This book is the result of almost ten years of collaboration by its authors. Although at first glance it appears to be an edited collection, it is in fact co-written on the basis of a collaboratively designed research project. The contributors are all members of the Research Network on Gender Politics and the State. In the project as a whole some forty scholars from the USA, Canada and Europe have met over a period of ten years, sustaining a cross-national, longitudinal research project on gender and public policy. Since 1995 this network has met to design, conduct and write up research on state feminism in advanced industrial democracies. As chapter 1 describes, we decided to assess the impact of state feminism on women's representation by examining the part played by women's policy agencies in key policy debates since their establishment. In this volume we assess the impact of those agencies on the issue of political representation itself to offer a systematically comparative account of how and to what effect women's movements have engaged the important issue of women's political representation.

This volume is jointly edited by a team of five. Each member of the team took responsibility for some country chapters and for assessing and analysing parts of the model. Each supplied feedback to authors, prepared text that was incorporated into the concluding chapters and supplied feedback on drafts of the concluding analysis.