Role Of Women In Politics Research Articles

Women's Political Participation in Malaysia: The Non-Bumiputra's Perspective

Women's involvement in political activities in Malaysia has become apparent since 1945. While earlier, women's political roles were limited only to campaigning and voting, more recently, it is estimated that less than 5 percent of women are formally involved in politics and compete as candidates for parliamentary and state assembly seats. In the recent election of 1995, women's involvement has been relatively encouraging, as 61 women from various political parties competed as candidates. The numbers still remain quite small, constituting only 4.64 percent of the total number of candidates competing for the total number of 586 seats, both at the parliamentary (192) and state assembly (394) levels. Of the 60 women candidates, 10 were non-bumiputra women.1 This paper seeks to make a general survey of political participation among the non-bumiputra women. Aspects that are examined here include profiles of these women and the obstacles and challenges they faced while participating in the political sphere. The research reveals that the majority of women who stood for election held important posts, such as president, vice-president, state chairman, or chief of the women's wings of the political parties, prior to becoming candidates. These women also had at least a graduate degree and earlier had professional occupations, such as school and college teaching. Women members of three major parties, the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), and Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia (GRM), ate the main focus of this paper. The women had varied academic and professional backgrounds and some were housewives. The obstacles and challenges they faced in becoming candidates were closely linked to socially given notions about gender. Other significant factors affecting their political participation were religious and family background, education, and experience in the political field.

Women in Sub-Saharan Africa: Restoring Women to History

Iris Berger's essay focuses on East and southern Africa, tracing women's history from earliest times to the present. By exploring their place in social, economic, political, and religious life, Berger highlights the changing societal position of women through shifts over time in ideas about gender and the connections between women's publi and private spheres. The essay by E. Frances White examines the status and activities of women in West and Central Africa, from the earliest periods through the rise of various kingdoms and states, to the establishment of colonies and independent nations. It looks at women's participation in trade, including the slave trade, and agriculture; women's political roles in chiefship, other leadership positions, and nationalist movements; and the current constraints under which women function.

INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION: FEMINISM'S RELATIONSHIP WITH POLITICAL SCIENCE

Feminist political scientists argue that women's political roles may be best understood in terms of a split between the public and private spheres. Ignoring the private sphere predisposes politicalscience to misunderstanding the complex relationship between gender and politics. Despite interesting advances, mainstream political science does not seriously incorporate this critique and dismisses gender's importance. If political science continues to ignore feminism, it cannot gain a comprehensive understanding of politics. So, while feminist demands may change the discipline significantly, political science should consider feminism more seriously. After considering the dynamics of the relationship between feminism and political science, this article suggests ways to improve the dialogue between feminist and mainstream researchers.

Congress, Social Movements and Public Opinion: Multiple Origins of Women's Rights Legislation

Scholars often characterize congressional response to public opinion as either reflecting opinion and legislating accordingly or manipulating opinion for political ends. When the wider political environment contains an active, high-profile social movement with rapid shifts in public opinion occurring, the relationship between Congress and opinion appears to be less unidimensional than these options suggest. To test the relationship between Congress and public opinion on women's rights issues, we first coded and factor analyzed New York Times events data chronicling the degree of agitation on behalf of women's rights, 1950-86. We then compiled data examining legislative activity on laws addressing women as a group and public opinion about women's political role. These measures were used to evaluate alternative interpretations of the relationship between Congress and public opinion. Using a three-stage least squares model reinforced by several case studies of congressional activity on laws addressing women's issues, we conclude that during the time when there was an active women's movement, the relationship between Congress and public opinion was reciprocal. Congress and the women's movement competed for leadership of public opinion. Congress both led opinion and followed it, bringing about change that was swifter and less predictable than in normal periods of interest group politics.

