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The COVID-19 pandemic revealed, but did not create, the caregiving crisis in the United States: for most people, it was already a major ordeal to provide reproductive labor. The caregiving crisis was less visible before the pandemic because it was suffered unequally, in part due to the different positions of American women. Some women paid other women to do care work, women received differing sets of benefits from federal and state governments, and some women got far more support from their employers than did others. Pandemic-induced shocks, including the closure of K–12 schools and childcare centers, and reduced access to domestic workers and elder care workers, seemed to have triggered a closer alignment of perspectives and interests among diverse women. Although women's demands for support seem to have pushed the Biden administration to propose more expansive family policies, stereotypes and norms that marginalize care work and care workers within families and across the economy also need to change to achieve equality for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We know more about why laws on violence against women (vaw) were adopted than about how much and in what ways these laws affect society. The authors argue that even weakly enforced laws can contribute to positive social change. They theorize the expressive power of vaw legislation, and present evidence for a cautiously optimistic assessment of current trends on violence against women and the ways that vaw laws affect social norms. Focusing on a time of major legal change related to vaw in Mexico, this article explores trends in behavior and attitudes related to violence by analyzing four waves of the National Survey on the Dynamics of Household Relations (endireh), which include detailed interviews with thousands of Mexican women. The authors find that over this period, the share of women experiencing intimate-partner abuse declined, attitudes condoning violence shifted, reporting rates rose, and most women learned about legislation to protect their rights. These changes are consistent with the authors' expectations about the expressive power of anti-violence legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of European Journal of Development Research is the property of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The gender publication gap puts women at a disadvantage for tenure and promotion, which contributes to the discipline's leaky pipeline. Several studies published in PS find no evidence of gender bias in the review process and instead suggest that submission pools are distorted by gender. To make a contribution to this important debate, we fielded an original survey to a sample of American Political Science Association members to measure participants' perceptions of political science journals. Results reveal that the gender submission gap is accompanied by a gender perception gap at some but not all political science journals we study. Women report that they are more likely to submit to and get published in some journals, whereas men report as such with regard to other journals. Importantly, these gaps are observed even among scholars with the same methodological (i.e., quantitative or qualitative) approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1990s and 2000s, pressure from feminist movements and allies succeeded in pushing scores of states to reform their laws to prevent and punish violence against women (VAW). Even in states with progressive legislation, however, activists face challenges to induce citizens to comply with the law, compel state authorities to enforce the law, and ensure the adequate allocation of resources for social support services. In this essay, we take stock of legislative developments related to VAW around the world, with a focus on the variation in approaches toward intimate partner violence and sexual harassment. We analyze efforts to align behavior with progressive legislation, and end with a discussion of the balance activists must strike between fighting VAW aggressively with the carceral and social support dimensions of state power, while exercising some restraint to avoid the potentially counterproductive effects of state action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations—from academic and professional associations to private corporations and police forces—face challenges promoting diversity and inclusion among their workers and affiliates. Instead of training and regulations, recent research recommends mechanisms that engage managers and leaders in activities that involve behavioral changes. This article describes how we put the managerial engagement approach into practice by organizing a "Diversity and Inclusion Hackathon" at the 2018 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. With 11 teams focused on a range of topics, the hackathon attracted more than 200 people and produced multiple outputs. It engaged scholars from a range of backgrounds, social identities, institutions, ranks, and beliefs in the generation of new norms, programmatic ideas, and plans for the profession. Although we cannot infer causality, analysis of the APSA Annual Meeting evaluation survey reveals that hackathon participants are significantly more likely to express positive perceptions of the conference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the authors discuss the various articles published within the issue on such topics as women's employment, women's empowerment, and labor markets.

The article presents a study which examined the cross-country patterns on the relationship between gender-discriminatory laws and different women's economic agency indicators. Other topics include the efforts to advance women's legal rights, women's asset ownership and labor force participation, as well as wage gap and discrimination in wage work and parental leave.

Google Scholar (GS) is an important tool that faculty, administrators, and external reviewers use to evaluate the scholarly impact of candidates for jobs, tenure, and promotion. This article highlights both the benefits of GS—including the reliability and consistency of its citation counts and its platform for disseminating scholarship and facilitating networking—and its pitfalls. GS has biases because citation is a social and political process that disadvantages certain groups, including women, younger scholars, scholars in smaller research communities, and scholars opting for risky and innovative work. GS counts also reflect practices of strategic citation that exacerbate existing hierarchies and inequalities. As a result, it is imperative that political scientists incorporate other data sources, especially independent scholarly judgment, when making decisions that are crucial for careers. External reviewers have a unique obligation to offer a reasoned, rigorous, and qualitative assessment of a scholar's contributions and therefore should not use GS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A correction to the article "Women's Equality and the COVID-19 Caregiving Crisis" by Mala Htun, published online on November 29, 2021 is presented.

