Ballots & Bullets

Image by LSE Library

There’s a new report out on women’s political representation today. According to yesterday’s Observer it is ‘shocking’, and shows women’s presence in a range of professions – especially politics – to be ‘plummeting’.

Based on the report, however, there was very little evidence of much plummeting going on.  Women’s presence in the professions was fairly low …

Why aren’t more people angry about women’s political under-representation?  That was the core question posed by Joni Lovenduski in a recent article in Political Quarterly, reporting on a workshop on the subject.  “Participants in the workshop”, Lovenduski noted, “wondered why the political under-representation of women in the United Kingdom is not treated as the public disgrace that it is”.

“Undoubtedly,” …

The year is about to turn and with it the tide is also turning. Mothers, often the poorest of the poor, are no longer merely victims of the logic of market competition, division and austerity: they are fighting back. As I argue, with my co-editors in the editorial of the most recent edition of Interface, Feminism, Women’s Movements and …

Once disregarded by politicians and students of politics alike, women – and the issue of gender more generally – now occupy a slightly less peripheral position in real-world and academic politics. There are more elected female representatives in the world than ever there were while even the Political Studies Association has a Women and Politics Specialist Group.

However, as …

Kay Burley is one of the top presenters on Sky News. That means she is a person of influence. If you get Sky News.

Ms Burley has just published a novel about politics called Ladies First. She has her detractors so I doubt the novel will be read in its own terms. Some people think it’s a bit rubbish; …

From Tahir Square in Cairo to the shanty towns of Soweto, resistance to economic, political and social marginalisation in the global south is being increasingly feminised.

According to some this should not be happening. For many Western analysts have historically viewed third world women as passive victims, because of their supposed adherence to traditional values, positioning in the domestic sphere …