Contemporary Native Women: Role Flexibility and Politics

Abstract: Some recent efforts to reconceptualize contemporary Native gender systems (1) argue that tribal and band political life is best understood by reference to social formations other than gender systems and (2) rely on poorly defined notions of one feature of the gender system, role flexibility. This article argues that these two issues are connected; differences in role flexibility by sex help channel the political participation of men and women. Several notions of role flexibility, each with different properties and implications for women's political role, are employed in the literature. A comparative framework of role flexibility is constructed, building on the work of Kopytoff (1991), and ethnographic examples are used to build the case that the analysis of gender (including role flexibility) is important in understanding Native women's recent successes in politics. An interesting problem in the literature on Native North Americans is understanding how aboriginal gender systems have been transformed in the post-contact period, an effort made difficult by inadequate knowledge of precontact gender systems. One key aspect of these transformations is the focus of this article: scholars have been struck by the assumption of important political and economic roles in Native communities by women in the second half of the 20th century (Albers 1989 reviews this literature). Perhaps the most visible emerging position in clarifying the connections between gender and political and economic life is to argue that gender is not necessarily useful as a category of analysis, because gender is constructed fundamentally differently in Native communities than in non-Native communities; because gender is not a super-ordinate status in Native communities; because Native communities; frequently are egalitarian and structured around kin and not gender relations; and because changes in political life and in the allocation of work are not regarded as gendered issues by Natives themselves. For example, Albers (1989:160) argued that many forms of work and leadership are not sex-typed in a fixed and narrow way. As an indication of this, she (ibid.:136) noted that Importantly, when people achieved a prestige through channels most often utilized by the opposite sex, it was not perceived as a threat to established notions of femininity or masculinity (Spindler and Spindler 1979:36-37; Whitehead 1981:104-109). Gender and other social roles are apparently not in conflict in such cases. Bourque and Warren, in describing the nature of sex roles in an egalitarian society, suggested that individual traits outweigh sex-linked traits in political life: Sex roles, to the extent that they were marked at all, would be highly flexible and individually variable. In such a society, competence, and not sex, would determine how decisions are made, resources allocated, and activities undertaken (1981:48). Initially scholars have benefited from the realization that the nature of Western gender systems, with highly partitioned male and female roles, has created difficulties in understanding fundamentally different Native systems. This realization led correctly to questioning whether an emphasis on gender in generating new explanations of Native social organization would produce the insights it has for Western societies. Such a position can mislead as well as enlighten, however, and I argue that in some communities contemporary Native political life cannot be understood without accounting first for gender, and cannot be explained adequately by reference to other social processes and institutions. This article is intended as a corrective. I do this, in part, by examining whether individual traits outweigh sex-linked traits in political life, and whether Native women have moved into new political and economic roles without drawing reactions in their communities. I suggest that in some cases debate on women's political role is not carried out publicly, but nonetheless is significant. …

Women Writers and Women Rulers: Rhetorical and Political Empowerment in the Fifteenth Century

The first prose novels in the German language have been attributed to two writers of the late Middle Ages, Elisabeth von Nassau-Saarbrücken (c. 1393-1456) and Eleonore von Österreich (1433-1480). These Early New High German texts have been typed by scholars as Trivialliteratur , a classification this essay questions. Eleonore and Elisabeth transform their source texts, chansons de geste , to increase the political role for women. I argue that the authors' own international political skill and marital experience affected their revisions. Rhetorically, women are depicted as speaking honestly, unlike the characterization of women's speech so prevalent in medieval misogynistic texts. Finally, this essay suggests future theoretical approaches for analyzing these works. (SSM)

Toward the study of women and politics in the Arab world: The debate and the reality

This article deals with the subject of political roles of women in the Arab world. It argues that, while the conditions of women are not uniform in the region, there are some general common factors that inhibit women’s participation in the political process. The article also addresses the subject of Islamic determinants—or lack thereof—of the status of women in Arab society. An analysis of the feminist debate is presented, and some trends are identified. The analysis focuses on the interaction between Islam and culture in an attempt to determine the role of each in the oppression of women. A critique of the antifeminist and “Islamic feminist’ viewpoints is included. The article offers some methodological suggestions for the comparative study of women and politics in the Arab world, with special emphasis on: voting, legalistic/constitutional method, informal vs. formal politics, and the impact of modernization. The conclusion is predicated on the belief in the limitations of a feminist struggle within the parameters of religion, any religion—in this case Islam.

