Karen Beckwith

A common language of gender

Is there a common language of gender in political science research? One might expect the answer to be no , given the wide range of ways in which scholars employ the concept of gender in empirical and theoretical research. I maintain, however, that a common language of gender does exist and that we must articulate it in explicit terms in order to advance the way we build knowledge in this field. In this contribution to “Critical Perspectives on Gender and Politics,” I suggest two ways in which to employ “gender” as part of a common language that the subfield can employ for the purposes of empirical political research: gender as a category and as a process.

Sheer Numbers: Critical Representation Thresholds and Women's Political Representation

Studies of women in legislatures indicate that achieving a “critical mass” of women may have the effect of changing the legislative priorities of women, increasing the number of legislative initiatives dealing with women and the passage rate of such initiatives, and altering the legislative priorities of men. In the absence of a critical mass, “token” women may be so constrained by their minority status as to be unable to respond proactively to their environment. Popular wisdom suggests that a critical mass may be necessary for women to make a difference as women in a legislature. Yet, critical mass is both problematic and under-theorized in political science research. The critical mass threshold is debated, the mechanism of effect is unspecified, possible negative consequences are overlooked, and the potential for small numbers of elected women to effect political change on behalf of women is neglected. Beyond sheer numbers, what are the conditions that govern the ability of women legislators to make a difference? We argue that two major contextual factors beyond the sheer numbers are likely to govern the extent to which female legislators serve to represent women. Relying on the secondary literature, this article maps parliamentary and civil society contexts to sheer numbers of women to locate conditions in which female legislators are most likely to have policy successes. Karen Beckwith is the Flora Stone Mather Professor of Political Science at Case Western Research University and Editor, with Lisa Baldez, of Politics & Gender ( karen.beckwith@case.edu ). Her published work includes Womens Movements Facing the Reconfigured State (Cambridge 2003, with Lee Ann Banaszak and Dieter Rucht), Political Women and American Democracy (forthcoming, with Christina Wolbrecht and Lisa Baldez), and articles on gender and politics in the European Journal of Political Research , Politics & Society , and Signs , among others. Kimberly Cowell-Meyers is Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at American University ( kcowell@american.edu ). She is author of Religion and Politics: The Party Faithful in Ireland and Germany (Greenwood, 2002) and articles published in Women & Politics, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics , and Irish Political Studies among others. She has worked in the British Parliament and the United States Institute of Peace.

Lancashire Women against Pit Closures: Women's Standing in a Men's Movement

N OCT O B E R 13, 1992, Michael Heseltine, a member of British Prime Minister John Majors cabinet and secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry, announced that British Coal would close thirty-one of the remaining fifty deep coal mines in Britain, with an immediate loss of thirty thousand mining jobs and an additional seventy thousand jobs in related trade and industry.1 As part of the governments pit-closure program, the normal appeals

Gender Frames and Collective Action: Configurations of Masculinity in the Pittston Coal Strike

This article develops the concept of gender frame for understanding major transformations in the collective action repertoires of social movements. Focusing on the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) strike against the Pittston Coal Group (1989-90), the article discusses the UMWAs traditional collective action repertoire and its innovation of nonviolent protest, widely employed during the strike. Interviews with major activists and UMWA staff and officers illustrate how the UMWA employed a gender frame of mining masculinities to initiate the new nonviolent strike action. The article concludes by suggesting how collective action repertoires and framing are linked and encouraging future research on gender frames in social movements.

The Comparative Politics of Women's Movements

The comparative study of womens movements is developing within the political science subfield of women and politics, largely by drawing on concepts and findings from several disciplines. From political science it borrows theories of the state, political development, democracy, and democratization. Sociology offers insights on social movements and the gendered nature of societies. Womens studies scholarship enables us to understand systematic gendered arrangements of power and privilege, including those fragmented or reinforced by class, race, sexuality, and ethnicity. The subfield of women and politics contributes both feminist theoretical insights and scholarship on elected women, female leaders, and womens policy preferences; these contributions inform comparative research on womens movements. Karen Beckwith is a professor of political science at the College of Wooster (kbeckwith@wooster.edu). She is coeditor, with Lee Ann Banaszak and Dieter Rucht, of Womens Movements Facing the Reconfigured State and author of American Women and Political Participation. Beckwith is the founding editor, with Lisa Baldez, of Politics & Gender , the journal of the Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association. The author thanks Jeff Lantis and Kent Kille for extensive comments on earlier versions of this article.

