Feminists and Party Politics

The contemporary women’s movement has transformed North American society. Change has been greatest in the realm of everyday life, but feminism has also challenged the substance and practice of politics. Feminists and Party Politics examines the effort to bring feminism into the formal political arena through established political parties in Canada and the United States. Two major sets of questions lie at the heart of this inquiry. First, how have movement organizations approached partisan and electoral politics? To what extent have they tried to change parties? What factors have shaped their approaches? Second, how have parties themselves responded to the mobilization of feminism? Have they taken steps to include women in elite cadres? Have they either adopted any of the policy stances advocated by feminist organizations or instead come to define themselves in opposition to feminism? Lisa Young explores these questions through research based on numerous interviews with feminist and partisan activists, archival and documentary material, and analysis of attitudinal surveys of political elites. She concludes that although the effort of North American feminists to transform political parties over the past thirty years cannot be judged entirely a success, it has not been a failure. By bringing women into the political arena on something beginning to approach an equal footing, feminists have begun to realize liberal democracy’s promise of equal citizenship for women.