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Developing Countries and New Democracies Matter: An Overview of Research on State Feminism Worldwide

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2007

Celia Valiente
Celia Valiente
Affiliation:
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
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Extract

Since the 1970s, institutions with the explicit purpose of advancing women's rights and status have been established in an overwhelming majority of countries. In political science research, these institutions usually are called “women's policy machineries,” “state feminist institutions,” or “gender equality agencies.” The people who work in them are often referred to as “state feminists.” This article offers a general overview of academic studies on state feminism, the majority of which were published in the last decade. Generally speaking and with few exceptions, social scientists researching state feminism in postindustrial countries tend to consider only academic work on other postindustrial countries and ignore scholarly analyses of developing countries and new democracies. Countries outside the postindustrial world have women's institutions, and there is no reason to disregard them.

Type
Critical Perspectives on Gender and Politics
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 3 , Issue 4 , December 2007 , pp. 530 - 541
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2007

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