State Ranking in International Society and the Spread of Norms: Women’s Suffrage, National Women’s Bureaus, and Legislature Sex Quotas

Abstract

Women and States: Norms and Hierarchies in International Society. By Ann E. Towns. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 249 pp., $32.99 paperback (ISBN: 978-0-521-74591-8). How can we account for the emergence and spread of women's suffrage, national women's bureaus, and legislature sex quotas? How do these three areas relate to states' rankings and status in the international system? How can we understand the process of stratification and differentiation among states in the international system through the lens of women's rights? Ann E. Towns's book, Women and States: Norms and Hierarchies in International Society , provides the answers to these questions and others, offering an important contribution to the literature in international relations (IR) through the application of a constructivist approach and the use of a gender analysis. As Towns asserts, in seeking “to understand and explain the spread of certain state practices towards women, this book points to the importance of the status of women as a standard of rank in international society” (p. 1). Its contribution to the field of IR, therefore, is through an examination of state behavior, particularly state behavior toward women within the state. Challenging the conventional wisdom “that the political empowerment of women is a practice stemming from Europe or North America,” her evidence shows that these practices have sometimes originated from countries in other regions (p. 9). Towns explores the connection between a state's rank in the international hierarchy of states and the state's treatment of women, issues not well addressed by IR scholars (p. 4). She examines the changes and transformations in three areas that deal with states' treatment of women: women's suffrage, establishment of national women's bureaus (or NWM, national women's machinery), and legislature sex quotas. In looking at the development and evolution of the treatment of women within states, Towns argues that we can discern how states rank in the international hierarchy of states. She also …