Can Conservatives represent women? Descriptively of course, they do.
Conservative parties and organisations are increasingly feminised; conservative women sit in many of the world’s parliaments; a few women have led conservative parties; and there are, and have been, Conservative Prime Ministers. But whether these women actually stand for women, act for women and re-gender representation is likely to invite greater contestation.
Contributors to this edited collection address head-on the puzzle of conservative women who engage in gendered political representation but do so within a conservative setting. Individual chapters examine women’s participation as conservative movement and party members, supporters, candidates, leaders, legislators and ministers – in countries ranging from Europe, the US, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Turkey and Morocco. Assessment is made of the nature of their representational contribution, and the relationship they have with conservative women’s views in society.
Didier Caluwaerts is a professor of political science at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His book Confrontation and Communication: Deliberative Democracy in Divided Belgium (2012 Peter Lang) has won the 2013 ECPR Jean Blondel award. He has published in Acta Politica, Ethnopolitics, Politics, Res Publica, European Political Science Review, Government & Opposition, Journal of Elections, Public Opinion & Parties, Religion, State & Society, Journal of Public Deliberation, and West European Politics.
Rosie Campbell is lecturer in research methods at the School of Politics and Sociology, Birkbeck College, University of London. She researches gender and representation, participation and voting behaviour. She is currently involved in the British Representation Study 2005, a study of the backgrounds, attitudes and experiences of MPs and candidates.
Previous publications include Gender, Ideology and Issue Preference: Is there such a Thing as a Political Women's interest in Britain? BJPIR 6:20-46,Winning Women's Votes? The Incremental Track to Equality with Joni Lovenduski in Parliamentary Affairs, October 2005 and the electoral commission report Gender and Political Participation with Pippa Norris and Joni Lovenduski, published in 2004.
Francesco Cavatorta is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, Laval University, Quebec. His research focuses on processes of regime change in the Arab world, Islamist movements and civil society activism. He has previously published on these topics in Democratization, Journal of Modern African Studies, Government and Opposition, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Contemporary Arab Affairs, Mediterranean Politics and the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, among others.
Jennifer Curtin is an Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Her research spans the fields of comparative politics and public policy, with a focus on Australia and New Zealand, and women in politics. She has published widely on these topics including, most recently, articles on the status of women in the discipline (Political Science 2013), and on how federalism matters to domestic violence policy (co-authored in Publius 2013). In 2011, she co-edited a special issue on Coalition Formation in the journal Political Science.
Emanuela Dalmasso is a postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on Moroccan civil society actors and how they interact with the regime, and also on the role of Islamist parties and movements activism in Morocco. She has previously published on these topics in the Journal of Modern African Studies, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Contemporary Arab Affairs and Mediterranean Politics.
Silvia Erzeel is an assistant professor and postdoctoral researcher at the Political Science Department of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her research interests include political representation, political parties, gender and ethnicity and comparative politics.
Alisa Gaunder is professor of political science at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. Her research interests include comparative political leadership, campaign finance reform, and women and politics in Japan. She is the author of Political Reform in Japan: Leadership Looming Large (Routledge 2007) and editor of the Routledge Handbook of Japanese Politics (Routledge 2011).
Roberta Guerrina is Reader in Politics and Head of the School at the University of Surrey. She is a European policy analyst with a particular interest in European social policy, citizenship policy and gender equality. She has published in the area of women’s human rights, work-life balance, identity politics and the idea of Europe. She is author of Mothering the Union (Manchester University Press, 2005) and Europe: History, Ideas and Ideologies (Arnold, 2002).
Josef Hien is a postdoctoral researcher at the Collegio Carlo Alberto in Turin. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne and holds a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence. Hien is interested in the connection between political economy and religion. His thesis analysed the role of religiously informed doctrines in the formation of the German and Italian welfare states.
