Feminist Political Science and Feminist Politics

Abstract

This article moves away from issues of the impact of women and feminist scholarship on political science to examine the relationship of feminist political science to a political constituency. It traces the trajectory of feminist political science from its close relationship with women's movement activism in the 1970s to the highly professionalised disciplinary subfield of today. It highlights some of the dilemmas resulting both from professional imperatives and from the norms of research excellence stemming from new forms of research governance. It finds that feminist political science has been pushed towards addressing an international community of scholars in a language inaccessible to local publics. But it finds that despite such pressures, feminist political science has still sought to produce work that is of direct relevance to achieving women's movement goals, whether within public policy or within political institutions broadly conceived. While it may no longer be speaking the same language, it is still seeking to identify the obstacles to change and the possibilities for transformation. This can be seen particularly clearly in the area of research on the intersection of electoral systems, quotas and party structures. Yet even here tensions can emerge, as with the concept of ‘critical mass’, perceived by activists as a crucial discursive tool but problematised by feminist scholars.     

Covert Operations and Official Collaboration: British Intelligence's Dual Approach to Ireland during World War II

Neutral Ireland posed a unique challenge to the wartime British intelligence community and the latter responded by adopting a dual approach. On the one hand, it carried out covert intelligence operations in Irish territory, involving the Service intelligence branches, the Ministry of Information, and, most importantly, the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). On the other hand, unprecedented cooperation developed between military, police and intelligence agencies from Britain and Ireland, and in particular between MI5 and Irish military intelligence (G2). For most of the war British intelligence pursued this joint strategy of covert activity and official collaboration, and MI5 and SIS shared responsibility for Ireland. However, there was a gradual shift of emphasis towards cooperation and it was eventually concluded that the MI5-G2 link could serve all Britain's security needs. This article charts this evolution and places it within the context of Anglo-Irish wartime political relations.     

Reflections on the NGO forum on women '95

Abstract

The approximately 30,000 participants in the Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) Forum on Women ‘95 did more than simply give voice and attention to often invisible and silenced women's issues. They journeyed to the forum from over 185 countries to Huairou, a resort town forty kilometers outside of Beijing, the People's Republic of China, to network, exchange information, and devise innovative and determined implementation of solutions to the world's most pressing problems. The NGO forum inspired commitment to action in many forms: renewing and forging solidarity on issues and strategies, lobbying government delegates during the overlapping (4–15 September 1995) official U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, and sustaining and expanding day-to-day work in communities after participants returned home.     

Gender,Metaphor and the State

The neo-liberal upsurge of the last twenty years and the neo-liberal case against the welfare state has gained much of its emotional force from a sub-text which is highly gendered. Whereas social liberalism had contained the promise of more autonomy within the private sphere and more caring values in the public sphere, neo-liberalism depicts the results of social liberalism as a loss of self reliance - through ‘over-protection’ by the state in the public sphere and usurpation of male roles in the private sphere. The identification of the welfare state as female (the ‘nanny state’) helps fuel resentment on the part of those already confused by rapidly changing gender roles.This paper tracks the sex change which took place in the image of the liberal state as it evolved out of the night watchman state - the link between the women's suffrage movement and social regulation, maternal principles of distribution and demands for the public organization of caring. It examines the neo-liberal rejection of the breast and neo-liberal claims that the maternal state is incompatible with ‘self-reliance’ and a barrier to competitiveness in the world market.