Abstract
‘Making Gender Salient’ is an outstanding contribution to the study of gender and politics. It illustrates how gender quotas, in addition to bringing more women into our legislatures (if implemented effectively), provide a context conducive for issues of gender equality to reach the political agenda. This book has the potential to set a research agenda for the next generation of scholars and to be a catalyst for real progress in a field that is presently often bifurcated along methodological and epistemological lines. The range of data collected, and approaches employed, is so impressive that it is difficult to believe that they have been brought together by one researcher. Catalano Weeks show us, in a concrete realisation, how the field can advance by bringing different perspectives together, combining qualitative, historical and comparative quantitative analytic approaches. The result is a holistic approach to analysing the substantive representation of women which has often been missing from the sub-discipline.
Making ‘Gender Salient’ tackles the perennial problem of gender and politics research, the substantive representation of women. The sub-discipline started by asking the question ‘where are the women?’, an essential question in the first instance because mostly women were simply absent from formal political institutions. Thus, counting women’s bodies was a necessary first step to identifying women’s presence/absence, or their descriptive representation. Scholarship then moved on to think about what difference it makes when women are present. This is where we got into the really difficult issues of what it means to substantively represent women and what is in women’s interests. ‘Making Gender Salient’ moves this research forward, it avoids taking an essentialist position on the definition of women’s interests, instead arguing that different interests between men and women manifest when societies organise along gendered lines; thus, we should expect variation across time and space. The book provides an analytic framework for identifying when, where and how gender equality is politically salient.
‘Making Gender Salient’ sets out a problem of political market failure, an innovative description of the gap between what women might want politically and what is actually delivered. Weeks explains that, where there are gender gaps in attitudes and preferences, the issues that are most salient to women are often marginalised and considered peripheral because the political market is not organised to respond to them. She illustrates, with convincing empirical evidence, how gender quotas can provide an effective mechanism for the translation of women’s preferences into the political arena.
Weeks tackles the who, what, where, when and how of women’s political representation using the example of the implementation of gender quotas to illustrate a wider set of questions concerning the varying influence of factions, ministers and salience on the pursuit of gender equality. All of these factors influence how well women are represented and quotas provide a mechanism for enhancing each one. The approach speaks to the broader field of political representation, beyond the study of quotas, because it raises the question of whether there are other democratic innovations that would have a similar impact on these three characteristics.
A large proportion of gender and politics scholarship focuses on high income nations, thus cutting off significant variation from the analysis. Weeks acknowledges this limitation and clearly sets out her rationale for focusing on high income countries and the formal economy as starting point for analysis. She moves beyond the implicit assumption that the findings of comparative political science will travel, without modification and clearly delineates a new research terrain showing how her approach, question and her methods are conducive expanding to more countries in future in a tangible next step.
The study of the impact of quotas in ‘Making Gender Salient’ is based on an incredibly rigorous over time analysis of work-family policy. The measurement of how maternal employment is supported illustrates the attention to detail and meticulous operationalisation that is apparent throughout. The potential negative impact of longer maternity leaves and extended low paid leaves is included alongside the benefits of paid parental leave. The argument of the book is incredibly logical and based on a solid foundation of empirical research because of all the groundwork over an extended period.
Finally, for me the most impressive aspect of the analysis is the combination of rhetorical policy commitment, action and policy impact in the examination of the influence of gender quotas on the substantive representation of women. It is very unusual to see all three stages of the policy process included in the analysis and this comprehensive approach makes the results especially persuasive.
Two main questions have remained with me since reading this book. First, how long might the influence of a quota last? Does the implementation of a gender quota raise the salience of gender equality in policy making indefinitely or for a finite period? Second, what other democratic innovations could provide similar effects making the interests of marginalised groups politically salient?