Morals, Manners, and the Republican Mother

ONE OF THE MOST PROVOCATIVE IDEAS TO EMERGE FROM THE RECENT historiography of Revolutionary era is concept of Mother. Originally articulated by contemporaries such as Benjamin Rush and Judith Sargent Murray, republican motherhood affirmed that women had a profound influence on political values of American Republic. As wives and mothers, women were seen to make an essential, though indirect, contribution to body politic. According to Linda Kerber, historian who coined term, the Republican Mother's life was dedicated to service of civic virtue: she educated her sons for it, she condemned and corrected her husband's lapses from it. 1 Republican motherhood preserved traditional gender roles at same time that it carved out a new, political role for women. Despite brilliance of Kerber's insight, no one has yet offered a completely satisfactory explanation for intellectual origins of republican motherhood. Mary Beth Norton, Jan Lewis, and Ruth Bloch have all examined aspects of women's experience in late eighteenthcentury America, but have given relatively little attention to question of intellectual antecedents. 2 Kerber has provided most extended analysis. In her book, Women of Republic, and in several articles,

The Role of Women in Iroquoian Society

Three primary sources (Gabriel Sagard, Joseph-Francois Lafitau and Lewis Henry Morgan) written in three different centuries are consulted to discover what information they contain on the economic, social and political role of women in Iroquoian society. This information is analyzed with respect to its reliability and credibility. Recent interpretations of the ethnohistoric record (Brown, Tooker and Trigger), as well as the primary sources are considered in terms of the role of women in the authors' societies. These sources show that the role of Iroquoian women changed over time; however, the record may have been influenced by the role of women in the authors' societies at the time.

Retrieving Women's History: Changing Perceptions of the Role of Women in Politics and Society

(1990). Retrieving Women's History: Changing Perceptions of the Role of Women in Politics and Society. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 89-90.

Retrieving Women's History: Changing Perceptions of the Role of Women in Politics and Society

Edited by S. Jay Kleinberg This volume investigates the role played by women in ancient, more recent and contemporary history and demonstrates that taking into account the activities of women radically alters the perspectives of historians.

Retrieving women's history: changing perceptions of the role of women in politics and society

Retrieving women's history: changing perceptions of the role of women in politics and society

Adolescents' Attitudes toward Women in Politics:

Recent studies of political attitudes have documented increasing support for women political candidates among college students and adults. This study examined junior and senior high school student's attitudes toward women in politics and analyzed the effect of gender and race on their attitudes. We found that adolescent girls had very positive and optimistic views of the role of women in politics; adolescent boys, particularly blacks, had more negative and pessimistic views.

Economic Development and Sex Differences in Political Participation

This study investigates the hypothesis that certain processes associated with economic development (urbanization, industrialization, increasing affluence, and increasing education) promote smaller sex differences in political participation. Two underlying assumptions are also tested, namely, that economic development stimulates: (1) the more equitable distribution of resources for political participation and (2) more egalitarian attitudes concerning women's political role. The data are derived from national election surveys of seven nations: the United States, Great Britain, Norway, France, Italy, and Japan. Eight different facets of campaign activity constitute the measures of political participation. The results only partially support the hypothesis and the two corollaries.

Women and politics: case of the Kham Magar of western Nepal

Current anthropological studies of women in South Asia recognize that women play a more significant role in community decisions and local politics than was previously believed. Such participation in rural areas tends to be informal, that is, outside the formal political institutions. This paper investigates the entrance of women in a Kham Magar community in Nepal into the public arena to protest a ban on the sale of local liquor. The case sheds light on the dynamics of these women's political roles and on future trends in their involvement in politics. [women and politics, formal/informal participation, political anthropology, women's roles, Nepal, Kham Magar]

If U.S. Senator Baker Were A Woman: An Experimental Study of Candidate Images

About five percent of American political office holders are women. On this indicator of women's status, the United States approximates the worldwide norm (Putnam, 1976). A central research question for those who study women's political roles is why, given the lack of legal or obvious structural barriers to recruitment of female elites, are women still so underrepresented among political officials. The literature on women and politics offers a number of plausible answers.

