Aims and Scope

Politics & Gender is an agenda-setting journal that publishes the highest quality scholarship on women, gender, and politics. It aims to represent the full range of questions, issues, and approaches on gender and women across the major subfields of political science, including comparative politics, international relations, political theory, and U.S. politics. The editors welcome studies that address fundamental questions in politics and political science from a gender perspective, as well as those that interrogate and challenge standard analytical categories and conventional methodologies.

Members of the Women, Gender, and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association receive access to the journal as a benefit of membership. After December 2022, all issues of the Journal will be published online-only. 

Types of Article

The journal accepts the following types of article:

• Research Article*
• Book Review
• Symposium Review*
• Thematic Review*
• Notes from the Field*
• Critical Perspective Introduction
• Critical Perspectives Article

* If publishing Gold Open Access, all or part of the publication costs for these article types may be covered by one of the agreements Cambridge University Press has made to support open access.

Preparing your article for submission

Research Articles

Manuscripts should be uploaded in Word. Article length requirements at Politics & Gender have recently changed. The main manuscript, including text, tables, figures, and endnotes, should be no longer than 10,000 words. Reference lists are no longer subject to word limits, apart from the requirement that all references in the bibliography be cited in the text. The entire manuscript (including notes and references) should be double-spaced.

Authors should remove all identifying information from the manuscript, including acknowledgments of funding, student assistance, or other institutional or personal identifications that could identify the author(s). Such information should be provided in a separate title page.

Submissions should include an abstract of no more than 150 words. Abstracts should clearly state the theme or research question addressed in the paper, situate the problem within political science (broadly construed), and summarize the findings.

Authors of empirical papers should specify the country/countries under investigation in the title and/or abstract.

In an effort to enhance readability for manuscript reviewers, we ask that submissions include tables, figures, and other images at the appropriate place within the text, rather than separately at the end of the submission. For example, instead of saying "Table 1 Here," please just go ahead and insert the table or figure where you would like it to appear. If your manuscript is accepted, you will be provided with more detailed instructions for formatting tables, figures, and references.

References and notes should conform to the APSA Style Manual. Endnotes should be used (rather than footnotes). Numbered notes should appear at the end of a sentence and be numbered consecutively throughout the article.

References should appear at the end of the article. Be sure to include full volume, issue, and page numbers for all references.

Critical Perspectives Articles

The Critical Perspectives section of Politics & Gender brings together leading and emerging scholars working on the most salient themes in gender and politics research. The essays published in the section problematize old and new concepts, set the parameters for emerging research agendas, and critically summarize existing bodies of knowledge in politics, gender, and sexuality. Since the journal’s founding in 2005, Critical Perspectives has become an invaluable tool for scholars, teachers, and students in the field of politics and gender.

The editorial team of the Journal welcomes proposals for Critical Perspectives. Proposals should be submitted via this online form and include the following information:

• A brief abstract or description of the topic, paying particular attention to why it is relevant to the study of politics and gender (broadly conceived).
• A list of authors and titles of their submissions. Please be sure that all of the authors have agreed to contribute and, whenever possible, to include a mix of junior and senior scholars.
• A timeline indicating when all of the essays will be ready to submit to the Journal editor.

Each Critical Perspectives section should open with a short introduction by the CP editor, followed by four to six individual contributions (approximately 2,000-2,500 words for each submission). The total package should be no longer than 12,000 words all included. Ideally, the introduction should set up a common set of questions for contributors to respond to, drawing on their past and ongoing research.

Proposals should be submitted directly to the editorial team via this online form. Once the Journal editor has decided that a proposal should go forward, the editor will ‘invite’ the proposed CP editor and contributors to submit their pieces via Editorial Manager. The whole submission would then be editor-reviewed before formal acceptance. 

Notes from the Field Articles

In 2022, the Journal launched a new article type, ‘Notes from the Field’ (NFF), to report on recent developments related to women, gender, and politics in the U.S. and around the world. The aim is to create opportunities for exchange across the boundaries of theory and practice, for example by highlighting the public engagement activities of gender and politics scholars, or by introducing new publications by practitioners that might inform and advance scholarly research.  NFF articles might provide firsthand accounts of gender equality campaigns, insights and commentary on recently adopted gender equality policies, or the presentation of new datasets, among other possibilities.

NFF pieces should be short (maximum 2,500 words) and concise in presenting the case in question. The editorial team welcomes NFF submissions from both academics and practitioners. These papers will be editor-reviewed only.

Prior to writing, potential contributors should email the editorial team at [email protected] to ensure that the scope and framing of the proposed article aligns with the aims of this new article type.  If cleared by the editors, the author(s) will receive an invitation to submit their piece via Editorial Manager.

Book Reviews

Book reviews are normally solicited by the editorial team, with an invitation initiated through Editorial Manager. Potential authors of unsolicited book reviews should contact the editorial office via this online form. If approved, those authors will also receive an invitation to submit via Editorial Manager.

Three types of book reviews are possible: a review of a single book, a review of an edited volume, and a thematic review of two or more books.  All book reviews should aim to be between 750-1000 words, with the exception of thematic reviews which may be as long as 1,200 words.

Review Process and Time-Lines

All submissions will go through an initial review by the Journal's lead editor, in consultation with the associate editors specializing in the subfield of the submitted manuscript.

Due to the large number of submissions received by the Journal and the editorial team’s wish to respect the time commitments of our reviewers, we are unable to send all manuscripts submitted for external review. Submissions that do not meet the Journal's standards in terms of fit and quality may be desk-rejected. If an editor believes the submission meets the Journal's standards, the manuscript enters into a double-anonymous peer review process.

Although the editors are committed to processing submissions as quickly as possible, a rigorous peer review process takes time. Our goal is to make decisions on manuscripts within approximately three months of submission, but at times, the wait may be longer.

Politics & Gender will suspend new submissions from December 15th to January 15th each year. During this time, the editors will continue to work on manuscripts that are already in the review or production process but will not accept new submissions.

To contact the editorial team with any questions, please email us [email protected]. 

Abstract and Keywords Preparation

For further guidance on how to prepare your Abstracts and Keywords, please refer to these guidelines.

How to prepare your materials for anonymous peer review

To ensure a fair and anonymous peer review process, authors should not allude to themselves as the authors of their article in any part of the text. This includes citing their own previous work in the references section in such a way that identifies them as the authors of the current work.

Please refer to our general guidelines on how to anonymise your manuscript prior to submission.

Tables and Artwork

Please refer to the following guidance about preparing artwork and graphics for submission.

Seeking permissions for copyrighted material

If your article contains any material in which you do not own copyright, including figures, charts, tables, photographs or excerpts of text, you must obtain permission from the copyright holder to reuse that material. Guidance on how to do that can be found here.

Ethics and Transparency Policy Requirements

Please ensure that you have reviewed the journal’s Publishing ethics policies while preparing your materials. 

Please also ensure that you have read the journal’s Research transparency policy prior to submission. We encourage the use of a Data Availability Statement at the end of your article before the reference list. Guidance on how to write a Data Availability Statement can be found here. Please try to provide clear information on where the data associated with you research can be found and avoid statements such as “Data available on request”.

A list of suggested data repositories can be found here.

Funding statement

A declaration of sources of funding must be provided if appropriate. Authors must state the full official name of the funding body and grant numbers specified. Authors must specify what role, if any, their financial sponsors played in the design, execution, analysis and interpretation of data, or writing of the study. If they played no role this should be stated.