Lee Ann Banaszak

Why Movements Succeed or Fail: Opportunity, Culture, and the Struggle for Woman Suffrage

Wyoming became the first American state to adopt female suffrage in 1869--a time when no country permitted women to vote. When the last Swiss canton enfranchised women in 1990, few countries barred women from the polls. Why did pro-suffrage activists in the United States and Switzerland have such varying success? Comparing suffrage campaigns in forty-eight American states and twenty-five Swiss cantons, Lee Ann Banaszak argues that movement tactics, beliefs, and values are critical in understanding why political movements succeed or fail. The Swiss suffrage movements beliefs in consensus politics and local autonomy and their reliance on government parties for information limited their tactical choices--often in surprising ways. In comparison, the American suffrage movement, with its alliances to the abolition, temperance, and progressive movements, overcame beliefs in local autonomy and engaged in a wider array of confrontational tactics in the struggle for the vote.Drawing on interviews with sixty Swiss suffrage activists, detailed legislative histories, census materials, and original archival materials from both countries, Banaszak blends qualitative historical inquiry with informative statistical analyses of state and cantonal level data. The book expands our understanding of the role of political opportunities and how they interact with the beliefs and values of movements and the societies they seek to change.

CONTEXTUAL DETERMINANTS OF FEMINIST ATTITUDES: NATIONAL AND SUBNATIONAL INFLUENCES IN WESTERN EUROPE

hand, some early works on American conservatism suggest to us that status discontent may be a better explanation. We explicate these two approaches and derive a series of testable hypotheses for each. We then examine the validity of these theories utilizing data from nine European nations.

How employment affects women's gender attitudes: The workplace as a locus of contextual effects

Abstract This paper explores how womens employment context affects their attitudes towards the womens movement. Previous research finds a relationship between employment and gender attitudes. We examine three mechanisms which might account for this relationship: the social status of some occupations provides specific benefits which cause women to adopt more non-traditional attitudes; employment experiences such as entering the workforce and working in a non-traditional occupation increase feminist attitudes; and, the social networks and context acquired through employment alter traditional sex-role attitudes. A regression analysis of survey data from South Bend, Indiana, finds that experiences in male-dominated jobs and social networks with employed women significantly increase support for the womens movement.

Informal Institutions, Protest, and Change in Gendered Federal Systems

Federalism seems to play a widely varying role in maintaining or undermining gender hierarchies around the world. In 1869, for example, federalism allowed Wyoming—a new state in the United States—to enfranchise women before this happened at the national level. But in Switzerland, federalism let a recalcitrant canton disenfranchise women until the 1990s—20 years after women achieved the vote on the national level (Banaszak 1996). More generally, federal institutions are associated with widely varying policies on womens rights. Table 1 groups countries according to Lijpharts (1999, Chapter 10) three measures of federalism: a numerical summary measure (column 2), whether the country is centralized or decentralized (column 3), and a dichotomous measure of federal or unitary based on the countrys constitution (column 4). No matter which measure is used, gender equality policies vary greatly within each type of system. The wide variation within each category suggests that standard approaches to federalism give us little purchase on gender politics.

The Gendering State and Citizens' Attitudes toward Women's Roles: State Policy, Employment, and Religion in Germany

This study explores how the state genders citizens’ attitudes toward women by examining differences between East and West Germany in gender role attitudes since unification. Compared to the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was a stronger supporter of women’s employment, although the two countries did not differ greatly in their policies on women’s roles within the family. Using four waves of the German Social Survey, I examine whether East‐West differences in gender role attitudes are explained by: 1) institutional learning (socialization under a particular regime) or 2) compositional effects (variation in the distribution of causal factors, specifically women’s employment or religious affiliation). Analyses suggest that both types of factors influenced East‐West differences in gender role attitudes. Even when other characteristics are included in the model, East and West Germans continue to differ in their gender role attitudes. Women’s employment and religiosity—both heavily influenced by GDR policies—continue to play a large role in determining gender role attitudes even 15 years after unification. The results suggest that gendered state policies are reflected in citizens’ gender role attitudes both directly and through changes in the social characteristics of the population.

