Feminist Political Theory and Political Science

Abstract

Feminist scholars have shown that few aspects of politics are unaffected by gender. The feminist study of politics is interdisciplinary and radical. There are three main dimensions to this critique of politics: feminist political theory which is predicated on a critique of contemporary liberalism, challenges the conventions of political theory; feminist political science, a critique of political institutions and the ways they are typically understood; and feminist accounts of gender and politics that combine explorations of gender as a category, as a hierarchy, and as performance in studies of how gender relations are implicated in power. In the study of politics, feminist use of the concept of gender involves redefinition of the split between public and private life and the re-examination of conventional political science for gender dimensions in order to construct a gender informed understanding of politics.