ABSTRACT
From the classic works of Western political theory to empirical analyses of contemporary political life, politics has been construed as male terrain. Although the absence of women from practices of governance, decision making, and collective determination was variously attributed to women’s biological incapacity, intellectual inferiority, lack of interest, or lack of qualifications, it was seldom linked to institutional contexts that enable and constrain individual action or structural forces that ensure that all individuals are not equally unfettered subjects. The field of gender and politics research was launched to challenge received views of women’s political engagement. Interrogating works of political theory, comparative politics, international relations, and public policy, feminist scholars have investigated women’s political experiences in relation to men’s, identifying pervasive androcentric bias in established claims about the political world and offering alternative accounts. Feminist approaches to the study of politics have raised a host of questions concerning the nature and extent of women’s political participation, the omission and distortion of women’s political activism in traditional political studies, and the accuracy of long-accepted theories of politics that are premised on the experiences of only half the human population. By incorporating women into their analyses, feminist scholars have excavated aspects of political power and dimensions of political life that challenge long-held views about the nature of the state, practices of democracy, formal equality, and the scope of justice within national and international institutions. They have also raised significant epistemological concerns about the production of political knowledge, the validity of core assumptions about legitimate research techniques, and the importance of incorporating gender as an integral interpretive strategy in the study of the political world. This chapter provides a brief overview of feminist contributions to the understanding of political life.
