1st Edition

Women and Representation in Local Government International Case Studies

Edited By Barbara Pini Copyright 2011
    232 Pages 8 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Women and Representation in Local Government opens up an opportunity to critique and move beyond suppositions and labels in relation to women in local government.

    Presenting a wealth of new empirical material, this book brings together international experts to examine and compare the presence of women at this level and features case studies on the US, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Finland, Uganda, China, Australia and New Zealand. Divided into four main sections, each explores a key theme related to the subject of women and representation in local government and engages with contemporary gender theory and the broader literature on women and politics. The contributors explore local government as a gendered environment; critiquing strategies to address the limited number of elected female members in local government and examine the impact of significant recent changes on local government through a gender lens.

    Addressing key questions of how gender equality can be achieved in this sector, it will be of strong interest to students and academics working in the fields of gender studies, local government and international politics.

    1. Introduction Barbara Pini and Paula McDonald Part One: Women’s Representation in Local Government: Facilitators and Constraints 2. Moving through the Pipeline: Women’s Representation in Municipal Government in the New England Region of the United States Paige Ransford and Meryl Thomson 3. Women in Local Assemblies – Rare Guests or (Almost) Equal Partners? An Analysis of the Causes of Women’s Underrepresentation in the German County Councils Raphael Magin Part Two: Strategies to Increase Women’s Representation in Local Government 4. Women and Local Politics in Spain: Exploring Gender Regimes and Biased Party Candidate Selection Processes Tania Verge 5. Making it Happen in Practice: Organized Efforts to Recruit Rural Women for Local Government Leadership Louise Carbert 6. Missing from the Picture: Women’s Initiatives in English Local Government Wendy Stokes Part Three: Making a Difference? The Descriptive and Substantive Representation of Women in Local Government 7. How Gender Shapes Local Party Politics: The case of Belgium Petra Meier and Dries Verlet 8. Critical Acts and Critical Contexts: Understanding the Substantive Representation of Women at the Regional Level in France Katherine Opello 9. Transforming Local Politics? The Impact of Gender Quotas in Finland Anne Maria Holli Part Four: Gender and a Changing Local Government Sector 10. Gendering Local Government Amalgamations: An Australian Case Study Denise Conroy 11. Women in New Zealand Local Government: The Effect of Reform on Women’s Presence in Leadership Marianne Tremaine and Jean Drage 12. New Public Management and Gender in Swedish Local Government Gun Hedlund

    Biography

    Barbara Pini is a Professor in the John Curtin Institute of Public Policy at Curtin University of Technology, Australia. She has an extensive publication record in the fields of gender studies, rural sociology, employment, public policy and politics. Recent papers have appeared in Gender, Work and Organisation, Policy and Politics, Work, Employment and Society, Journal of Rural Studies, Sociologia Ruralis, and Telecommunications Policy. Her first book, Masculinities and Management in Agri-political Organisations Worldwide was published by Ashgate in September 2007.