Family law is an essential dimension of women's citizenship in the modern state. The rights established in family law shape women's agency and autonomy; they also regulate access to basic resources—such as land, income, and education—that determine a citizen's ability to earn a living independently, among other life chances (Agarwal 1994; Deere and León 2001; Kabeer 1994; Okin 1989; World Bank 2012). Yet family law is a notorious site of sex inequality, historically and in the present. Equal rights enjoyed by women in national constitutions are often contradicted by family and civil codes that subordinate women to the decisions of their husbands and fathers. In the early 21st century, family law in a significant number of countries discriminated against women, denying them the rights held by men and contributing to their disadvantaged social positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political scientists have contributed to the world of electoral systems as scientists and as engineers. Taking stock of recent scientific research, we show that context modifies the effects of electoral rules on political outcomes in specific and systematic ways. We explore how electoral rules shape the inclusion of women and minorities, the depth and nature of political competition, and patterns of redistribution and regulation, and we consider institutional innovations that could promote political equality. Finally, we describe the diverse ways that political scientists produce an impact on the world by sharing and applying their knowledge of the consequences of electoral rules and global trends in reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Gender & Development is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Politics in Latin America is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Over the past four decades, violence against women (VAW) has come to be seen as a violation of human rights and an important concern for social policy. Yet government action remains uneven. Some countries have adopted comprehensive policies to combat VAW, whereas others have been slow to address the problem. Using an original dataset of social movements and VAW policies in 70 countries over four decades, we show that feminist mobilization in civil society—not intra-legislative political phenomena such as leftist parties or women in government or economic factors like national wealth—accounts for variation in policy development. In addition, we demonstrate that autonomous movements produce an enduring impact on VAW policy through the institutionalization of feminist ideas in international norms. This study brings national and global civil society into large-n explanations of social policy, arguing that analysis of civil society in general—and of social movements in particular—is critical to understanding progressive social policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Examining cross-national variation in family law, we find that many countries have reformed to promote sex equality. Yet a significant group retains older laws that discriminate against women. These variations reflect the diverse institutional legacies of these societies, conforming closely-but not entirely-to inherited legal traditions: civil law, common law, and postsocialist countries are the most egalitarian, while countries applying religious law are the least. Yet change is possible, even in unlikely contexts. Political conjunctures that disarm religious, nationalist, and fundamentalist opponents can open windows of opportunity for liberalizing reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the proposed framework to analyze cross-national variation in women's legal rights. It subdivides sex equality on two dimensions to explore the distinct logics of policy change. It challenges historical patterns of state-society interaction concerning relations between the state and the market, religion, cultural groups and the respective authority of the state, as policies promoting gender equality seek fundamental social change.

This article analyzes a dataset of policy views of members of the Brazilian Congress to assess the nature of support for gender-related policy issues. It makes three core claims. First, liberal and progressive opinions on gender correspond to party membership more than to sex, Left parties have consistent and programmatic policy positions on controversial gender issues. Women and men are more divided, as are parties of the center and the right. Second, coalitions supporting change differ across policy issues. Support for gender quotas, for example, does not translate into support for more liberal abortion laws. Third, there is a large gap between legislators' attitudes toward gender-related policy and actual policy outcomes. Institutional deadlock and executive priorities explain this discrepancy. This article concludes that although women may share some interests by virtue of their position in a gender-structured society, these interests may be trumped by partisan, class, regional, and other cleavages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Part II. Focuses on the improvement in basic opportunities for women in Latin America, as well as their progress toward equality. Trends concerning women's political representation in the region; Major reforms adopted to grant women equal rights in family and constitutional law; Efforts to address violence against women; Neglected health issues; Work trends; Education of women in the region.

Political scientists have contributed to the world of electoral systems as scientists and as engineers. Taking stock of recent scientific research, we show that context modifies the effects of electoral rules on political outcomes in specific and systematic ways. We explore how electoral rules shape the inclusion of women and minorities, the depth and nature of political competition, and patterns of redistribution and regulation, and we consider institutional innovations that could promote political equality. Finally, we describe the diverse ways that political scientists produce an impact on the world by sharing and applying their knowledge of the consequences of electoral rules and global trends in reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a response to Kara Ellerby's review of the book "The Logics of Gender Justice: State Action on Women's Rights Around the World" on the politics and logics of women's rights.