Johanna Kantola is Academy Research Fellow in Gender Studies at the University of Helsinki, where she also holds a permanent position as a Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies. She has published extensively on gender, politics and the state, and her monographs include Gender and the European Union (Palgrave 2010) and Feminists Theorize the State (Palgrave 2006). She is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook on Gender and Politics (OUP 2013, with Georgina Waylen, Karen Celis and Laurel Weldon) and, with Judith Squires, co-editor of Palgrave's Gender and Politics book series.
Rainbow Murray is Reader (Associate Professor) in Politics at Queen Mary University of London. Her research on gender, politics and representation has been published in journals such as the American Political Science Review, Political Research Quarterly, European Journal of Political Research and Politics & Gender. She is the author of Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France (Palgrave, 2010) and the editor of Cracking the Highest Glass Ceiling: A Global Comparison of Women’s Campaigns for Executive Office (Praeger, 2010).
Daniela R Piccio holds a PhD from the European University Institute, Florence. Since 2010 she has been a postdoctoral Research Associate at Leiden University. Her work has appeared in South European Society and Politics, Representation, and International Political Science Review, as well as in several edited book volumes. Her main research interests include political parties, political representation, social movements, and party (finance) regulation.
Jennifer M Piscopo is Assistant Professor of Politics at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. She has published widely on representation, gender quotas, and legislative institutions in Latin America, and she co-edited The Impact of Gender Quotas (Oxford University Press, 2012). She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego (2011) and an MPhil in Latin American Studies from the University of Cambridge (2003), where she was a Gates Cambridge Scholar.
Ekaterina Rashkova is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Innsbruck. Her research interests lie in electoral and party systems and the strategic behaviour of political actors, institutions, party system development, party regulation and gender representation. Her work compares new and established democracies and has appeared in Comparative European Politics, Party Politics and Political Studies, as well as in several edited book volumes.
Milja Saari is an Early Stage Researcher at the University of Helsinki, in the Department of Political and Economic Studies. The working title of her PhD dissertation is ‘Equal pay – a negotiated human right’. Her main academic fields of expertise are equal pay and gender mainstreaming. She also trains and consults organisations, especially trade unions, in conducting gender equality plans and pay surveys.
Zeynep Sahin-Mencütek is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Gediz University, Turkey. Her research focuses on women’s political activism in relation to democratisation, socio-political movements, international migration, and representation, with an emphasis on Turkey and the Middle East. She is currently examining the factors influencing women’s representation in conservative and ethno-nationalist parties. Based on her dissertation study, she is preparing a book addressing gender politics in Turkey.
Ronnee Schreiber is Professor of Political Science at San Diego State University. Her book, Righting Feminism: Conservative Women and American Politics, was published by Oxford University Press and examines how conservative women’s organisations represent women in national politics. She has also published in the Journal of Women, Politics and Policy, Journal of Urban Affairs, New Political Science, Political Communication, Politics & Gender, Queries, Sex Roles, Social History and several edited volumes. Her current research explores how women political leaders construct and represent mothers’ interests.
Réjane Sénac is a CNRS Research Fellow at the Centre for Political Research at Sciences Po (CEVIPOF) and teaches in the gender studies programme of Sciences Po (PRESAGE). Her research challenges the relationships between norms and rules, justice and public policy, with particular interest in republican equality. She has published in journals such as French Politics, Modern and Contemporary France and Revue française de science politique, and her books include L’invention de la diversité (Paris, PUF 2012).
Sarah Elise Wiliarty is an Associate Professor of Government at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. She is the author of The CDU and the Politics of Gender in Germany: Bringing Women to the Party (2010). Her research focuses on women and politics, political parties, Christian Democracy and energy policy. Her new project investigates gender differences in media coverage of politicians in Europe.
Emilia Zankina is an Assistant Professor in Political Science at the American University in Bulgaria. Her research examines democratisation and elite transformation in Eastern Europe, populism, civil service reform, and gender political representation. In the past, Zankina has served as Associate Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, Managing Editor of East European Politics and Societies, and Editor-in-Chief of the newsletter of the Bulgarian Studies Association. She is the recipient of a number of national grants from IREX, ACLS, American Councils, Wilson Center, and more.
