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This chapter advocates for building much-needed bridges across the gulf between the historical study of feminist theory and contemporary political psychology, demonstrating the degree to which major historical figures in feminist theory probed problems that contemporary political psychology addresses through empirical experimental and survey research. Sapiro begins by laying out a “grammar of political theory,” an analytical tool for understanding the elements of feminist theory. She then shows how, although the core emphases and methods of historical normative theory and contemporary social science may differ, they are linked together in crucial, but rarely noticed ways. Contemporary research examples include gender questions and dynamics in representation, electoral politics, stereotyping, and sexual harassment.

Most students of Wollstonecraft locate her significance at the point where those traditions meet. But to understand her significance we must remember one thing: we are talking about a woman who wrote at a time in which neither democracy nor a feminist movement, nor a democratic mass movement existed. She approached theorizing feminism without benefit of the invention of that very term that manifests group or political consciousness by women on the basis of their gender; that is, before the term "feminist" or even "womanist" was invented. The narrator of The Wrongs of Woman did not play the role of authoritative reasoner as she did in the Rights of Woman; in the former she took the part of a woman speaking with love to her daughter. Nevertheless, Wollstonecraft instructed her readers to understand this story "as of woman, than of an individual".

This article takes advantage of a naturally occurring experiment to examine how congressional campaign advertising responds to dramatic events. Integrating the literatures on issue ownership and gender stereotypes, we ask how campaign rhetoric and substance changed after the attacks of September 11, 2001, paying particular attention to how those responses were mediated by party and gender expectations. Using data from the Wisconsin Advertising Project (WiscAds) of all ad-airings (not merely ads created) in the top 75 to 100 media markets in 2000 and 2002, we find that campaigns stepped up issues relevant to 9/11 consistent with party- and gender-based issue ownership. Republican men gave more attention to the military than any other group and more attention to foreign affairs than Democratic men or women. However, most noteworthy was the dramatic increase in the symbolic use of the flag for all candidates.

Most conceptual research on equality revolves around theoretical texts or legal theory and decisions, thus reflecting the thought of legal, political, or cultural elites. But in a democratic polity, we must attend to the political thought not just of politicos and academics, but ordinary citizens as well. In terms of its political significance, “What does equality mean” requires answering the question: what does equality mean to the mass public? We thus probe the meanings of “gender equality” in the public mind, using a unique set of questions included in the National Election Studies 1991 Pilot Study, and con-textualized within the literatures of feminist and legal theory and political psychology and public opinion. Most importantly, we distinguish among “empirical” and “normative” equality and discontent and among the domains of the polity, economy, and family; feature the problem of “equality” versus “sameness” and consider the relationship of these orientations to people's own structural circ...

Investigations by political psychologists reveal some of the changes in public opinion, gender consciousness, and gender ideology that have taken place since the beginning of the women's movement. There is more general acceptance of equality between the sexes, but even young people still show some adherence to traditional divisions of roles, and traditional gender ideology still plays a part in maintaining inequality. There is still widespread support for a women's movement, especially among women.

Dividing Citizens is an important contribution both to the burgeoning literature on the historical development of the American state and citizenship and to the lively field of work on gender within that corpus. Like the best studies of this sort, Mettler's book ably demonstrates not only how the transforming institutions and practices affected women but also how gender norms and practices were built into the new structures, making gender a basic element of their architec- ture.

The truth of this is clear. For if it is asked why some witches will not confess the truth under even the greatest tortures, while others readily confess their crimes when they are questioned, . . . the reason is as follows. It may truly be said that, when it is not due to a Divine impulse conveyed through a holy Angel that a witch is made to confess the truth and abandon the spell of silence, then it is due to the devil whether she preserves silence or confesses her crimes. The former is the case with those whom he knows to have denied the Faith both with their lips and in their hearts, and also to have given him their homage; for he is sure of their constancy. But in the latter case he withdraws his protection, since he knows that they are of no profit to him (Malleus Maleficarum,' 230).

