Rethinking Women and Politics: New Zealand and Comparative Perspectives

What has happened to the New Zealand women’s movement since the 1970s? How has MMP changed women’s participation in politics, and how involved with the political process are younger generations of women? How equal are men and women these days in central and local government, the workplace, the media and the home? What else needs to be done to improve gender equality? Rethinking Women and Politics takes up where Women and Politics in New Zealand (Catt and McLeay, 1993) left off, examining the position of women in New Zealand society after a period of extensive social and political change. It reflects on changes in New Zealand feminism, women’s voting and representation, and sites of conflict and cooperation, and compares the New Zealand situation with those of other countries, particularly the United Kingdom and Germany. Most of all, Rethinking Women and Politics attempts to figure out why the issues that occupied activists and scholars in 1993 - participation and protest, representation, equal access to power, institutional cultures, the role played by feminist theory, and policies that enhance women’s lives rather than inhibit them - remain the issues that concern them today.