Representing Women

Women in public office are often assumed to "make a difference" for women, as women--in other words, to represent their female constituents better than do their male counterparts. But is sex really an accurate predictor of a legislator's political choices and actions? In this book, Beth Reingold compares the representational activities and attitudes of male and female members of the Arizona and California state legislatures to illuminate the broader implications of the election and integration of women into public office. In the process, she challenges many of the assumptions that underlie popular expectations of women and men in politics. Using in-depth interviews, survey responses, and legislative records, Reingold actually uncovers more similarities between female and male politicians than differences. Moreover, the stories she presents strongly suggest that rather than assuming that who our representatives are determines what they will do in office, we must acknowledge the possibility that the influence of gender on legislative behavior can be weakened, distorted, or accentuated by powerful forces within the social and political contexts of elective office.

In this republication, revisit the late Linda Nochlin’s pioneering writings on the representation of women in art. Women—as warriors, workers, mothers, lovers—haunt nineteenth and twentieth-century Western painting. This republication of Representing Women brings together the late Linda Nochlin’s most important and pioneering writings on the representation of women in art as she considers works by Jean-Francois Millet, Eugene Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Georges Seurat, Mary Cassatt, and Kathe Kollwitz, among many others. In a riveting, partly autobiographical introduction, Nochlin argues for the honest virtues of an art history that rejects methodological presuppositions and for art historians to investigate the work before their eyes while focusing on its subject matter, informed by a sensitivity to its feminist spirit.

Written by a major international team of authors, this new study features twelve chapters on both new and established parliaments, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. It tests the latest theories about women's political representation within Westminster style assemblies and is clearly organized into three key sections.

This book examines how women are discussed and depicted visually in popular media. Stressing the importance of a historical approach, the text includes a detailed study of continuities and changes in dominant myths of femininity, especially in the transition from the modern to the postmodern period and explores the influences of feminism and consumerism.

“Over the last few years we’ve seen a remarkable surge of women running for office, and even better, winning. Running takes courage, passion, and commitment, but it also takes books like this. June and Kate have created a wonderful resource for women as they think about taking the leap.”—Hillary Rodham Clinton Turn “can I do this?” into “yes, I can!” Join the growing wave of women leaders with Represent, an energetic, interactive, and inspiring step-by-step guide showing how to run for the approximately 500,000 elected offices in the US. Written with humor and honesty by writer, comedian, actress, and activist June Diane Raphael and Kate Black, former chief of staff at EMILY’s list, Represent is structured around a 21-point document called “I’m Running for Office: The Checklist.” Doubling as a workbook, Represent covers it all, from the nuts and bolts of where to run, fundraising, and filing deadlines, to issues like balancing family and campaigning, managing social media and how running for office can work in your real life. With infographics, profiles of women politicians, and wisdom and advice from women in office, this is a must-own for any woman thinking of joining the pink wave.

Women, Art, and Power?seven landmark essays on women artists and women in art history?brings together the work of almost twenty years of scholarship and speculation.

Following significant increases in women’s electoral representation in the 1980s and '90s, progress has stalled. Despite some high-profile successes at the provincial level, there are now only a few more women in Canada’s parliament and legislatures than a decade ago. What has happened to the representational gains for women and why does gender parity remain so elusive? To answer these questions, Stalled provides a provides a detailed roadmap of women’s political representation as candidates, office-holders, cabinet ministers, party leaders, and as representatives of the Crown at all levels of government across Canada. Prospects for gender parity in political office are assessed in each jurisdiction and institution. Explanations are re-examined and analyzed using data from across the country. The representation of women in elected and appointed offices is an important indicator of both gender equality and the overall health of democratic governance. By this measure Canada continues to fall short.

In this major book, Griselda Pollock engages boldly in the culture wars over `what is the canon?` and `what difference can feminism make?` Do we simply reject the all-male line-up and satisfy our need for ideal egos with an all women litany of artistic heroines? Or is the question a chance to resist the phallocentric binary and allow the ambiguities and complexities of desire - subjectivity and sexuality - to shape the readings of art that constantly displace the present gender demarcations?

In COMPASSIONATE AUTHORITY Kathleen B. Jones takes up some of the most central debates in contemporary feminist analysis - debates concerning the nature of the categories of feminist theory, the development of alternative interpretative strategies in feminist theory, and the position of authority in both feminist theory and practice. Engaging the criticisms of feminist theory offered both by postmodernist feminists and the writings of feminists of color, and employing the textual strategies of feminist film theory, Jones reads canonical texts in modern political theory "against the grain." In doing so, she demonstrates the ways in which gender has been used to construct the paradigms of politics and the practices of authority. Jones explicates the historical roots of the definition of authority as sovereignty and considers the limited usefulness of this conceptualization for the feminist project. She counters this formulation of authority which has dominated political discourse for centuries with an alternative conceptualization of "compassionate authority." This feminist reconstruction of the theory and practice of authority provides a basis for the foundation of a new and meaningful order, for a "woman-friendly" polity. This work uses authority as the means to examine how political analysis is transformed by thinking through gender. In doing so, it makes an original and important contribution to the field of feminist political theory: a burgeoning field in which many political concepts have received rich and extensive treatment and yet, a field in which the question of authority has never before been systematically explored. Drawing on the writings of feminist philosophers, literarycritics, film theorists, and historians, as well as on the more orthodox texts of political theory, this book will have broad appeal to scholars and students of women's studies, political science, and a range of interdisciplinary studies.