Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T22:00:38.175Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Informal Institutions, Protest, and Change in Gendered Federal Systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2011

Lee Ann Banaszak  and
S. Laurel Weldon
Lee Ann Banaszak
Affiliation:
The Pennsylvania State University
S. Laurel Weldon
Affiliation:
Purdue University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Federalism seems to play a widely varying role in maintaining or undermining gender hierarchies around the world. In 1869, for example, federalism allowed Wyoming—a new state in the United States—to enfranchise women before this happened at the national level. But in Switzerland, federalism let a recalcitrant canton disenfranchise women until the 1990s—20 years after women achieved the vote on the national level (Banaszak 1996). More generally, federal institutions are associated with widely varying policies on women's rights. Table 1 groups countries according to Lijphart's (1999, Chapter 10) three measures of federalism: a numerical summary measure (column 2), whether the country is centralized or decentralized (column 3), and a dichotomous measure of federal or unitary based on the country's constitution (column 4). No matter which measure is used, gender equality policies vary greatly within each type of system. The wide variation within each category suggests that standard approaches to federalism give us little purchase on gender politics.

Type
Critical Perspectives on Gender and Politics
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , June 2011 , pp. 262 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

American Bar Association. 2010. http://www.abanet.org/family/familylaw/tables.html (Accessed August 2010).Google Scholar
Banaszak, Lee Ann. 1996. Why Movements Succeed or Fail. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banaszak, Lee Ann. 2003. “The Women's Movement and the Constraints of State Reconfiguration.” In Women's Movements Facing a Reconfigured State, ed. Banaszak, Lee Ann, Beckwith, Karen, and Rucht, Dieter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 141–68.Google Scholar
Bashevkin, Sylvia. 1998. Women on the Defensive. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Beramendi, Pablo. 2007. “Federalism.” In Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics, ed. Boix, Carles and Stokes, Susan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 752–81.Google Scholar
Center for Reproductive Rights. 2008. “Fact Sheet: The World's Abortion Laws.” http://reproductiverights.org/sites/crr.civicactions.net/files/pub_fac_abortionlaws2008.pdf. Accessed August 2010.Google Scholar
Chappell, Louise. 2002. Gendering Government. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.Google Scholar
Chappell, Louise. 2010. “Nested Newness and Institutional Innovation: Expanding Gender Justice in the International Criminal Court.” In Gender, Politics and Institutions, ed. Krook, Mona Lena and Mackay, Fiona. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 163–80.Google Scholar
Clearinghouse on International Developments in Child, Youth and Family Policies at Columbia University. 2000. “Maternity, Paternity, and Parental Leaves in the OECD Countries 1998–2002.” http://www.childpolicyintl.org/issuebrief/issuebrief5table1.pdf. Accessed August 2010.Google Scholar
Elman, R. Amy. 1996. Sexual Subordination and State Intervention. Providence, Oxford: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Gray, Gwendolyn. 2010. “Federalism, Feminism and Multilevel Governance: The Elusive Search for Theory?” In Federalism, Feminism and Multi-level Governance, ed. Haussman, Melissa and Sawer, Marian. Surrey: Ashgate, 19–36.Google Scholar
Helmke, Gretchen, and Levitsky, Steven. 2004. “Informal Institutions and Comparative Politics: A Research Agenda.” Perspectives on Politics 2 (4): 725–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoff, Joan, 1991. Law, Gender, & Injustice. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Htun, Mala, and Weldon, S. Laurel. 2010. “When and Why Do Governments Promote Women's Rights?” Perspectives on Politics 8 (1): 207–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
International Labour Organization.2010. 2nd edition. Maternity at Work: A review of national legislation. Findings from the ILO Database ofConditions of Work and Employment Laws Second edition. International Labour Office Geneva.Google Scholar
Interparliamentary Union. 2010. Women in National Parliaments. http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm. Accessed August 2010.Google Scholar
Irving, Helen. 2008. Gender and the Constitution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, Robert, and Jackson, Doreen. 2006. Politics in Canada 6th ed.Toronto: Pearson.Google Scholar
Lijphart, Arend. 1999. Patterns of Democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Mackay, Fiona. 2009. “Institutionalising ‘New Politics’ in Post Devolution Scotland: ‘Nested Newness’ and the Gendered Limits of Change.” Presented at the European Conference on Politics and Gender, Queen's University, Belfast.Google Scholar
McCammon, Holly J., Campbell, Karen E., Granberg, Ellen M., and Mowery, Christine. 2001. “How Movements Win: Gendered Opportunity Structures and U.S. Women's Suffrage Movements, 1866 to 1919.” American Sociological Review 66 (1): 49–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDonagh, Eileen. 2009. The Motherless State. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McRoberts, Kenneth. 1993. “Federal Structures and the Policy Process.” In Governing Canada, ed. Atkinson, Michael. Toronto: Harcourt Brace. 149–77.Google Scholar
Mershon, Carol. 1994. “Expectations and Informal Rules in Coalition Formation.” Comparative Political Studies 27: 40–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Lisa. 2008. The Perils of Federalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Toyo, Nkoyo. 2006. “Revisiting Equality as a Right: The Minimum Age of Marriage Clause in the Nigerian Child Rights Act, 2003.” Third World Quarterly 27 (7): 1299–1312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vickers, Jill. 1994. “Why Should Women Care about Federalism?” In Canada: The State of the Federation, ed. Brown, Douglas M. and Hiebert, Janet. Kingston: Queen's University Press, 135–51.Google Scholar
Vickers, Jill. “A Two-Way Street: Federalism and Women's Politics in Canada and the United States.” Publius 40 (3) 412–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weldon, S. Laurel. 2002. Protest, Policy and the Problem of Violence Against Women. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weldon, S. Laurel, Htun, Mala and O'Brien, Cheryl. 2009. “Church, Market, State: Institutions and Women's Rights in Nigeria.” Presented at Annual Meetings of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago.Google Scholar
Wheare, Kenneth C. 1964. Federal Government. 4th ed.New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar