Abstract
In this richly analytical book, authors Mala Htun and S. Laurel Weldon have attempted to establish a new approach to gender politics research and activism. Drawing on international, regional, and national data sets, Htun and Weldon have constructed a typology of women’s rights issues that challenges the premise of current feminist scholarship. This new model of analysis is anchored on what they refer to as a disaggregation of women’s rights issues into two typologies: status politics and class politics. Through this disaggregation, the authors argue that scholars, activists, and policy makers will be able to more accurately account for and understand the uneven variation of achieving gender justice across issues and nations. They demonstrate the utility of this disaggregated framework through internationally comparative case studies of specific women’s rights issues and the policies that have (and have not) been achieved to combat them.
Status politics here refers to injustices faced by women because they are women. In other words, status politics are issues that arise because of the ways in which the cultural construction of the feminine is devalued and/or subordinated to the masculine. Such issues may include gender-based violence, constitutional equality, workplace rights, and reproductive justice, among others. Whereas status politics are based in meanings attached to women and their social positions, class politics are ontologically distinct. In their view, class politics involve the access women of all social classes have to resources. Specifically, they argue that there are women’s rights issues that require a reconfiguration of the state–market relationship vis-à-vis women as a class. This view, of the need for the redistribution of resources, draws on the work of Nancy Fraser in Redistribution or Recognition? (2004). Examples of policies falling into class politics include state-funded child care, low-cost contraception, and paid parental leave.
Though the above framework largely rests on this distinction between status versus class politics, the authors raise a second set of concerns. Not only do women’s rights issues differ in substance, but they also differ in what sets of institutions and symbolic meanings specific issues challenge. The claim is that there are two dimensions along which this can occur, what they term doctrinal–nondoctrinal dimensions. The doctrinal dimension challenges the symbolic, namely, religious doctrine, cultural traditions, and social norms. For example, they argue that legal access to abortion is not only situated as status politics but also in the doctrinal dimension because abortion access policies face obstacles from some religious doctrine. On the other hand, the nondoctrinal dimension is situated in the socioeconomic arrangements of a society. This is typified in the example of state-sanctioned mandatory paid maternity/parental leave.
One of the greatest strengths of this book is in the authors’ application of their model to case studies across the globe. Each case study not only addresses a specific women’s rights issue (such as equal opportunity laws) but also uses comparative policy analyses of more than one country to demonstrate the possible causes for the incredible variation in approaches to said issue. In many ways, what the authors are suggesting is an intersectional approach to gender-based policies at the national and international levels. The constellation of institutional actors (such as feminist movements) embedded in specific historical, sociopolitical contexts in conjunction with their disaggregated framework offers new explanatory power for how and why certain actors in certain times are able to achieve gender-based policy changes.
While the model offered here is unique and does encourage more nuanced understanding of the policy-making process itself, there are some limitations. The complete disjuncture between status and class politics creates a false dichotomy, which the authors acknowledge but do not adequately address. The meanings attached to femininity and the subsequent gender roles assigned to women because of these meanings lie at the root of any and all women’s rights issues. While a policy aimed at providing mandatory paid maternity leave may not include language about the symbolic status of women, the status of women is both the cause and effect of the need for the policy. Creating such a false dichotomy between status and class/doctrinal and nondoctrinal also stunts holistic, macro-level approaches to gender-based scholarship. While women’s rights issues at the policy level do need to be addressed individually, it is important to be able to show how seemingly disparate issues are in fact connected by a larger gender logic. Despite these analytical challenges, this book would be very useful to a wide variety of audiences, especially upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in Public Policy, Political Science, Women and Gender Studies, and Sociology.