ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines competing explanations for the continuing underrepresentation of women in elective offices. It draws on feminist social science, particularly Joni Seager's Atlas of Women in the World to illuminate the vast differences that characterize women's lives in various regions of the world. The book provides a very different account of the liberal democratic nation-state—an account that emerges when race, gender, and sexuality are included in the analysis. It discusses the politics of intimacy, the microphysics of power, and the politics of identity beyond the United States. The book examines the contours of women's activism to engage the state, considering how different kinds of regime affected women's strategies of engagement. It explores the question of women's political leadership within the nation-state, investigating the challenges women confront when they assume the mantle of state power.
