Gender discrimination can be overt & deliberate. It can be covert & indeliberate. In the latter case it is called 'asymmetry.' The gender studies community aims to reveal & eliminate any forms of gender asymmetry. However, insufficient methodological & theoretical reflection implies the reproduction of gender asymmetry throughout gender studies. Adapted from the source document.
In: Politics & gender: the journal of the Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association, Volume 1, Issue 1, p. 137-141
Part of a symposium, "The Concept of Gender: Research Implications for Political Science." This article examines ways of finding gender in data from research on individuals. A comparison is drawn between the study of race & the study of gender. While gender is more in the open because Americans are more comfortable making essentialist claims about gender than about race, it is also more invisible because the distinctions of sex are more naturalized & less questioned. Furthermore, gender happens in many social institutions in ways that build linkages between institutions. Without taking these linkages into account, scholars may not observe the scope & cause of potential discrimination. Lastly, gender hierarchies are intimate & can often be explained away as a series of individual choices rather than large-scale discrimination. It is recommended that the study of gender must take into account the unlikelihood that all women or all men will share a vast quantity of life experiences. As a result, any analysis should pinpoint gender into a series of coefficients representing the paths, experiences, & mechanisms through which gender formations operate. References. R. Prince
A review essay on a special issue of International Peacekeeping, edited by Louise Olsson & Torunn L. Tryggestad, Women and International Peacekeeping (London: Frank Cass, 2001).
The Electoral Commission's recently published report Gender and Political Participation captures in a clear and accessible fashion the ways in which gender determines the nature of women and men's political participation in the UK. Analysing existing academic survey research it establishes that there is an overall gender gap in political activism with men more active than women. However, it also finds that there is no gender gap in voter turnout at national, regional, or local elections and that in some political activities, such as signing petitions or boycotting products, women are more likely than men to be active. The report also raises important questions about the consequences ‐ substantive and in terms of legitimacy ‐ of women's lower levels of participation in party politics, and suggests that political parties should ensure that greater numbers of women are elected to our political institutions.
