A review essay covering books by: 1) Merike Blofield, The Great Gap: Inequality and the Politics of Redistribution in Latin America (2011); 2) America Evelyn Huber and John D. Stephens, Democracy and the Left: Social Policy and Inequality in Latin (2012); 3) Stephen B. Kaplan, Globalization and Austerity Politics in Latin America (2013).
This essay offers a conceptualization of a comparative politics of gender (CPG) and some explanations for why CPG work is marginalized in the comparative politics subfield. I delineate CPG as a field of study in which gendered dependent or independent variables are the defining feature and present illustrative examples of four different types of CPG research. I contend that institutional and historical factors account for much of the marginalization of CPG research, and I propose some courses of actions through which CPG scholars can lessen this marginalization. The failure of comparative politics scholars to engage with gendered work is also a serious problem. The essay concludes by offering some suggestions for better integrating CPG scholarship into the subfield.