Women in public office are often assumed to "make a difference" for women, as women--in other words, to represent their female constituents better than do their male counterparts. But is sex really an accurate predictor of a legislator's political choices and actions? In this book, Beth Reingold compares the representational activities and attitudes of male and female members of the Arizona and California state legislatures to illuminate the broader implications of the election and integration of women into public office. In the process, she challenges many of the assumptions that underlie popular expectations of women and men in politics. Using in-depth interviews, survey responses, and legislative records, Reingold actually uncovers more similarities between female and male politicians than differences. Moreover, the stories she presents strongly suggest that rather than assuming that who our representatives are determines what they will do in office, we must acknowledge the possibility that the influence of gender on legislative behavior can be weakened, distorted, or accentuated by powerful forces within the social and political contexts of elective office.

In this republication, revisit the late Linda Nochlin’s pioneering writings on the representation of women in art. Women—as warriors, workers, mothers, lovers—haunt nineteenth and twentieth-century Western painting. This republication of Representing Women brings together the late Linda Nochlin’s most important and pioneering writings on the representation of women in art as she considers works by Jean-Francois Millet, Eugene Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Georges Seurat, Mary Cassatt, and Kathe Kollwitz, among many others. In a riveting, partly autobiographical introduction, Nochlin argues for the honest virtues of an art history that rejects methodological presuppositions and for art historians to investigate the work before their eyes while focusing on its subject matter, informed by a sensitivity to its feminist spirit.

The first book-length treatment of the political representation of women in countries with parliamentary systems based on the Westminster model. Written by a major international team of authors, this new study features twelve chapters on both new and established parliaments, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. It tests the latest theories about women's political representation within Westminster style assemblies and is organized into three key sections that: examine the extent to which the descriptive representation of women in the ‘old’ Westminster parliaments has progressed in recent years, and the factors which have enhanced or impeded development. explore the relationship between the numbers of women elected and the substantive representation of women – or the extent that women ‘act for’ women. review the recent experiences of four ‘new’ Westminster parliaments (Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Nunavut) and evaluate the political opportunities for women provided by the creation of new institutions. This new comparative study will be of great interest to students and researchers of legislative studies and of gender politics and gender studies.

An interdisciplinary anthology of writing by and about women and the way they talk about themselves and allow others to talk about them in ways that are sometimes liberating, sometimes incriminating, but always fraught with questions of personal, and therefore political, power. Some topics include the concept of representation in the law; race and essentialism in feminist legal theory; and representing the lesbian in law and literature. Lacks an index. Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This book examines how women are discussed and depicted visually in popular media. Stressing the importance of a historical approach, the text includes a detailed study of continuities and changes in dominant myths of femininity, especially in the transition from the modern to the postmodern period and explores the influences of feminism and consumerism.

It was not long after the election of a record number of women to the House of Commons in 1997 that the backlash began. The criticism was all-encompassing: they wore the wrong clothes, they voted the wrong way and they were concerned with the wrong issues. Above all, they were accused of failing to make difference, to have failed women, and were dismissed by some as ‘Blair’s Babes’. Drawing on in-depth interviews with more than half of the new Labour women MPs, Sarah Childs reveals how these women actually experienced being MPs, and explores whether they acted for and like women – in their constituencies, in parliament and in government. She presents important insights into theories of women’s political representation, showing that the relationship between women’s descriptive and substantive representation is complicated, that party and gender identities are crucial, that women’s differences must be acknowledged and that it might not always be possible for women representatives to act for women even if they want to. Including a key section on women’s selection for parliament; whether women MPs act as role models; why it is important that women should be present in politics; as well as exploring in depth the subject of women’s substantive representation, New Labour’s Women MPs is essential reading for all those interested in women and politics, legislative studies, political behaviour and representation.

Women, Art, and Power?seven landmark essays on women artists and women in art history?brings together the work of almost twenty years of scholarship and speculation.