Women's Movements Facing the Reconfigured State

Examines the changing relationship between women's movements and states in Western Europe and North America.

Lee Ann Banaszak (Edited by), Karen Beckwith (Edited by), Dieter Rucht (Edited by)

9780521812788, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 March 2003

374 pages, 2 b/w illus. 17 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.72 kg

'This book is refreshing in its depth and scope of analysis, especially in identifying and exploring the interrelated political, cultural, domestic, and international components of state reconfiguration that underlie the dynamic relation between women's movements and states.' Journal of Peace Research

This book examines the relationship between women's movements and states in West Europe and North America, as states have relocated their formal powers and policy-making responsibilities. Since the 1980s, North American and West European states have reduced the scope and volume of their national responsibilities, increasingly employing neoliberal free market rhetoric, and developed transnational economic and political authorities. Simultaneously, second wave women's movements have been transformed. Movements that were revolutionary in rhetoric, autonomous from states, and largely informally organized in the 1970s are, by the 1990s, employing moderate neoliberal rhetoric, entering state institutions as active participants, and creating more formal organizations. Utilizing a common theoretical framework, the contributors examine how movements have influenced the reconfiguration of nation-states and how these changes have influenced the goals, mobilization, tactics, success and rhetoric of women's movements in various Western European and North American countries.

1. When power relocates: interactive changes in women's movements and states Lee Ann Banaszak, Karen Beckwith and Dieter Rucht
2. The feminist movement and the reconfigured state in Spain (1970s–2000) Celia Valiente
3. The women's movement, the left, and the state: continuities and changes in the Italian case Donatella della Porta
4. Comparing two movements for gender parity: France and Spain Jane Jenson and Celia Valiente
5. Refuge in reconfigured states: shelter movements in the United States, Britain, and Sweden R. Amy Elman
6. Shifting states: women's constitutional organizing across time and space Alexandra Dobrowolsky
7. The women's movement policy successes and the constraints of state reconfiguration: abortion and equal pay in differing eras Lee Ann Banaszak
8. The gendering ways of states: women's representation and state reconfiguration in France, Great Britain, and the United States Karen Beckwith
9. 'Re-dividing citizens' - divided feminisms: the reconfigured US state and women's citizenship Mary Fainsod Katzenstein
10. Cultural continuity and structural change: the logic of adaptation by radical, liberal, and socialist feminists to state reconfiguration Carol McClung Mueller and John D. McCarthy
11. Interactions between social movements and states in a comparative perspective Dieter Rucht
12. Restating the woman question: women's movements and state restructuring David S. Meyer.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], Politics & government [JP], Gender studies: women [JFSJ1]