Since Donald Trump took office in 2017, the White House has issued several clear anti-LGBTQIA signals and initiatives. Reflecting on Trump's election as U.S. president, many political scientists have analyzed his rise in the context of the literature on American political development (e.g., Skowronek 2017) and comparative governments (e.g., Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018). Some of this work has received significant media attention and attained a popular readership. The American political development analyses have often focused on the lens of political time and potential party realignment, exploring the possibility of a “disjunctive presidency,” which foretells the demise of the coalition that has enabled the Republican Party to dominate U.S. politics since the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s. Comparative work in the discipline argues that Trump initiatives are threatening to democratic principles, portending a turn toward authoritarianism that parallels the rise of right-wing authoritarian leaders across the globe.

What effect do social welfare policies have on women's active involvement in the economy and politics? Though there is much policy and scholarly debate on a wide spectrum of socioeconomic and political outcomes of welfare spending, little research has explored the possible impact that social welfare policies have on one of the supposed major beneficiaries of such policies—women. Combining data on welfare spending in three areas—social security, health, and education—with data on women's labor force participation and share of seats in national legislatures, this article examines the extent to which welfare spending might affect women's economic and political status. The results from a panel of 97 countries for the years spanning 1990 to 2010 indicate that the government's fiscal commitment to social policies is positively related to female participation in the total labor force and national politics. The findings are robust to different model specifications, sample selection, and the use of instrumental variables. One major policy implication of the findings is that the government's fiscal commitment to key social welfare areas are likely to contribute to women's economic and political empowerment, which might in turn help address gender imbalances in the economy and political sphere.

The surge in gender quotas across Africa raises questions about the varied impacts of these measures on women's empowerment in legislatures. This study contends that we must explore the diverse political conditions under which quotas are adopted to understand the potential for empowerment in legislatures. By examining political context, we can pinpoint why political parties acquiesce to gender quotas and how they design laws to either empower women or reinforce party control. Parties influence aspects of gender quota design that have lasting effects on women legislators elected through these laws. Employing a new measure of legislative leadership equity, this article compares political conditions under which quotas are adopted across 18 African countries and the extent to which women reach leadership positions following the implementation of a quota. Levels of political competition and women's mainstream political activity at the time of gender quota adoption indicate how the interests of political parties shape the design and effects of the law. That the outcomes of gender quotas are highly contingent on adoption context suggests the need for academics and policy makers to analyze the politics behind these measures to develop country-specific approaches for empowering women in politics.

The US government was a late adopter of support and advocacy for international sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) human rights. Although US support for SOGI human rights did not begin in the Obama administration, after 2011 such support was expanded, publicized, and institutionalized. Since the 2016 presidential election, many international and grassroots LGBTQI human rights activists have expressed concern about the prospects for US SOGI advocacy in the Trump administration. No definitive policy changes have been made public, but clues to the future of US advocacy for SOGI can be found in a variety of sites. These include the discourse and policy articulations of the secretary and human rights officials in the State Department as well as those of legislators who fund human rights programs and exercise oversight over it.

Conservative political actors appear rather troubling for many gender and politics scholars and feminist activists. What should we make of their claims to represent women? How should we best understand their actions? This article, based on a critical rereading of the empirical literature and informed by contemporary representation theory, develops a new conceptual framework for assessing the quality of women's substantive representation by conservatives. We find that under specified conditions, conservative representatives do further women's substantive representation. A first set of conditions relates to conservative claims to represent women. These are considered to be “for women” when they marry conservative women's concerns in society; when conservative representatives act and do not simply engage in rhetoric; and when their actions are not undercut by other acts, policies, or outcomes unfavorable to women. A second set of criteria considers the quality of the process of women's substantive representation. We contend that a feminist process of deliberation about women's interests can include conservative claims as long as they meet the requirements of responsiveness, inclusiveness, and egalitarianism.

Conservative Christians played a significant role in pioneering the United States’ groundbreaking anti-HIV funding initiative, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Consequently, PEPFAR is widely regarded as George W. Bush's crowning achievement. The same political forces that ushered in PEPFAR under President Bush were also the architects of strict ideological restraints around the otherwise straightforward public health goal of curbing the spread of HIV/AIDS. In recent years, some of these restrictions have been rolled back or struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, and PEPFAR has continued to serve a crucial role in global health and security. PEPFAR's future success in achieving its health mandate (to create an AIDS-free generation) will be influenced by lessons from its past. This article illuminates how, in its first decade, PEPFAR was directed toward the fulfillment of socially conservative goals that ran counter to its official agenda. This was accomplished in large part through two controversial provisions: the “anti-prostitution pledge” (2003–2013) and the “conscience clause” (2003–present). Working in tandem, these policies sought to secure funding for organizations that favored abstinence and fidelity rather than a multisectoral approach to AIDS prevention.

Theories of democracy commonly assume that citizens must have a certain degree of information and factual knowledge to be able to understand the functioning of institutions, the performance of the incumbent government, and the actions of the main political actors. Political knowledge helps people to better assess their interest as individuals and as members of groups (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996). Moreover, governments have more incentives to be responsive when they can be held accountable, but citizens are able to hold governments accountable for their actions only when they know what governments are actually doing.

Cross-national studies of women's political leadership (WPL) usually focus on female prime ministers and presidents or numbers of women in parliament. While illuminating, these studies fail to provide a comprehensive assessment of WPL in a particular place and time. Addressing this gap in the literature, we assert that WPL is inherently contingent upon the theoretical concepts of “structural power” and “male dominance,” encompassing multiple formal apex political decision-making institutions. In accordance with this perspective, we have constructed a novel women's political leadership index based on collective leadership across judicial (high court judges), executive (cabinet ministers), and legislative (parliamentary committee chairs) branches of governments to capture both the presence of women among political leaders and their balance across institutions. Applying our index to 21 diverse territories in Asia, we demonstrate the utility of our approach through a series of country case studies illustrating four prominent patterns of WPL: exclusion, illusion, imbalance, and balance. We conclude by discussing the potential benefits of globally expanding the scope of the index.

Parties are the key actors shaping women's representation in advanced parliamentary democracies. Based on traditional patterns of feminist organizing, conventional wisdom suggests that parties of the left are the strongest advocates for women. Despite the prevalence of this claim, a burgeoning body of work indicates that parties on the right can—and often do—seek to represent women. To address these competing narratives, this article offers the first large-N, party-level study of women's descriptive and substantive representation over place and time. The results suggest that party ideology continues to affect women's representation: right parties lag behind their left counterparts with respect to women's presence in elected office, and right and left parties address women differently on their platforms. At the same time, there is significant heterogeneity among right parties. Christian democrats, for example, are more likely than conservatives to adopt voluntary gender quotas and make policy claims on behalf of women. The traditional left-right distinction is thus too coarse to fully explain party behavior in these states.

While there is much research examining gender gaps in political attitudes, there is less examining how gender gaps differ within social groups. This article helps fill that void by examining gender gaps among American Indians. Using two surveys, the initial findings suggest that among American Indians, women have a stronger American Indian identity, are more likely to support women's/compassion issues, and are more likely to be Democrats. It further finds that the gender gap in party is more likely the result of the gender gap in compassion issues than in American Indian identity. Additional analysis finds that among American Indians who prioritize their American Indian identity, the partisan gender gap is reversed, with men being significantly more likely to be Democrats. Although this study finds some similarities between the gaps among American Indians and whites, it also finds some unique gaps among American Indians. This suggests the need to look at the intersectionality of gender and social groups to fully understand the gender gaps.

Over the last two decades, LGBTQ and reproductive justice advocacy groups have attempted to queer reproductive justice by building coalitions and developing a shared agenda between the new movements. The recent election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States has presented a different set of challenges to this queering process. Through the examination of the political actions and stances taken by the Trump administration as well as the public discourse on identity politics and intersectionality that has emerged in the wake of Trump's election, this article explores what queering reproductive justice looks like in this changed political environment and discusses the implications of Trump's election on the potential for cross-movement coalition building. How does this political moment help us further develop the concept of political intersectionality?

This article cautions against the strong impulse in the #MeToo movement to desexualize politics. Informed by queer theory, the article argues that the public desexualization imperative, represented by indignation toward President Donald Trump's pussy-grabbing antics and the concomitant, albeit justified, movement to expose decades of his sexual harassment of women, casts a shadow across queer citizens that chills sexual expression in democratic discourse and public life. The public desexualization imperative presents a double bind that creates, on one hand, public spaces that are less threatening and discriminatory to women and, on the other, public spaces that—from a queer white cisgender man's perspective, one whose only “marking” is his sexuality—erase queers’ valued differences. The author uses personal narrative to describe and apply tools (conceptualized as fagchild tools) that help navigate tensions between women's equality movements and queer efforts to gain fuller, more open sexual citizenship. The article focuses, first, on softening the body politic (implicitly a white cisgender heterosexual male body) to provide sociopolitical space for sexual pluralism. Second, the article uses the sexualization of House Speaker Paul Ryan to argue that making space for queer sexualities may require accommodating the expression of nonqueer sexualities, including those that most of us find offensive.

Responding to ongoing debates about the presence (or otherwise) of feminism within left-wing politics, this article has two central aims. First, it seeks to develop a set of analytical criteria to identify and assess the extent to which an instance of politics has become “feminist.” Second, it aims to illustrate the utility of this framework by applying it to a range of examples of contemporary left politics in Britain. Our argument is similarly twofold. Conceptually, learning from the literature on socialist feminism, gender and politics, and cultural studies and sociology, we identify five features of what we call “feministization,” arguing that in addition to feminist ideas, policies, and modes of organizing, we must also pay attention to the role of embodied performances and affect. Empirically, we suggest that, seen through this lens, the British left has in fact undergone a significant but uneven process of feministization in recent years.