In the post-World War II era, American women have been consistently less militaristic and more opposed to war than American men. Theorists, both feminist and not, have attributed such differences to gender itself, maternalism, and feminism. Drawing on the American National Election Study 1991 Pilot Study, we explore these hypotheses and discover no support for the maternalist explanation, some evidence in favor of the feminist accounting, and substantial support for the gender explanation. We also probe into the structure of political thinking in these areas and discover that the roots of women's and men's thinking usually differ even when they basically agree on the "bottom line." In particular, men's attitudes are much more partisan in their origins than are women's.

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, womenthousands of them -became increasingly organized and active in the attempt to promote the general welfare, especially by helping the most vulnerable members of society. As individual leaders and as group participants they were instrumental in organizing and nationalizing movements for public health (mental and physical), poor relief, penal and other institutional reform, education for the previously uneducated, and child welfare. As the nineteenth century waned and the twentieth dawned, women were prominent among proponents of a principle which was hitherto nearly alien to American ideology but which has now, a century later, come to be an accepted part of our political views: the government and, they increasingly argued, the national government, have a responsibility to promote the general welfare actively by providing initiative and support where necessary. The degree and types of support remain, perhaps more now than then, matters of profound political contention, but in the late twentieth century even the most conservative ideologues tend to agree that government must provide a "safety net" for its people. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was also a time during which thousands of women, many of them the same as those involved in the general welfare movements, were agitating to promote women's welfare specifically. I The

The determinants of women's political orientations are explored in terms of two perspectives: ambition and gender role and their interrelationship. A sample of 1336 Democratic and Republican delegates to the 1972 national nominating conventions was used to compare the political expectations and aspirations of men and women. Women were found tohave less interest in holding public officebut equalled men in aspiring to party careers. Party as well as sex differences affected the political ambitions of female elites, with Democratic women more likely to pursue public office holding and Republican women remaining committed to the party sphere. Women's roles in the family and at work were also found to influence the development of political ambition among women. In addition, gender roles had an impact on the type of ambition women developed and the styles of activism they pursued.

‘Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry’, was penned by Jeremy Bentham in 1825, but could as appropriately appear in most contemporary treatments of social choice and rationality. Political economists still use the felicific calculus; they search for ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ by exploring means and consequences of aggregating individuals' preferences to form social choices among competing values. The values are assigned equal weight. The origins and processes of development of individual preferences are taken as ‘givens’, i.e. as irrelevant to the problem of social choice. What counts is rational behaviour, which is said to exist when action is ‘correctly’ designed to maximize goal achievement, ‘given the goal in question and the real world as it exists’.

C ONSCIOUSNESS and conflict are essential prerequisites of change in the status of women. As Harriet Martineau wrote one hundred forty years ago, "All women should inform themselves of the condition of their sex, and of their own position. It must necessarily follow that the noblest of them will, sooner or later, put forth a moral power which shall prostrate cant, and burst asunder the bonds (silken to some, but cold iron to others), of feudal prejudices and usages."' Martineau, like the feminists of today who join or organize consciousness-raising groups, viewed selfconsciousness and consciousness of the status of women as a group necessary to change. Her observation shows an early recognition of the difference between "objective social reality" and perception as well as the effect of both on behavior. Consciousness raising, as suggested by Martineau and asserted by more recent feminists, is a change in self-perception as well as a change in social relations involving women. Martineau assumed that feminist activity was impossible until women became capable of seeing their lives as they "really were." Each time large numbers of women become conscious of their situation conflict follows. It has never been enough for women to point out the ills they observe. More often than not change has involved the development of and conflict between feminist movements and organizations on the one side and counter movements and organizations on the other; in other words, a public, social conflict. Change does not seem to occur without the development of both consciousness and social conflict. This paper is addressed to the problem of consciousness or perception of social conflict over the status of women.