How the Absence of Women Became a Democratic Deficit: The Role of Feminist Political Science

Abstract

For most of the twentieth century, political science was complicit in the absence of women from public office. This started to change in the 1970s as feminists began to reframe the absence of women not as a 'condition' but as a problem to be addressed by political science as well as political actors. This chapter examines the original assumptions found in political science concerning women's political participation and the way these were challenged by feminist critiques. A male-dominated profession had failed to take account of how the gendered distribution of power contributed to exclusion. The chapter then looks at how feminist political scientists then contributed to the promotion of new norms and strategies through transnational standard-setting institutions, as well as through engaging with laggard political institutions in the English-speaking democracies.

Commercialization and Corporatization: Academic Freedom and Autonomy under Constraints in Australian Universities

“…Tenurial staff can also be subjected to insider power plays where senior managers close ranks on staff speaking out about funding allocations or engage in unfair behavior on matters within their discretion such as workloads, denial of leave, or internal conference/research funding. Gendered hierarchies within the academy remain despite equal opportunity legislation (Sawer 2018 ). This is accentuated in the sciences where over half PhD graduates are female, but women are less than 20% of senior academics in Australian universities and research institutes (Academy of Science 2018 ).…”