Sally J. Kenney

New Research on Gendered Political Institutions

This essay reviews four texts that analyze women in political institutions in order to develop a more general theory of gendered institutions. Scholar ship on women in political institutions will be advanced by continuing to look beyond the confines of the traditional subfields of political science, drawing on interdisciplinary work in feminist theory, critical race theory, and the sociology of work. Gender should be theorized, not as a word that is interchangeable with sex, but as a continuous, variable, and tenacious process that, while usually leading to womens disadvantage, is challenged, negotiated, subverted, and resisted. Such scholarship should explore how masculinity, work, and politics are intertwined.

Where Is Gender in Agenda Setting

Abstract Why do some issues surge to the forefront of our attention while others languish in obscurity? Feminist scholars have explored the emergence of issues such as rape, battering, no-fault divorce, pay equity, and other womens issues on the public agenda. Despite a burgeoning body of literature on feminist social movements within history, political science, and sociology over the last twenty-five years, scholars of agenda setting, public policy, and American politics more generally have largely ignored this work. Not surprisingly, this research cannot be simply added in to the dominant agenda setting theoretical paradigm; rather, the findings disrupt conventional understandings. This essay critiques two canonical works, Kingdons Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies(1995) and Baumgartner and Joness Agendas and Instability in American Politics(1993), and discusses exemplary feminist research. It argues that if we want to know how norms change we need to broaden our scope beyond political elites and interest groups to include social movements and newly politicized grassroots activists. We must see change as produced by networks of insiders and outsiders rather than exclusively caused by elites in formal positions. Feminist scholarship also takes seriously the discursive and emotional aspects of politics rather than utilizing a narrow pluralist framework. Moreover, it recognizes the important yet neglected role of law as both an arena and a discourse.

Thinking about gender and judging

Reviewing the work of three political scientists who studied women judges provides an opportunity for rethinking the concept of gender and how to do gender-based research. Scholarship on women judges sometimes veers toward an essentialist view of women and gender differences, despite empirical evidence to the contrary. A close reading of this early work reveals some essentialist missteps but also offers strong examples of research across many methodologies that should serve as exemplars for current research across disciplines. If we move beyond the question of whether women decide cases differently from men, using sex as a variable, like other gender-based research strategies, can provide useful feminist insights.

Breaking the Silence: Gender Mainstreaming and the Composition of the European Court of Justice

Why has it taken so long for member states to appoint women to the Court of Justice? Despite having won relatively significant policy instruments for equal treatment at work and high levels of legislative representation, women in the European Union have been slow to extend the demand for gender mainstreaming to courts. Prior to 1999, the Court of Justice had had one woman member until Ireland appointed Fidelma Macken in late 1999, and Germany appointed Ninon Colneric and Austria appointed Christine Stix-Hackl Advocate General in 2000.The 1995 U.N. meeting in Beijing was a catalyst for the demand for balanced participation of women and men in decision-making processes within the E.U., and it coincided with Sweden, Finland and Austria joining and championing the cause of gender equality. In 1999, the Commission published a report on women in the judiciary and women lawyers began to organize across Europe. After tracing the appointment process, I review the European Parliaments role in championing women on the Court and consider recent developments. Courts, particularly supranational and federal courts, are representative institutions even if their representative function differs from legislatures. Non-merit factors have always been a factor in judicial appointments and thus the demand for women on the bench is not a terrible deviation from merit. An all male bench is no longer legitimate.

Gender and justice : why women in the judiciary really matter

1. Introduction: Gender as a Social Process 2. Gender, Judging, and Difference 3. Mobilizing Emotions: The Case of Rosalie Wahl and the Minnesota Supreme Court 4. Strategic Partnerships and Women on the Federal Bench 5. Gender on the Agenda: Lessons from the United Kingdom 6. A Case for Representation: the European Court of Justice 7. Backlash Against Women Judges 8. Conclusion: Drawing on the History of Womens Exclusion from Juries to Make the Case for Women Judges

Beyond principals and agents: Seeing courts as organizations by comparing référendaires at the European Court of Justice and law clerks at the U.S. Supreme Court

Scholars have long recognized the importance of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) as an active court and an engine of European integration. Few, however, have peered inside the black box of the institution to look at the individuals who do the work or to analyze the ECJ as an organization. Law clerks at the ECJ, called référendaires, are drawn from the ranks of lawyers, legal academics, legal administrators, and judges. They provide valuable legal and linguistic expertise, ease the workload of their members, participate in oral and written interactions between cabinets, and provide continuity as members rapidly change. Although they have more power than their counterparts in the United States Supreme Court, they are not the puppeteers of the members, but their agents. Focusing on the purported unchecked power of clerks distracts us from examining the important institutional consequences of changes in workload or an expansion of members.

Gender on the Agenda: How the Paucity of Women Judges Became an Issue

Analyzing how the virtual absence of women in high judicial office in the United Kingdom came to concern policy makers expands our understanding of agenda setting. By identifying the idiosyncratic barriers that impeded diffusion of innovation, this case suggests that an issue may get on the governmental agenda and policy change occur without a threshold groundswell of support or consensus that one sees in more typical cases. Policy change may help more to produce a consensus after the fact than reflect it. This case also seems exceptional for both feminist policy change and change driven by legal mobilization in that a very few uncoordinated actors made the difference. The agents of change in this case linked their cause to other governmental priorities as key personnel changed. Litigation provided one vehicle for this discursive work.

Measuring Women’s Judicial Empowerment as Part of Political Empowerment

Scholars and activists measuring women’s political empowerment have consistently ignored the judiciary. Studying women’s judicial representation comparatively, within and between countries as well as within supranational institutions, shows how adaptive women are in developing strategies that fit their political culture, even those cultures that seem to have built-in headwinds to women’s equality. I consider three case studies, Egypt, Kenya, and the state of Louisiana. Women’s political empowerment is a process rather than a discrete point. (We must do far more than knit together scholars and keep track of numbers, quotas or gender balance requirements, and troubling episodes.) We need a sustained political movement to focus attention on courts.

The Politics of Sexual Harassment: A Comparative Study of the United States, the European Union, and Germany

The Politics of Sexual Harassment: A Comparative Study of the United States, the European Union, and Germany. By Kathrin S. Zippel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 274p.

Equal Employment Opportunity and Representation: Extending the Frame to Courts

80.00 cloth,