Less than a year ago, Politics & Gender made its debut at the American Political Science Association meetings in Washington, DC, at a reception graciously held by our publishers at Cambridge University Press. Past, present, and future presidents of the APSA, members of the Women and Politics Research Section, and scores of colleagues joined us to celebrate the publication of Volume I, Issue 1. We were buoyed by the enthusiastic reception but more than a little anxious about the work that lay ahead. Now, with four issues completed, we'd like to review what we've accomplished and reflect on the scholarly shape the journal has begun to take.
In the first issue, we articulated a series of intellectual commitments for Politics & Gender. We sought “to publish work on women and race, and on gender and racialized politics” (3). We stated our intention of publishing “the best feminist theoretical work available,” in recognition of the intellectual debt of our subfield to feminist theory and feminist political thought. We sought to publish “studies that address fundamental questions in politics and political science concerning women and concerning gender, including those that interrogate and challenge standard analytical categories and conventional methodologies” (1). To what extent has the journal fulfilled these goals, which we laid out in our first “From the Editors” statement?
With regard to intersections of race and gender, we published two pieces of note in Volume I: Melissa Harris-Lacewell's “Critical Perspectives” essay on the “Contributions of Black Women in Political Science to a More Just World” (Issue 2), and Robert G. Moore's article on “Religion, Race and Gender Differences in the Ambition of Local Activists” (Issue 4). We reviewed some of the most recent work on gender and race, including Evelyn M. Simien's evaluation of Peter J. Ling and Sharon Montieth's Gender and the Civil Rights Movement (in Issue 1), and Yvette M. Alex-Assensoh's assessment of Patricia Hill Collins's Black Sexual Politics: African-Americans, Gender and the New Racism (in Issue 2). This current issue adds two outstanding articles to this list. In “Finding Intersection: Race, Class, and Gender in the California Recall,” Lisa Garcia Bedolla and Becki Scola present an empirical test of theories of intersectionality. Hawley Fogg-Davis's “Theorizing Black Lesbians Within Black Feminism: A Critique of Same-Race Street Harassment” juxtaposes black feminism and black conservatism to frame a new approach to the status of lesbians within the black community.
The first volume of Politics & Gender included several articles that evince our commitment to publish feminist theoretical articles and reviews of books on feminist theory. These include Traci Levy's “At the Intersection of Intimacy and Care: Redefining ‘Family’ through the Lens of a Public Ethic of Care” (Issue 1), Jacqueline Stevens's “Pregnancy Envy and the Politics of Compensatory Masculinities” (Issue 2), and Karen Zivi's “In Defense of a Politics of Identity” (Issue 3). Mary Hawkesworth examines the politics of research on gender and politics in her contribution to the “Critical Perspectives” section of Issue 1, “Engendering Political Science: An Immodest Proposal.” Two of the articles in this issue address questions of gender, race, and politics from feminist political theoretical perspectives. In addition to Fogg-Davis's “Theorizing Black Lesbians Within Black Feminism,” Brenda Lyshaug invites us to reimagine what it is that feminists share in common in her article “Solidarity Without Sisterhood? Feminism and the Ethics of Coalition Building.”
A continuing, core focus of Politics & Gender concerns groundbreaking uses of gender as a category of analysis and innovative efforts to develop new theoretical perspectives about the ways in which gender is relevant to the state. In the first issue, Michaele Ferguson provided a provocative analysis of gendered “feminist” discourse in the security rhetoric of the Bush administration in the post-9/11 era, and Barbara Palmer and Dennis Simon examined the way that female incumbents change the contours of primary and general elections. Nicholas Winter's article in Issue 3, “Framing Gender: Political Rhetoric, Gender Schemas, and Public Opinion on Health Care Reform,” is another example. Winter identified “the conditions under which elite political discourse can lead citizens to perceive and evaluate issues in terms of their gender schemas” (453), in the empirical context of attempts to reform health care in the United States (1993–94). In Issue 4, Timothy Kaufman-Osborn analyzed the gendered presentations of masculinity, femininity, women, and the state in the photographs exposing the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. His article examined the government's use of “specifically gendered practices … as elements within a more comprehensive network of technologies aimed at disciplining prisoners and so confirming their status as abject subjects of U.S. military power” (597). In this issue, Lee Ann Banaszak's “The Gendering State and Citizens' Attitudes Toward Women's Roles: State Policy, Employment, and Religion in Germany” provides a second example. She analyzes differences in citizen attitudes toward women's employment and religion in the “two Germanies” post-unification. Her analysis suggests that “gendered state policies are reflected in citizens' gender role attitudes both directly and through changes in the social characteristics of the population” (29).
Producing four issues of a new journal within less than a year was a formidable task, and one we did not accomplish by ourselves. We have many people to thank, and our gratitude is profound. Kathleen Dolan, Associate Editor and the journal's Book Review Editor, has been a staunch supporter of the journal. We have relied upon her for advice and support well beyond the duties suggested by her formal titles. Members of our editorial board have solicited and reviewed manuscripts, written book reviews, and provided editorial direction, advice, and encouragement. Mark Zdrozny, Journals Editor at Cambridge University Press, has been similarly encouraging and supportive. Donhae Koo, CUP Assistant Production Editor, has done an outstanding job overseeing the production of the journal. She has also tolerated our mistakes with good grace. Barbara Chin, our former editor at CUP, helped to create the journal from the very beginning. She has since moved on to new responsibilities at JSTOR and we wish her well. We also thank the College of Wooster and Dartmouth College, our home institutions, for their continuing support of our work on behalf of Politics & Gender.
Finally, we acknowledge that it is a risky proposition to submit one's work to a journal that is not yet well established and whose intellectual trajectory is not yet known. We are grateful to the many people who ventured that risk and sent us their work over the course of the past year. We look forward to receiving, and publishing, many more excellent manuscripts.
