Gender and Power - Towards Equality and Democratic Governance

Despite explicit commitments to gender equality, women experience complex modes of disadvantage and discrimination in all nations of the world. Offering sophisticated insights into the persistence of gendered differences in opportunities, roles, power, and rights in societies across the globe, this volume investigates factors that both enable and constrain women's advancement. From intimate relations within families, to social norms, relations, ideologies, and structures of power, to political institutions, electoral systems, and public policies, the chapters analyze possibilities for and obstacles to inclusive democratic practices and identify interventions essential to enable democratic values to take root. Contributors from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the USA provide detailed assessments of the social, economic, and political condition of women, their mobilizations to produce transform gendered power and authority in diverse nations, and their efforts to enhance the quality of their lives, their communities, and democratic governance.


Mino Vianello (University of Rome, 'La Sapienza') has concentrated his research over the last forty years on the issue of gender and power. His pathbreaking work, Gendering Elites: Economic and Political Leadership in 27 Industrialised Societies (2000) received the Descartes Prize for the Social Sciences from the European Commission.

Mary Hawkesworth is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, USA. Her recent works include Political Worlds of Women: Activism, Advocacy, and Governance in the 21st Century (2012); War and Terror: Feminist Perspectives (2008); Globalization and Feminist Activism (2006); and Feminist Inquiry: From Political Conviction to Methodological Innovation (2006).