Women political leaders, research shows, have been able to use stereotypically feminine traits to their advantage in their response to the pandemic, thus overcoming usual double binds of performing femininity and political leadership. But what, more precisely, accounts for women politicians’ successful performance of pandemic leadership? In this paper, we argue that public perceptions of women leaders’ credibility are negotiated through news media and further mediated by specific events and broader cultural contexts. Using a mixed methodology of media readings and focus group interviews, we show how prime ministers Erna Solberg of Norway and Mette Frederiksen of Denmark both performed a persona of the “mother of the nation,” but only Solberg succeeded in doing so authentically, leading to the public’s celebration of her credibility while Frederiksen was chided for being inauthentic and strategic.

We are delighted to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Politics & Gender. This achievement signals an inflection point in the maturity of the subfield of women, gender, and politics research, and provides us with an opportunity to reflect on the role that the journal has played in the discipline of political science.

The COVID-19 pandemic posed new challenges for leaders, requiring behavior change and public self-compliance. Stereotypically feminine qualities, such as compassion and a good approach to people, may have helped achieve these goals, rendering the pandemic a “feminine crisis.” The special nature of this crisis, along with media attention on female-led countries successfully managing the pandemic, raises the question of whether female leaders would be perceived as more competent in handling such a crisis. In an experimental study conducted on a representative sample in Poland, we assessed whether female prime minister candidates or candidates with feminine traits had an advantage when their competence in managing a large-scale pandemic was evaluated. Surprisingly, we found that, contrary to national security and economic crises (where male or masculine candidates tend to be advantaged), women or feminine candidates were not perceived as having an advantage in managing a COVID-19 type crisis. Furthermore, conservative participants seemed to perceive male candidates as more competent, even in the pandemic context. Although the differences were small in magnitude, they suggest that even in a potentially “feminine crisis,” women do not fare better than men, while men still fare better in stereotypically male crises.

While scholarship on feminist foreign policy continues to proliferate, the impact of anti-feminist objectives on foreign policy requires attention. In this article, I critically examine the intersection of abortion politics and U.S. foreign policy, arguing that American foreign policy has long been shaped by an anti-feminist practice. The U.S. has systematically restricted access to abortion abroad for over 50 years through legislation and executive actions. Applying quantitative and qualitative research methods, I trace the history of abortion-related foreign policy from 1973 to 2022, analyze all congressional foreign policy bills referencing abortion, and draw on interviews with legislative staff and issue advocates from the 115th Congress (2017-18) to highlight how anti-abortion advocacy shapes U.S. foreign policy decisions. These findings suggest that while feminist mobilization has constrained anti-abortion efforts domestically in the US, foreign policy remained a key battleground where anti-feminist actors have historically been more successful. This case underscores the importance of analyzing domestic policy dynamics to understand the broader implications of feminist and anti-feminist agendas in international relations.

Much has changed since 2007–2010 when I co-edited the journal Politics & Gender (P&G) with Kathleen Dolan. In this essay, I reflect on the changes in the journal and the subfield of a comparative politics of gender. Dolan and I were the second team to edit the journal, following in the footsteps of the inaugural editors Karen Beckwith and Lisa Baldez. The journal was finding its footing at the time, and increasing submissions was a key concern. This year, on its 20th anniversary, we can celebrate that the journal, like the subfield of gender and politics, has flourished and matured. The number of articles published by the journal has multiplied exponentially and the quality of articles has improved significantly. Moreover, the journal has demonstrably helped shape the subfield of a comparative politics of gender in ways that I outline below.

The Supreme Court of the United States’ (SCOTUS) decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization removed the federal right to an abortion, thereby entrusting the states to decide the fate of women’s reproductive health care policies. The outcome activated pro-choice and pro-life groups in efforts to secure favorable policies in states. One tool that groups have utilized to gain support for their position involves selective framing of women’s reproductive policies, including careful selection of wording employed in popular referenda. Using a survey experiment, this study investigates how word/phrase choice influences support for women’s reproductive policies. Two general findings stand out. First, word/phrase choices significantly impact aggregate levels of support for policies. Second, predictor variables exhibit non-static relationships with support across statements. For example, some gender gaps were evident in support for general statements and pro-choice-leaning statements but absent for specific statements and pro-life-framed statements. These findings hold implications for elections on reproductive health policies.

We take a deep dive into the sponsorship and cosponsorship activity of Republicans in the US House of Representatives from 1993–2014 to examine how ideology and gender influence the policy priorities of Republican legislators on issues associated with women, as well as on the party-owned issue of tax policy. We expect that Republican women are cross-pressured since assumptions about their policy expertise as women conflict with the policy reputation of the Republican Party. As a result, Republican women’s policy choices are impacted by their ideology in a way that is different from their male counterparts. Moreover, our analysis of which members’ bills move through the legislative process demonstrates that beyond their own policy preferences, women are strategic party actors. Thus, women are only more likely to see action on their women-focused and anti-abortion proposals, the two areas that define the partisan divide over women’s place in society.

A growing number of states are adopting a feminist foreign policy (FFP). While this change has excited much scholarly attention, the process by which countries decide to adopt FFP remains unclear: How can we explain their journey toward the formal adoption of FFP? What factors create an environment in which these states were willing (and able) to declare their foreign policy feminist? We bring together literature on FFP and foreign policy change to identify the factors that lead to the uptake of FFP. The roles of a favorable domestic context, policy entrepreneurs, a new governing coalition, and the international context for feminism are highlighted as having clear impact on the decision to adopt FFP. The paper focuses on two different cases: Sweden, which pioneered the idea of FFP until a rollback on its position following domestic elections in 2022, and Chile, which only adopted FFP in 2022.

The objective of feminist institutionalist (FI) political science is to expose institutions that perpetuate gender inequalities. The nature of these entities and the best strategies for studying them remain hotly debated topics. Some scholars identify ethnography as a valuable methodology for FI research. However, novices to this methodology might need help navigating it. In this theory-generating article, we aim to bridge the gap between different approaches to FI and ethnographic methodologies. We propose ethnographic approaches suitable for scholars who see gendered institutions as real entities that constrain and enable human practices, as well as those who perceive them as sedimented clusters of meanings. We illustrate our arguments using a partially fictional empirical example, inspired by findings from our own ethnographic research. We hope that this article will promote increased engagement, both theoretical and empirical, with ethnography among FI scholars.

I, Mary Caputi, was humbled and honored to be offered the editorship of Politics & Gender, a position that I filled between 2016–19. With my hard-working associate editors Sun Young Kwak, Steve Gonzales, and Timothy Kaufman-Osborn, we strove to build upon the journal’s already strong reputation as an agenda-setting academic publication that offers cutting-edge scholarship in all areas of gender studies. Because the relationship between “politics and gender” is so rich and complex, we tried to faithfully represent the depth and variety of interplay in our scholarly articles, Critical Perspectives contributions, Special Issues, and our choice of books to be reviewed. As a team, the task of editing the journal sent us on an enlightening journey that proved both challenging and educational. Throughout my tenure, I learned a great deal about my own field of contemporary feminist theory, and about how gender is studied in other subfields of political science and other academic disciplines across the university.

Femonationalism, or the selective use of feminist discourse to advance far-right causes, has often been analyzed through the lens of party politics. Shifting the focus to grassroots activists, this article studies a group of far-right female activists in France organized as a women-only collective of “identitarian feminists” to explore how these grassroots activists articulate anti-feminist frames while also appropriating selective aspects of feminism. The study relies on three types of empirical data: a long-term digital observation of the collective, a critical analysis of documents, and 10 semi-structured interviews. These data reveal that these activists diverge from traditional anti-feminism and instead reflect a femonationalist appropriation of feminism. This appropriation can be seen in three interconnected frames used by the collective in the fight against street harassment: an opposition to intersectional feminism, the use of postfeminist frames, and the racialization of sexism.

The 2024 elections made US history in numerous ways. Vice President Kamala Harris became the first Black and South Asian woman to be nominated by a major party for the presidency. Former president Donald Trump made history by becoming the oldest person and the first convicted felon to become president. 2024 marked the first presidential election following the historic Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in 2022.

Is gender violence considered a part of advancing Indigenous self-determination in Alaska? What are the key jurisdictional, institutional, infrastructural, and community level challenges in combating violence against Alaska Native women? Few studies have considered the relationship between gender violence and Alaska Native sovereignty. I address this gap by employing the theory of relational Indigenous self-determination and drawing on research interviews with Indigenous women in Alaska and analyzing the data in light of two recent legislative changes: the 2022 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, and the legislation that formally recognizes Alaska Native tribes in the state of Alaska. The findings demonstrate that persistent questions about Alaska Native jurisdiction stemming from the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) limit considering violence against Indigenous women and Indigenous self-determination as issues that need to be addressed in tandem.

Germany’s 2023 Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP) Guidelines commit to a transformative, intersectional agenda across diplomacy, security, and climate policy, but omit migration. This article examines how and why migration was excluded, despite its centrality to foreign policy and the involvement of civil society in the drafting process. Drawing on practice theory, Black feminist and postcolonial scholarship, we analyze state–civil society consultations as a community of practice shaped by epistemic hierarchies based on race and coloniality. We show how the Foreign Office’s reliance on established, Germany-based policy actors with limited expertise in gendered mobility sidelined migration as a feminist concern. The consultation format constrained participation and reinforced boundaries around what counted as legitimate feminist knowledge. Bridging literature on migration and FFP, the article advances understandings of how institutional and epistemic power shape feminist policy-making. It calls for a more inclusive FFP attentive to the gendered and racialized dynamics of mobility.

We seek to unpack and complicate traditional findings of Black Americans’ ambivalent progressivism of immigrants and immigration by seriously considering gender as an analytic tool. Specifically, we aim to highlight how Black women’s political and social uniqueness contextualizes their perception of attitudes toward immigrants and immigration. We argue that Black women’s unique race and gendered experiences inform Black women’s attitudes and preferences regarding immigration and immigrants. Further, we take their heterogeneity seriously because Black women are not a monolith. Using the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-election Survey (CMPS), we argue that perceptions of shared disadvantage, high levels of woman of color (WoC) linked fate and intersectional solidarity, and strong Democratic identification will positively influence African American women and Black immigrant women’s progressive attitudes toward immigrants and immigration compared to Black women who have lower levels of shared discrimination, WoC linked fate, intersectional solidarity, or have weak Democratic identification.

Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee on August 23, 2024. Her campaign was significantly different than others. As the sitting vice president to Joe Biden, Harris’s campaign was shortened. She had less than 90 days to mount a formal campaign after her endorsement from Biden. In this essay, I take an intersectional analytical framework — accounting for how power in society is shaped by multiple axes of social division, including race, class, and gender, and not a single axis of identity (Collins and Bilge 2020, 2). I seek to explain the racial and gendered dynamics during the campaign, the activism of Black women voters leading up to Election Day, and Black women’s activism in the aftermath of the 2024 election. This essay highlights the resilience of Black women, evident in their political behavior and political attitudes in the 2024 presidential election campaign and aftermath. In Black women’s support for the Democratic Party, Democratic ticket, and Vice President Harris, we better understand how this pivotal base influences electoral politics and how race-gendered identities influence American politics overall.

Recently, former colonial powers in the Global North have begun addressing their colonial pasts through their foreign policies. Some of these states pursue a feminist foreign policy (FFP). However, to date, only one FFP makes explicit mention of colonial legacies: that of Germany, adopted in 2021. How does German FFP discourse address this and what political work does this do? Contributing to critiques of coloniality in FFP, we analyze the discursive representation of Germany’s colonial past in foreign policy texts since 2021. Drawing on the socio-critical concepts theater of reconciliation by Max Czollek and remembrance superiority by Mohamed Amjahid, we find that the discourse powerfully establishes gendered notions of caring, responsible, and reflexive German statehood. This organizes how Germany’s engagement with its colonial past is told and which forms of engagement with former colonies are rendered intelligible. We argue that German FFP erases colonial structures that permeate German foreign policy and reproduces coloniality through discursive representations.