Democrats, Republicans, and the Politics of Women's Place

Extract

Democrats, Republicans, and the Politics of Women's Place. By Kira Sanbonmatsu. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. 328 pages. $50.00 cloth, $22.95 paper.

In her book, Kira Sanbonmatsu provides a compelling and evenhanded analysis of how political parties have come to embrace issues of gender. She provides a penetrating longitudinal and cross-sectional analysis of this response of political parties against a backdrop of the women's movement. With elections since 1992 focusing on women as voters and candidates, and with a growth of interest in parties due to their apparent polarization on issues and their newfound ways around campaign finances laws, her timely study contributes to a broader understanding of party realignment and adds to recent scholarship (e.g., see Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal Congress: A Political-Economic History of Roll Call Voting, 1997).