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An explosion in the literature on women and politics has been stimulated by the contemporary women's movement. This paper argues that an early diversity in theoretical orientation and methodology has been replaced by a narrow orthodoxy characterized by the use of polling and the survey method, and the theoretical voting behavior model employed by the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan. Left out of this approach is the study of political parties as organizations-a variable presented here as essential to the study of women in politics. The image of parties in women and politics scholarship is surveyed, as are the theoretical implications of ignoring women's gains in political parties in such studies.

This analysis seeks to codify and elucidate an emerging consensus among party scholars concerning the phenomenon and significance of the institutionalized party. More than the mere bureaucratization of party organizations, by adapting to environmental challenge an evolving “web of party” has sprouted new linkages between elites and non-elites, as well as among national and subnational executives and legislatures. Party scholarship, dominated until recently by non-institutional perspectives such as progressivism, behavioralism, and pluralism, needs to examine party institutionalization in a broader institutional context, i.e., as compared with Congress, the Presidency, and other prime political institutions, for which the advent of the institutionalized party has far-reaching implications.

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This chapter reviews existing research about women's participation in political parties and women's organizations, including both groups that developed as part of the contemporary women's movement and more traditional groups. Baer suggests an agenda for future research that would help bridge the gap between the sub‐fields of women and politics and interest groups and parties, and that includes more attention to historical context and to issues of leadership, recruitment, and organizational culture.