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Women’s Representation: How Bait-and-Switch Male Dominance Promotes, but Then Boxes In Women in Politics

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The Gender of Informal Politics

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Abstract

This chapter explains how the influx of women into politics around the world is part of the twenty-first-century bait and switch. Women in Iceland and Russia have been fast-tracked, both formally and informally, but these women are recruited based on what Raewyn Connell has called emphasized femininity. They are then boxed in by informal rules related to their gender and into formal policymaking bodies at the same time that policymaking has been informalized. As a result, while both countries now have more women in parliament than ever before, power is more male dominated.

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Johnson, J.E. (2018). Women’s Representation: How Bait-and-Switch Male Dominance Promotes, but Then Boxes In Women in Politics. In: The Gender of Informal Politics. Gender and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60279-0_3

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