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Cambridge Studies in Gender and Politics
The Logics of Gender Justice: State Action on Women's Rights Around the World
When and why do governments promote women's rights? Through comparative analysis of state action in seventy countries from 1975 to 2005, this book shows how different women's rights issues involve different histories, trigger different conflicts, and activate different sets of protagonists. Change on violence against women and workplace equality involves a logic of status politics: feminist movements leverage international norms to contest women's subordination. Family law, abortion, and contraception, which challenge the historical claim of religious groups to regulate kinship and reproduction, conform to a logic of doctrinal politics, which turns on relations between religious groups and the state. Publicly-paid parental leave and child care follow a logic of class politics, in which the strength of Left parties and overall economic conditions are more salient. The book reveals the multiple and complex pathways to gender justice, illuminating the opportunities and obstacles to social change for policymakers, advocates, and others seeking to advance women's rights.
- GenresPolitics
366 pages, Hardcover
Published March 1, 2018
About the author
Mala Htun
7 booksMala Htun was an American political scientist. She was a professor of political science at the University of New Mexico. Htun studied comparative politics, particularly women's rights and the politics of race and ethnicity with a focus on Latin America.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 18, 2019
As a student of women's movements, state, and gender justice, this book was a fascinating and wonderful read! The authors answer a question that is very important to those of us interested in gender justice and the state. What factors determine whether the state will enact/implement policies for gender justice? The major argument of the book, very eloquently made, is this: First, gender justice policies do not have a generic pathway. There are specific logics that determine which policies are enacted in which way. To elaborate, the authors suggest that gender justice issues can be seen either through the logic of status policies or the logic of class politics. Status policies are those related to issues such as violence against women, legal equality in the workplace, family laws such as divorce, legality of abortion, and reproductive freedom. Gender justice policies that are based on class politics are maternity/parental/daddy leave, public funding for childcare and public funding for abortion and contraceptives.
Status policies are those where the challenge is to gender as an institution. Status policies are those that highlight that "institutionalized patterns of cultural value (Fraser 2000) that privilege masculinity and devalue behaviors and characteristics associated with femininity inflict harm on women as a status group" (p. 10). Policies related to class politics are concerned about existing economic arrangements that affect which women have access to equal participation in society. For instance, access to child-care is available to privileged women who can access the market options for child-care, a luxury unavailable to poor women in countries where public childcare is not provided. Another example is abortion. In many countries, access to abortion is denied because women's choices are undermined and is a status issue. But even in countries where abortion is legal, without state funding, access becomes an issue for poor women. Thus, the legality of abortion is a status issue while abortion funding is coded as a class politics issue. The book thus goes on to differentiate the issues I mentioned earlier as status and class politics. Another difference in some of these issues is that they are also connected to religious authorities. For instance, legality of abortion, family laws, and public funding of abortion and contraceptives are often doctrinal issues, i.e. religious institutions have rigid ideas about these issues. Therefore, whether religious institutions play a role in politics has major influence on whether a country enacts some of these policies.
With that, the authors lay the foundation for the question we are interested: What determines why some of these policies were enacted in some countries and not in others?
To answer this question, each chapter is dedicated to a policy domain. Each chapter provides an overview of how different countries have enacted (or not) policies over the period 1975-2005. Besides interesting descriptions of specific cases, the authors provide statistical analyses of how various factors determine policy enactment. So much work has gone into creating this interesting dataset. The dataset includes seven policy domains: violence against women, family law, equality at work, family leave, childcare, abortion legality, and reproductive rights funding. They developed indices for state support for each of these domains and gathered data for 70 countries for four points in time - 1975, 1985,1995, and 2005. For a book on gender justice, it was such a page-turner! I was curious to see what each index comprised of and what factors mattered for each of the policy domain.
Overall, they find that different factors mattered for different logics. In the case of status related policy issues such as violence against women and legal equality at workplace, feminist movements played a significant role in creating change. Movements were also able to leverage international norms and regional agreements to push for policy changes in their countries. The authors also found that leftist parties did not make a huge difference in some status related issues such as violence against women. In the case of legal equality of work, feminist movements mattered. Countries with a communist legacy had a positive association with legal equality at work, though a weak association. In the case of family law and legality of abortion, which employed doctrinal logic, the institutionalization of religious entities in politics mattered irrespective of whether the country had a high level of religiosity or not. Where religion was institutionalized into politics, these status laws were difficult to enact. In terms of policy issues related to class politics such as childcare and parental leave, leftist parties were significant for enacting those policies. Where both doctrinal and class politics combined (as in the case of funding for abortion), feminist movements, international influences, left parties and religious groups were associated with variations in policy patterns.
There is so much to unpack in this book, especially if one were to think about each of those indices. I have not done that here. This is a global analysis and therefore may not provide insights into how specific contexts may have had particular pathways in each of those countries. That said, if you are interested to learn about broad patterns of gender justice policies around the world, this book is a must read! Don't miss it!
Status policies are those where the challenge is to gender as an institution. Status policies are those that highlight that "institutionalized patterns of cultural value (Fraser 2000) that privilege masculinity and devalue behaviors and characteristics associated with femininity inflict harm on women as a status group" (p. 10). Policies related to class politics are concerned about existing economic arrangements that affect which women have access to equal participation in society. For instance, access to child-care is available to privileged women who can access the market options for child-care, a luxury unavailable to poor women in countries where public childcare is not provided. Another example is abortion. In many countries, access to abortion is denied because women's choices are undermined and is a status issue. But even in countries where abortion is legal, without state funding, access becomes an issue for poor women. Thus, the legality of abortion is a status issue while abortion funding is coded as a class politics issue. The book thus goes on to differentiate the issues I mentioned earlier as status and class politics. Another difference in some of these issues is that they are also connected to religious authorities. For instance, legality of abortion, family laws, and public funding of abortion and contraceptives are often doctrinal issues, i.e. religious institutions have rigid ideas about these issues. Therefore, whether religious institutions play a role in politics has major influence on whether a country enacts some of these policies.