Gender mainstreaming (GM) is a strategy used by governments to promote gender equality. It entails integrating gender and intersectional considerations into all aspects of policy work, including policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. However, its success in achieving gender equality and social transformation has been limited. Drawing on implementation research and narrative analysis, this article explores the micro-level dynamics and the local actors that help shape the character and outcome of gender mainstreaming. Using narrative analysis, we explore how GM specialists within the Canadian public service make sense of their role, and we identify the strategies they use to make gender matter in policy work. By examining their stories of isolation, disempowerment, and resistance, we uncover the administrative and political forces that shape not only the “space” for gender work but also the opportunities for individual activism and resistance. These stories convey how, by engaging in these micro-level strategies, GM specialists both challenge and reinscribe, at the macro level, technocratic representations of GM and of policy work in general. We conclude with some reflections on the insights that micro-level analysis and implementation research can bring to the study of gender mainstreaming.

The question of conservative feminism in the United States did not really arise before the 2008 elections; most politically active conservative women leaders did not refer to themselves as feminists. Sarah Palin's vice presidential bid, however, prompted a shift. On a number of well-publicized occasions, Palin called herself a feminist, generating considerable discussion over whether conservative feminism is now a political movement. Using data from in-depth interviews with conservative women leaders, this article asks whether conservative women in the United States identify as feminists. Findings indicate that on the whole they do not, but conservative women are important gender-conscious political actors whose efforts compel questions about ideology and women's activism. Implications for understanding feminist and conservative movement politics more broadly are also explored.

This contribution to the Special Issue on Gender and Conservatism uses expert and election surveys to explore the extent to which the feminist or traditional gender ideology of parties of the right relates to their economic and liberal/authoritarian ideology. We show that although parties of the left generally espouse more feminist ideologies than parties of the right, there are a significant number of rightist parties in Western Europe that combine laissez-faire economic values with liberal feminist ideals. That said, there is more homogeneity among parties of the populist radical right than rightist parties more generally. We find that despite some variation in their gender ideology, parties of the populist radical right overwhelmingly—with the exception of one party in the Netherlands—continue to adopt traditional or antifeminist gender ideologies. In terms of attracting women voters, we find that rightist parties who adopt a feminist gender ideology are able to attract more women voters than other parties of the right. We detect several examples of center-right parties that include feminist elements in their gender ideologies and are able to win over larger proportions of women voters than rightist parties that fail to adopt feminist positions.

Over the past several decades, scholarship on women's movements, feminism, and the state has brought renewed attention to the study of protest politics by questioning its frontier with dominant institutions. This article takes this critique a step further by considering the institutional dimension of the state-movement intersection. Drawing on the French case, we argue that institutions that are formally devoted to women's rights inside the state (women's policy agencies) can operate as movement institutions—that is, as bureaucratic instances routinely engrained with a protest dimension—rather than being only a shelter for a network of insider activists. As such, they can provide a specific, institutional feminist socialization to their members; they can purvey, rather than only relay, feminist protest, and they can deploy institutional repertoires of protest, combining bureaucratic and movement dimensions. We conclude that the definition and boundaries of the women's movement need to be broadened to include bureaucratic sources of feminist protest.

Despite campaign promises to be the most “gay-friendly” Republican president, since assuming office, Donald Trump has been proactive in what many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) advocates call a “rollback” of gains made during the Barack Obama administration, shocking many observers and bringing sexual and gender politics to the fore. How can we make sense of the contradictions and consequences of Trump's sexual and gender politics? I argue that examining the transnational processes of democratization, political homophobia, and homonationalism illuminates the significance of the administration's actions. A democratization approach reveals how Trump's reversal of Obama-era policies and appointment of conservative judges signifies a greater effort at de-democratization through the contraction of citizenship rights and weakening of the judiciary; political homophobia clarifies how the administration legitimizes its governance through opposition to LGBT people and issues with the appointment of openly homophobic and transphobic individuals to prominent positions; and homonationalism, or the entry of certain queer subjects into the nation at the expense of racialized “others,” aptly characterizes forms of queer inclusion still taking place under Trump. For these reasons, putting Trump's sexual and gender politics in transnational perspective can help us better understand this moment in U.S. politics.

This article examines the relationship between urbanization and women's empowerment through the Turkish case. The article first tests statistically the overall impact of urbanization on women's empowerment by tapping into educational, economic, and political indicators at the province level. The results yield a positive relationship between urbanization and women's empowerment. We argue that these empowerment indicators demonstrate the necessary conditions of women's empowerment, yet whether these are sufficient for women to feel empowered needs to be further tested. To do so, the article utilizes an extensive original survey of 334 well-educated urban women in 43 out of 81 provinces of Turkey to examine the extent to which the results found in the quantitative section are paralleled by the actual experiences of women. The survey analysis reveals prospects and obstacles that well-educated women face in old and new urban centers. This nonrandom, purposive sample of seemingly empowered urban women shows that the barriers faced by these women would easily multiply when lower strata of society are reached. The Turkish case demonstrates that societal transformations such as urbanization have an imprint on the fates of women, yet further women's empowerment needs collective action at the political, legal, and societal levels.