Changing Women's Roles in Political Volunteerism and Reform of the City

Any description of women's political role in nineteenthand twentiethcentury America must begin with one major premise: in national and municipal electoral political organizations, the role of women has been marginal. Male politicians have dominated parties and machines in American cities, as the urban middle classes and financial and commercial elites charted the direction of urban growth-sometimes in conflict with each other, sometimes in unison. During that growth, cities developed different modes of urbanization in order to assimilate and control the poor and working-class populations that were their base. Unfortunately, the specificity of what role women did play in the politics of cities has been lost to us in two ways. Historians of the Progressive era, the high-water mark of women's urban reform activity, have tended to collapse women's contributions into the general category of urban reformers. Next, feminist historians have tended to focus on the suffragists' struggle for the acquisition of formal legal and political rights. In this essay, we wish to change that emphasis. Although excluded from the centers of urban power, women led urban reform movements. We are interested in describing and analyzing who participated in these movements, under what circumstances, and the strategies, tactics, and substantive issues they chose. Women who could not participate directly in the political life of the city historically used the voluntary association as a channel for their interests and energies. Probably the earliest important role played by women in urban voluntary associations was as the dedicated army of urban-morality foot soldiers1 fighting urban vice in the 1820s and

Sappho revisited: a new look at lesbianism

The main purpose of this article is to aid an understanding of the lesbian issue; it helps lay the foundations for future insights into the relationship between lesbianism and feminism. The article presents ideas which have developed from a 4-year research study on a particular group of lesbians in a specific metropolitan area, London, and it would be inadvisable to make generalizations from this group to all lesbians. The data for the research consists of interviews, questionnaires and observations of the group. The theory which is put forward is by no means conclusive. Since the completion of the research study arid with the advancement of ideas which have emerged within the women's liberation movement, many changes have occurred within lesbian groups (both the ‘closet≐ and the ‘out≐ types) and within the attitudes of feminists towards lesbianism. Not all feminists are lesbians and not all lesbians are feminists and both the inclusive and exclusive nature of the relationship between these two groups must be kept in mind; it would be naive and fallacious to assume that lesbians who are not feminists are simply women who have not come ‘far enough≐ and it would be equally naive and fallacious to assume that feminists who are not lesbians are in the same category of women who have not come ‘far enough≐. What is needed is an exploration of the reasons for women making the decisions that they do. The tentative theory which is put forward in this paper presents lesbianism in relation to the social organization of power and sexuality in a patriarchal capitalist society. As a complex social issue, lesbianism is just one aspect of women's sexuality; with the development of women's consciousness, the sexual and political roles of women appear to be closely linked. Along with this rise of women's consciousness, some lesbians too have acquired a type of social awareness: social lesbianism. This form of lesbian consciousness develops in response to a society which demarcates social roles between men and women. Social lesbianism may be viewed as a group response to this demarcation process; in effect, social lesbians emerge from personal isolation and create lesbian politics in the social arena. Through social lesbianism they can become a well defined group and can challenge some of the power configurations of society. Their unique contribution can contradict not only social norms but also the traditional roles of both lesbians and women.

Women and Political Leadership in Mexico: A Comparative Study of Female and Male Political Elites

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP HAS begun to pay closer attention to the political role of women. However, the existing information on this subject is, for the most part, from political cultures with predominantly English or West European groups, and women in political leadership of the more traditional developing countries have received very little attention. Furthermore, most studies examine mass female roles, particularly focusing on women's knowledge and interest in governmental affairs. The following is an effort to close this gap by providing information on the role of women as leaders in Mexican politics. Such a study, in general terms, might suggest what role, if any, women would play in changing government policies once they reach leadership positions. Mexico is a useful country to examine because it represents the stereotype of masculine supremacy, social cleavages, and authoritarian politics predominant in many countries. The purpose of this article is to examine briefly the literature available on Mexican women in general, and their political roles in particular. Further, I will suggest several hypotheses concerning the political role of women on the basis of this literature and studies

Role De‐Differentiation as a System Response to Crisis: Occupational and Political Roles of Women*

The relationship between crisis and role change is examined in terms of a three‐stage model of role development: differentiation, de‐differentiation, and reconfiguration. Crisis is conceptualized as a sufficient but not necessary condition of rapid and significant role change. Trends in occupational and political roles of women during and after World War II are presented as empirical support of the theoretical framework.