Can We Change How Political Science Thinks? “Gender Mainstreaming” in a Resistant Discipline

Abstract

AbstractThis paper argues that, despite significant increases in the number of women professors and the growth of feminist political science, transformative change hasn't occurred in how conventional political scientists think about politics. “Transformative change” requires the successful mainstreaming of gender-focused knowledge and the use of “gender” as a category of analysis in studies of politics. The article first explores the insights of leading feminist political scientists in the five Anglo-American democracies, about why gender mainstreaming has not succeeded to date. It establishes the extent of the failure and explores its causes, including the discipline's fragmented structure, polarized culture and a number of theoretical and methodological incompatibilities between mainstream and feminist political science. Finally, several promising strategies for achieving transformative change are explored.