Eileen McDonagh tackles important questions for gender and politics scholars: What accounts for differences in women's attainment of political office worldwide? Why does the United States lag behind many other Western democracies in this regard? McDonagh's arguments are bold, insightful, and original. She argues that women's political promotion is best achieved by “hybrid” states—those that simultaneously advance individual rights through liberal democratic processes and encompass policies associated with maternalism. Maternal identities foster women's political inclusion if given public significance through state policy.
The maternalist policies explored are social welfare, gender quotas, and hereditary monarchies open to women. For social welfare, states must constitutionally mandate that the state is obligated to provide for the public and subsidize at least half of health-care funds. McDonagh sets clear parameters in her consideration of gender quotas, recognizing their great diversity worldwide. The most controversial aspect of this work is its endorsement of hereditary monarchies as a means to increasing women's political representation. While state promotion of individual equality and monarchical institutions seemingly creates a tension, McDonagh aptly argues that monarchies invest substantial political significance in women to perpetuate family lines. This has occasionally resulted in women wielding direct power and exercising substantial influence. It is the linkage of families to the state, not separation from it, that promotes women. Since these monarchies are now symbolic, they offer the benefit of female political role models within liberal democratic contexts. In fact, the author argues that monarchical histories sometimes spawn future welfare states. Although clear imbalances of power have existed within monarchies, they also understood that they had to provide for the general welfare of the less fortunate.
Throughout this work, McDonagh presents evidence that hybrid states generally are comprised of publics that are more supportive of women's leadership roles and have higher proportions of women legislators. While the United States qualifies as a liberal democracy, it fails in the promotion of maternalist policies, which explains its relatively low level of women in Congress and the durability of the presidential glass ceiling.
The biggest strengths of this book are its theoretical and empirical richness. Each argument is couched within a clear and well-informed theoretical backdrop. To validate her main points, McDonagh examines a wide array of data on women in politics worldwide. Her techniques are generally appropriate and sophisticated. This is also a good example of research that incorporates the United States within a comparative and gendered framework. Most of all, her writing is provocative, and she sustains her main arguments throughout the entire book.
Although McDonagh argues that the public supports materialist policies that enhance women's political role through their “interpretive impact,” how these favorable conditions take shape initially is still unclear. Her inclusion of a number of case studies clearly tracing these developments would close this gap. While her data on women national leaders are compelling, unlike her legislative analysis, she fails to model important indicators to explain how a multitude of factors relate to women's success. Further, the author does not acknowledge the vast power disparities among national executive posts or relate them systematically to institutional differences. She argues that for women to make it to political office in a hybrid state, they must be hybrid candidates (espousing male and female traits). Although this seems to fit squarely with her main points, she does not provide adequate evidence. Given the increased number of women who have run for presidential offices, this would be a worthwhile endeavor.
Overall, however, this book will engage scholars in many timely debates. If the United States had kept its monarchical ties, would women have made more political gains, including the presidency? Given McDonagh's arguments, is there anything that the United States can do to increase the numbers of women in American political institutions? Does concentration on maternalism reinforce essentialist arguments about women? A sign of a laudable book is its shedding of light on several important questions while simultaneously raising still more. This is just what The Motherless State does.
