CA) was advanced in direct response to the uncritical use of Critical Mass Theory in the real world of politics, as well as its widespread and at times inconsistent application by academics. In its original conceptualization, CA referred to elected representatives ‘who initiate policy proposals on their own and who often – but not necessarily – embolden others to take steps to promote policies for women, regardless of the number of female representatives present in a particular institution’ (Childs and Krook 2008, emphasis added). Already present in some key FI literature, I move beyond Chappell and Mackay’s (2021) concept of the Feminist Critical Friend, to introduce a new type of critical actor: the (putative) feminist academic critical actor (FACA). Rather than simply researching institutional change and supporting others in their reform work, they explicitly undertake institutional (re)design and (re)building (Celis and Childs 2020). Crudely, the FACA is (potentially) critical in the sense of being essential to instigating and instituting institutional change. In this approach the FACA becomes the subject as well as the analyst of FI research, acting to exploit potential opportunities by bringing outsider experiences and expertise inside the institution. Living an institutional life ‘of sorts’, distinct from the Member, Clerk or official, even feminist ones in a parliament – suggests new theoretical insights on institutional change, democratic design principles, and impactful research – to the ‘problem’ of a gender sensitive political institutions. The concept moreover raises importantly questions about the (potential) erasure of the feminist academic in bringing about institutional re-gendering, and hence reveals limitations in existing FI conceptual/theoretical and applied analysis. It also begs questions about the evaluation of the FACA status as an impactful academic, which may have real world consequences in academic career terms. In making the case for the FACA, this paper permits a better understanding of how parliaments became subject to institutional (re)design and (re)building, and the role played by CAs, including women MPs, male allies, and innovatively, the feminist academic critical actor.