Wolbrecht Christina, Beckwith Karen, Baldez Lisa (ed.) Political Women and American Democracy

Cambridge University Press, 2008. — 279 p.What do we know about women, politics, and democracy in the United States? The past thirty years have witnessed a dramatic increase in women’s participation in American politics and an explosion of research on women, and the transformations effected by them, during the same period. Political Women and American Democracy provides a critical synthesis of scholarly research by leading experts in the field. The collected chapters examine women as citizens, voters, participants, movement activists, partisans, candidates, and legislators. They provide frameworks for understanding and organizing existing scholarship; focus on theoretical, methodological, and empirical debates; and map out productive directions for future research. As the only book to focus specifically on women and gender in U.S. politics, Political Women and American Democracy will be an invaluable resource for scholars and students studying and conducting women and politics research.
Christina Wolbrecht is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and Director of the Program in American Democracy at the University of Notre Dame. Her book The Politics of Women’s Rights: Parties, Positions, and Change (2000) was recipient of the 2001 Leon Epstein Outstanding Book Award from the American Political Science Association (Political Organizations and Parties Section). She has published articles in many journals, including the American Journal of Political Science and the Journal of Politics.
Karen Beckwith is Flora Stone Mather Professor of Political Science at Case Western Reserve University. She teaches mass politics, political parties and political movements, and women and politics; her research focuses on comparative women, gender, and politics. She is the founding editor, with Lisa Baldez, of Politics & Gender. Her books include Women’s Movements Facing the Reconfigured State (2003; with Lee Ann Banaszak and Dieter Rucht) and American Women and Political Participation (1986). Her work on women’s movements and gender has been published in the European Journal of Political Research, Politics &Society, Signs, andWest European Politics, among other journals. She is a former president of the American Political Science Association’sWomen and Politics Research Section.
Lisa Baldez is Associate Professor in the Government and Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies departments at Dartmouth College. She is the founding editor, with Karen Beckwith, of Politics & Gender. She is the author of Why Women Protest: Women’s Movements in Chile (2002) and numerous journal articles. She is currently writing a book about gender quotas in Latin America.