A Comparative Politics of Gender Symposium Introduction: Comparative Politics and the Logics of a Comparative Politics of Gender

This symposium is the culmination of work that began in October 2007, when fourteen scholars from Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States convened at Case Western Reserve University to participate in the research conference Toward a Comparative Politics of Gender: Advancing the Discipline along Interdisciplinary Boundaries. The conference was funded by a Presidential Initiative Grant from the University and further supported by an ACES grant. Dr. Gregory Eastwood made available the Library of the Inamori Center for Ethnics and Excellence for our conference meetings. Many thanks to Linda Gilmore, Tonae Bolton-Dove, Gail Papay, Shelley White, and Sharon Skowronski for their expert administrative support. Professors Dorothy Miller (Womens Studies), Rosalind Simson (Philosophy, Law and Womens Studies), and Kelly McMann (Political Science and International Studies) served as discussants of the conference papers. To Theda Skocpol, who presented remarks at the opening dinner of the conference, and to the scholars who participated in the CPG conference and whose contributions are included in this symposium, I offer my deepest appreciation and gratitude. What do we mean by a comparative politics of gender? How would a comparative politics of gender advance our understanding of politics generally? What would it take to develop a gendered comparative political analysis? In the essays that follow, Teri Caraway, Louise Chappell, Leslie Schwindt-Bayer, and Aili Mari Tripp elaborate their understandings of a comparative politics of gender. Five additional essays focus specifically on issues of democratization (Lisa Baldez, Georgina Waylen), political institutions and representation (Mili Caul Kittilson, Mona Lena Krook), and comparative sex equality policies (Mala Htun and Laurel Weldon). In this introductory essay, I discuss what I mean by “gender” in the context of comparative politics. Briefly enumerating the advantages of comparative politics as a subfield for a gendered analysis of political phenomena, I discuss how a comparative politics of gender can serve to advance our understanding of politics generally, and I provide an example of subfield research—the study of political violence—where gender as a metaconcept may be particularly useful. I conclude by considering what it would mean to our study of gender and of comparative politics to place gender as a central concept in comparative political research and to move to a comparative politics of gender.

Collective Identities of Class and Gender: Working-Class Women in the Pittston Coal Strike

This article investigates the intersections and tensions between two collective identities, those of class and gender, for working-class women involved in supporting the 1989-1990 strike against Pittston Coal Group in southwestern Virginia. In the case of this year-long (and ultimately successful) strike, women were organized by United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) staff in strike support activities, but they also sought to organize themselves as women. The tensions between their identity as members of the working class and their identity as women are revealed by examining their forms of activism, their relationship with the UMWA, the divisions between groups of activist women, and the articulation of women s involvement in the strike. The experiences of these women are briefly compared with womens activism in the 1984-1985 British Coal strike. The article concludes by arguing that collective identity is best understood as it emerges in response to specific contexts.

Feminism and leftist politics in Italy: The case of UDI‐PCI relations

(1985). Feminism and leftist politics in Italy: The case of UDI‐PCI relations. West European Politics: Vol. 8, Women and Politics in Western Europe, pp. 19-37.

Narratives of Defeat: Explaining the Effects of Loss in Social Movements

Loss in social movement campaigns is commonplace; as in any political contestation, some parties win and some lose. For social movements, the costs of defeat can be enormous, yet such defeats rarely result in the demise of the movement itself. Instead, social movement activists who lose persist in their efforts and engage in repeated attempts to achieve their goals—often, to achieve the same goals. How do losers persevere? One answer to this question may be found in the narratives of defeat articulated by a social movement after loss. This article develops the concept of a narrative of defeat and presents a typology of defeat narratives to hypothesize about how narratives of defeat might effect remobilization efforts, using examples from labor movements in Great Britain and the United States. The article concludes with reflections on the strategic utility of narratives of defeat and suggestions for further research.

Women, Gender, and Nonviolence in Political Movements

innovated with passive resistance; the U.S. black civil rights movement employed nonviolent civil disobedience as its major collective action; and peace and environmental movements in the 1980s and 1990s have employed nonviolent tactics. The ties between womens movements and nonviolence, however, are notable insofar as nonviolent tactics predominate in the collective action repertoires of womens movements (Rucht forthcoming). Because nonviolent tactics prevail, they are more visibly connected to those movements.