Frontiers of Women and Politics Research Seminar

Wednesday 2nd September 1998
John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Statement on the Subfield of Women and Politics
Cathy J. Cohen
Yale University

Over the last 20 to 30 years scholars of women and politics have made incredible advances in mainstreaming the study of women and politics into political science. Increasingly scholars of public opinion, for instance, make note of sex / gender differences in their findings. The American Political Science Review has begun to publish with increasing regularity some articles on women and their political behavior. Furthermore, across the country more and more graduate students are demanding courses and in some cases sustained training in the field of women and politics. Clearly, such victories are to be celebrated not only for the substantial rise in scholars and published work focusing explicitly on women and politics they produce, but also for the opportunities such advances afford other scholars tangentially connected to field. I, for one, believe that I never would have been authorized to pursue a qualitative dissertation on the political response to AIDS in black communities--in particular at the University of Michigan--if scholars studying black politics and women and politics had not waged important battles to expand the field of political science, legitimizing groups previously defined as marginal to understanding politics. However, at the same time that we celebrate our progress we must also ask at what costs have these advances been secured. I am one who is concerned that in our quest to be recognized as a legitimate subfield we may be replicating some of the pitfalls that currently limits the field of political science. Specifically, I worry that in our fight for inclusion we may be sacrificing creativity in our theoretical conception of politics, the groups or subjects under examination and the analytic techniques / methods that we use in our research. 

For example, feminist scholars have long pointed to the artificial dichotomy between public and private domains as one significant barrier to recognizing women's distinct and sometimes transformative ways of participating politically. Scholars argue that the dominant concentration on electoral forms of participation in political science has diverted attention from other extra-systemic and more social forms of participation in which many women, in particular, women of color engage. This very critical insight and argument for expanding how we conceptualize the political has only been partially heeded by many of us who study public opinion and political behavior. While we have fought to have the more traditional forms of participation women engage in recognized and studied, there is still relatively little research focusing on the non-institutionalized political activity of women. Political scientists must become actively involved in studying the non-electoral forms of participation women, in particular, women of color pursue. Why is it that historians and sociologists seem more interested than many political scientists in exploring, for example, the extra-systemic political work of black women pursued through such vehicles as the Black Baptist Club Movement of the early 1900s or the National Welfare Rights Organizing of the 1960s? As we begin to consider our research agenda for the next decade, this is an area that deserves our attention. 

Another example closely connected with the last point is the general dearth of work on the political attitudes and behavior of women of color. While as a subfield we have introduced women as an important and central unit of analysis, we have yet to decenter the normative role white and elite women play in our in research. In 1998, we still know relatively little about the political behavior, ideologies and attitudes of Latinas, African-American, Asian and Native American women. We must expect all those who study women and politics to consistently address issues of concern to poor women and women of color, challenging the unspoken normative standard of whiteness in this field. Furthermore, if we take seriously theoretical arguments promoting an intersectional framework for studying women's experiences, identities and political behavior, then future research must pay attention to the ways in which gender interacts with race, class, sexual orientation and other primary identities in our society. 

Finally, let me say that I briefly raise the concerns / questions detailed above not as criticisms of current scholars of women and politics, but instead as challenges which confront us all as we seek to expand the subfield and our personal research agendas. The subfield of women and politics has made substantial progress in political science, increasing its standing and power. As we progress down the path of mainstreaming, we have the opportunity to transform not only the subfield but just as importantly the discipline. A new generation of scholars can introduce and institutionalize a more expansive understanding of politics, the groups or subjects under consideration as well as the methodologies seen as legitimate in the discipline. Most importantly, we can all work to change the questions seen as fundamental to understanding politics. Our concern must not only be with do women vote, but also with the question of does voting improve women and men's lives. In addition to asking how women get elected to public office, we must also question whether their election improves the lives of some of our most marginal members--poor women and women of color. Even in the field of political behavior and public opinion, our statistical analyses must move beyond operationalizing "gender" as a simple dummy variable to a more complicated conceptualization of gender and gender role construction. I hope that as we move toward the twenty-first century our goal is not simply to be a central part of political science as currently constituted, but more ambitiously to substantially transform the field.