Drawing from the work of internationally renowned scholars from the Research Network on Gender, Politics and the State (RNGS), this study offers in-depth analysis of the relationship between state feminism, women's movements and public policy and places them within a comparative theoretical framework. Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Finland, Austria, Belgium, Canada, and the U.S. are all discussed individually.

This novel was the major inspiration for the Women's Movement and continues to be a powerful and illuminating analysis of the position of women in Western society___

How can women maximise their political influence? Does state feminism enhance the political representation of women? Should feminism be established in state institutions to treat women's concerns? Written by experts in the field, this 2005 book uses an innovative model of political influence to construct answers to these and other questions in the long-running debate over the political representation of women. The book assesses how states respond to women's demands for political representation both in terms of their inclusion as actors and the consideration of their interests in the decision making process. Debates on the issue vary from country to country, depending on institutional structures, women's movements and other factors, and this book offered the first comparative account of the subject. The authors analyse eleven democracies in Europe and North America and present comprehensive research from the 1960s to the present.

Most Western democracies established women's policy agencies to improve the status of women by the 1990s. One of the book's key questions is how have women's policy agencies been able to develop, maintain or enhance their roles in the transformed political context and how have women's movements adapted to change in twelve states.

Abortion Politics, Women's Movements and the Democratic State examines the impact of women's movements since the 1960s on the policy-making processes determining abortion laws. The impact of women's movements is assessed in terms of their success in increasing the democratic representation of women generally and movement organizations specifically. Rather than asking 'how many women are in political office' this study asks 'to what extent are women included in the day to day process of making decisions?' Of special interest in this project is the extent to which states, through establishment of women's policy agencies, have assisted, opposed, or ignored the demands of movement activists for access to power and for feminist abortion policies. Researchers have examined these questions in policy debates over the last four decades in 11 advanced industrial democracies: Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United States. The findings of this cross-national longitudinal study document that women's movements have been successful in gaining both substantive and descriptive representation on abortion policy in a majority of the 32 debates studied. The ability of women's policy offices to provide a necessary and effective linkage between women's movement activism and increased democratic representation in policy- making varies both cross-nationally and over time. The openness of policy subsystems and the status of the parties on the left are factors that interact with variations in movement cohesion and resources to account for these variations.

Combining research, theory and practice, pan-European perspectives and the disciplines of human rights, sociology and politics, this book offers a rare insight into the multiplicity of issues surrounding women's equality, citizenship and political rights in transitional Europe and an expanding European Union. From policy-making to civil rights, domestic violence and education, experienced authors present innovative research, analysis and suggestions for the future of women as participants in an evolving Europe.

Addressing essential questions of women's movement activism and political change in Western democracies.

This collection, originally published in 2007, offers a diachronic analytical study of new and alternative social movements in Spain from the democratic transition to the first decade of the 21st century, paying attention to anti-war mobilizations and the use of new technologies as a mobilizing resource. New and alternative social movements are studied through the prism of identified linkages among the left, movement identities and global processes in the Spanish context. Weight is given to certain important historical aspects, like Spain’s relatively recent authoritarian past, and certain value-added factors, such as the weak associationalism and materialism exhibited by the Spanish public. These are complemented by exploring insights offered by key theoretical approaches on social movements (political opportunities structures, resource mobilization). The volume covers established social movement cases (gender, peace, environmental movements) as well as those with a more explicit connection to the current context of global contestation (squatters’ and anti-globalization movements). This bookw as published as a special issue of South European Society and Politics.

Theorizing Feminist Policy avoids the usual clash between feminist analysis and non-feminist social science in mapping out the new field of feminist comparative policy. Instead, it intersects empirical feminist policy analysis with non-feminist policy studies to define and contribute to this new and emerging field of study. Consulting a wide sweep of empirical and theoretical work, the book first defines Feminist Comparative Policy showing how it dialogs with the adjacent non-feminist areas of Comparative Public Policy, Comparative Politics, and Public Policy Studies. Theorizing Feminist Policy seeks then to strengthen one of the weakest links of this new area - the study of explicitly feminist government action. In the remaining chapters, the books defines feminist policy as a separate sector, with eight sub sectors - blueprint, political representation, equal employment, reconciliation, family law, reproductive rights, sexuality and violence, and public service delivery. It develops a qualitative and comparative framework for analysing the profiles and styles of feminist policy in post industrial democracies and uses the framework to examine twenty seven different cases of feminist policy formation across thirteen different countries. The initial empirical study makes a case for feminist policy as a new sector of state action, concluding tentatively that successful feminist policy formation is a subtle combination of feminist strategic partnerships, non feminist support, institutions, culture, and international influences. These tentative findings also shed new light on the perennial questions of comparative politics and policy: do politics, institutions, national policy style, sector, institutions, or culture matter the most in determining policy processes and outcomes? The books finishes by suggesting the next steps in developing comparative theories of feminist policy formation. Theorising Feminist Policy, therefore, goes beyond just describing the dimensions of feminist policy from existing literature, it seeks to systematically contribute to comparative theories of how the contemporary post-industrial state has taken on social change at the beginning of the 21st century.

This is the story of how the women's movement in China took advantage of the government's official efforts to position women in the rural economic reforms of the 1980s to achieve a significant and ever-increasing role in China's developing turn toward a market economy, which was not the state's intent.