Do Government Positions Held by Women Matter? A Cross-National Examination of Female Ministers' Impacts on Women's Political Participation

Current research shows that female legislators serve as role models for women. Understudied is how and the extent to which female ministers inspire women to participate in politics. We argue that with their high visibility and greater ability to influence policy, female ministers also serve as role models, but their influence differs depending on the form of political engagement. Using the World Values Survey and additional national-level variables, we employ multilevel modeling techniques to explore how women in the cabinet influence various forms of womens political engagement. We find that the proportion of women in the cabinet has a stronger effect on participation than the proportion of women in parliament. All else being equal, a higher proportion of women in the cabinet increases womens conventional participation (voting and party membership), petition signing, and engagement in peaceful demonstrations, but it does not influence womens participation in strikes or boycotts. Our findings add to current studies of womens political representation, in which ministerial representation is often underexplored or not differentiated from parliamentary representation, and help distinguish various forms of participation. Future research should consider examining a wider variety of womens political roles in other areas of the political arena.

Public Opinion as a Movement Outcome: The Case of the U.S. Women's Movement*

We demonstrate that an important outcome of social movements is public opinion change, particularly in the case of the U.S. womens movement. We argue that contentious events associated with the womens movement provide informational cues that prime the public. This process then leads to changes in attitudes regarding gender. We use quarterly time series data on contentious events of the U.S. womens movement ranging from 1960 to 1992 and public opinion about gender attitudes in the United States to examine whether public opinion moves in response to social movement events. Using an error correction model, we demonstrate that social movement events have a significant effect on gender attitudes. Citizens adopt more liberal gender attitudes as the U.S. womens movement increases its activity. These results suggest that social movement scholars should be paying more attention to public opinion when assessing the outcomes of social movements.

Theorizing Feminist Policy

therefore responsibility—slip away entirely. Others might question the appropriateness of Hayward’s metaphors of “de-faced,” “faceless” power, contending that many key mechanisms of power may be the product of actions that are removed from those they affect but are not at all “faceless.” Still others might charge that Hayward’s preoccupation with the constraining effects of boundaries yields a lopsided account of power, one in which the forms of empowerment and political freedom that she exalts fail to receive the careful attention that is devoted to her exploration of power’s darker side. While an adequate examination of these important questions is beyond the scope of this review, there is no question that the central arguments of Hayward’s book deserve to be read and assessed with the same care that the author herself has invested in the articulation of them. If they are, this book will certainly keep alive vital debates about the nature of power and its role in political life. It will also take its place among the important contributions to that debate.

The Hidden Women's Movement

It is important to take the time and look both backward and forward at the womens movement: how it has influenced the past and how it is likely to be important in the future. But why do we ask this question in the first place?

Feminist Policymaking in Chile . By Liesl Haas

The election of Michelle Bachelet as president of Chile in January 2006 was heralded in the world press as an advancement of womens rights in Chile. Not only did Bachelets election increase womens representation at the highest levels, but it also raised expectations that Chile would adopt more women-friendly policies as well. Although focused on the years between the democratic transition and the election of Bachelet, Liesl Haass Feminist Policymaking in Chile speaks volumes to the questions of how and why such representation makes a difference. Although the womens movement and feminist policymaking in Chile have been well mined by gender scholars, Haas provides a different perspective, both in terms of time frame and of theoretical argument. The book is notable for its extensive documentation of the legislative process, church activism, and feminist policymaking in Chile in the posttransition era. This rich description will make it valuable to gender scholars wishing to understand the Chilean case and to Latin Americanists wishing to understand more about gender politics in Chile. But my particular interest, and my focus in this review, concerns what the book tells us about the reasons that feminist policies get adopted in a particular place at a particular point in time.