With that, the authors lay the foundation for the question we are interested: What determines why some of these policies were enacted in some countries and not in others?
To answer this question, each chapter is dedicated to a policy domain. Each chapter provides an overview of how different countries have enacted (or not) policies over the period 1975-2005. Besides interesting descriptions of specific cases, the authors provide statistical analyses of how various factors determine policy enactment. So much work has gone into creating this interesting dataset. The dataset includes seven policy domains: violence against women, family law, equality at work, family leave, childcare, abortion legality, and reproductive rights funding. They developed indices for state support for each of these domains and gathered data for 70 countries for four points in time - 1975, 1985,1995, and 2005. For a book on gender justice, it was such a page-turner! I was curious to see what each index comprised of and what factors mattered for each of the policy domain.
Overall, they find that different factors mattered for different logics. In the case of status related policy issues such as violence against women and legal equality at workplace, feminist movements played a significant role in creating change. Movements were also able to leverage international norms and regional agreements to push for policy changes in their countries. The authors also found that leftist parties did not make a huge difference in some status related issues such as violence against women. In the case of legal equality of work, feminist movements mattered. Countries with a communist legacy had a positive association with legal equality at work, though a weak association. In the case of family law and legality of abortion, which employed doctrinal logic, the institutionalization of religious entities in politics mattered irrespective of whether the country had a high level of religiosity or not. Where religion was institutionalized into politics, these status laws were difficult to enact. In terms of policy issues related to class politics such as childcare and parental leave, leftist parties were significant for enacting those policies. Where both doctrinal and class politics combined (as in the case of funding for abortion), feminist movements, international influences, left parties and religious groups were associated with variations in policy patterns.
There is so much to unpack in this book, especially if one were to think about each of those indices. I have not done that here. This is a global analysis and therefore may not provide insights into how specific contexts may have had particular pathways in each of those countries. That said, if you are interested to learn about broad patterns of gender justice policies around the world, this book is a must read! Don't miss it!
July 23, 2018
The authors take on an enormous task: the book tries to explain when and why governments adopt policies that promote women's rights, and why some countries have made progress on some gender equality issues but not on others.
The key contribution of the book is to break down "women's rights" or "gender equality" into different areas of policy change. Gender equality is a multidimensional issue that touches on many different policy areas. These policy areas in turn involve different institutional actors and interests, and will trigger different types of resistance and backlash.
Specifically, the authors distinguish between status politics, doctrinal politics, and class politics. While status politics relate to women's legal and social status as equal citizens and human beings (e.g. policies to tackle violence against women), doctrinal politics touch on the relationship between institutionalized religion and the state (e.g. abortion legality), and class politics concern the distribution of responsibilities between the state, the family, and the private sector (e.g. parental leave policies). This breakdown helps explain why some types of gender equality policies trigger a much larger pushback in some societies than in others. For example, while the US was an early adopter of policies to combat violence against women, it lags farbehind when it comes to maternity and paternity leave and the provision of publicly funded childcare.
For each area of policy change, the authors theorize which institutional actors and other drivers are likely to play key roles in precipitating reform, and test their hypotheses using cross-national panel data. Their approach is comprehensive, and provides valuable insights. However, at times the book feels very repetitive, as the authors revisit the same key independent variables in each chapter. The cross-national regressions are not always well-explained, and the descriptions of various empirical correlations often felt somewhat clinical. Overall, the analysis left me longing for more case studies or qualitative evidence to substantiate the more complex and multidimensional relationships emerging from the analysis.
The second big limitation is noted by the authors themselves: their focus is on policy change, rather than implementation. Yet we know that gender equality legislation in many countries around the world is very limited, and policies that are meant to empower women often tend to be inaccessible to the most vulnerable and marginalized.
The key contribution of the book is to break down "women's rights" or "gender equality" into different areas of policy change. Gender equality is a multidimensional issue that touches on many different policy areas. These policy areas in turn involve different institutional actors and interests, and will trigger different types of resistance and backlash.
Specifically, the authors distinguish between status politics, doctrinal politics, and class politics. While status politics relate to women's legal and social status as equal citizens and human beings (e.g. policies to tackle violence against women), doctrinal politics touch on the relationship between institutionalized religion and the state (e.g. abortion legality), and class politics concern the distribution of responsibilities between the state, the family, and the private sector (e.g. parental leave policies). This breakdown helps explain why some types of gender equality policies trigger a much larger pushback in some societies than in others. For example, while the US was an early adopter of policies to combat violence against women, it lags farbehind when it comes to maternity and paternity leave and the provision of publicly funded childcare.
For each area of policy change, the authors theorize which institutional actors and other drivers are likely to play key roles in precipitating reform, and test their hypotheses using cross-national panel data. Their approach is comprehensive, and provides valuable insights. However, at times the book feels very repetitive, as the authors revisit the same key independent variables in each chapter. The cross-national regressions are not always well-explained, and the descriptions of various empirical correlations often felt somewhat clinical. Overall, the analysis left me longing for more case studies or qualitative evidence to substantiate the more complex and multidimensional relationships emerging from the analysis.
The second big limitation is noted by the authors themselves: their focus is on policy change, rather than implementation. Yet we know that gender equality legislation in many countries around the world is very limited, and policies that are meant to empower women often tend to be inaccessible to the most vulnerable and marginalized.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews