In her book, Kira Sanbonmatsu provides a compelling and evenhanded analysis of how political parties have come to embrace issues of gender. She provides a penetrating longitudinal and cross-sectional analysis of this response of political parties against a backdrop of the women's movement. With elections since 1992 focusing on women as voters and candidates, and with a growth of interest in parties due to their apparent polarization on issues and their newfound ways around campaign finances laws, her timely study contributes to a broader understanding of party realignment and adds to recent scholarship (e.g., see Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal Congress: A Political-Economic History of Roll Call Voting, 1997).

Sanbonmatsu's starting point is interesting in that it reflects the generational shift in scholarship that looks at the dominant issues of the women's movement through a post–Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) lens. Abortion is the preeminent polarizing gender issue for parties beginning in the 1980s, but her study also broadens discussion of gender issues pre-1980 beyond the usual focus on the ERA or suffrage. She brings to her analysis no preconceived list of “gender issues” but focuses on those issues defined or “framed” as gender-related by party leaders. It is the context in which a party official discusses an issue that determines whether it is included in the analysis. This is an important conceptual contribution and makes political parties an appropriate institution in explaining the “politics of women's place” since the 1970s.

According to Sanbonmatsu: “Issues that I would not classify as primarily about gender roles can be framed in that way. For example, party leaders may discuss … abortion as an issue of privacy or as an issue of women's liberation from their traditional roles…. [I]ssues that might not ordinarily be thought of as gender-related—the minimum wage, for example—can become debates about women's place if political leaders frame the issue that way. Because gender issues such as abortion and child care, as well as issues that are not usually considered to be gender-related, can become debates about gender roles, my analysis examines how party leaders have framed issues” (p. 13).

The author's focus is on the two major political parties, and her multimethod approach includes a case study of the 1996 election, with elite interviews of party officials, delegates, and strategists at the 1996 Republican and Democratic national conventions, as well as public opinion data from the National Election Studies and General Social Surveys that looked at the attitudes of Democratic and Republican identifiers in the electorate. It also includes the positions of party leaders, with a focus on the public response of the parties using the Convention Delegate Studies, content analysis of presidential party nominee acceptance speeches, party platforms, and State of the Union addresses, archival research of the records of the Republican and Democratic National Party Committees, especially regarding platform writing proceedings, and the role of organizations in this process. Data on the appointment of women are also included. The focus includes the parties' nominees and the president in light of a candidate-centered party during the time period of this study.

In Part I, the focus is on the role of interest groups in responding to women; Part II examines the parties' response to groups and the public by looking at the role of delegates, at a case study of the strategies used by both parties in responding to gender issues in the 1996 election, and at a more general electoral strategy of the parties' response to women that has emerged in recent years.

Concerning women's place, the role of women in organizations and in government is often viewed as separate and distinct from activity in political parties. Yet all of these aspects of political involvement clearly enable women to share in the framing or defining of issues as gender-related. Sanbonmatsu focuses on the work of scholars who look primarily at the influence of groups beginning in the 1970s, although the framing of issues by women can easily be dated to earlier periods. For example, women's groups were active during and following World War I when newly formed women's organizations were chartered and the parties added women's divisions. In the early years of World War II, women in these organizations were involved in the planning for a GI Bill that would allow women to stay in the workforce while returning troops had opportunities to attend college (e.g., see Janet M. Martin, The Presidency and Women, 2003).

Sanbonmatsu notes the role of Representatives Edith Green (D-OR) and Martha Griffiths (D-MI), who gained power through work within the party and committee assignments, respectively, to influence the policy agenda with gender-related items. More could be made of this point by noting how widows elected to the House of Representatives to succeed husbands who had died while serving were often appointed to such committees as Post Office and Civil Service. Their gains in seniority and numbers played an important role in defining issues affecting federal-sector employees as gender-related (e.g., pay, pensions). The influence of Barbara Mikulski on the Senate Appropriations Committee or Pat Schroeder on the House Armed Services Committee illustrates that women with seniority (particularly in the majority party), could, for example, prioritize National Institutes of Health funding to include women in clinical trials, or insist on child care for armed services personnel, or use defense funds for mammogram research, redefining these agenda items as gender-related.

Sanbonmatsu has carefully crafted a research agenda for others to follow, including a far deeper exploration of party realignment from the perspective of those defining the policy agenda of a party. She notes the bipartisan support in Congress for gender issues, especially in regard to women's equality in the early 1970s. Realignment seen within Congress, but not in the electorate, adds dimensionality to the parties, and in the area of gender policy also illustrates the complexity captured in this study of the interparty agreement over gender-equality issues. Although there is a good deal of scholarship on women in Congress, which is noted by Sanbonmatsu, a more focused discussion of these women and their party roles could help illustrate her points. Both parties' platforms evolved to address “enforcement of sex discrimination laws, recognition of the problems of child care and child support enforcement, increased funding for women's health issues, and strengthening the traditional family” (p. 112). But when the focus is on the respective parties' activists, the platforms clearly part ways on abortion, the ERA, and affirmative action.

Sanbonmatsu's case study of the 1996 election is most useful in illustrating how framing can determine whether gender is truly on a candidate's agenda. She notes the work of Thomas E. Nelson, Rosalee A. Clawson, and Zoe M. Oxley in defining framing (“Media Framing of a Civil Liberties Conflict and Its Effect on Tolerance,” American Political Science Review 91 [September 1997]: 567–83): “Political actors give meaning to political issues and attempt to shape public opinion through framing…. Issues that are not usually considered gender issues may become gender issues, and gender issues may become less gendered depending on the framing…. [P]arty leaders may frame child care as a government spending issue, a family issue, or a women's rights issue” (p. 116).

One shortcoming of research in the field, as noted by Sanbonmatsu, is the absence of panel data with questions on gender roles and policy that could provide information for the type of longitudinal studies needed to sort out the relationship between party identifiers and their attitudes on issues, candidate evaluation, and the vote (pp. 74–79). Reference to traditional family values and children may imply different policy items on the party's agenda. Her case study of the 1996 election illustrates the value of such panel data.

In 1996, to mobilize women voters, Bill Clinton and Al Gore emphasized “pro-family values,” but not gender-equality issues (p. 151). This was a return to the classic pro-labor, protective stance historically taken by Democrats pre-1970, who for much of the twentieth century had avoided support for the ERA. Their emphasis in 1996 was on protecting social programs for children, education, crime prevention, the environment, and health care. The Republicans in 1996 also focused on family and children, but their emphasis was on a conservative “family values” agenda, previewing the 2000 and 2004 Bush administration's emphasis on a conservative moral agenda. The same words were used, but with different meanings and different policy outcomes, and different expectations for women's place. Sanbonmatsu's discussion of “moral values” was a foreshadowing of what was to come in the 2004 election on an issue that divided the parties for both men and women (p. 86).

Given the author's focus on gender equality and political parties, Democrats, Republicans, and the Politics of Woman's Place is a valuable addition to scholarly collections and accessible to wider audiences as well. Scholars studying the origins of public policy will profit from her analysis of gender issues by more fully understanding the nuances of the debate over women's issues, the agenda-defining role played by political leaders, and ways in which the public engages in these debates. There is much to be learned from each chapter. Sanbonmatsu's analysis and argument remain sophisticated throughout.