The following is a list of learning and research resources on topics that are central to this themed section, namely the male-breadwinner and adult worker models, and their alternatives; intersectionality; the views of employers and workplace culture; the role and influence of informal care; and the tendency toward dualisation.

The popularization of intersectionality within political science, feminist scholarship, and activism has constituted nothing less than a paradigm shift (Hancock 2007a). Politics & Gender has been a critical actor in enabling change within our discipline. However, this development has been hard won and there remains much to be done to operationalize intersectionality in line with Black feminist theory, and to center women of color and other intersectionally marginalized groups within scholarship. This article both traces the evolution of intersectional approaches within Politics & Gender over two decades and articulates pathways for future gender and politics research which aims to employ intersectionality. We employ quantitative and qualitative analysis of articles’ foci on different inequality structures and categories, their methodological approaches, and how they employ the concept of intersectionality. Subsequently, we argue in favor of approaches which center rather than include diverse intersectionally marginalized groups, emphasize the normative commitments of Black feminist theory to transformative justice rather than liberal inclusion, analyze intersectional structures and institutions as well as individual experience and identity, treat the constitution of categories and groups as contextual and contingent, dare to address the dangers of “women” as a theoretical starting point, and challenge fundamental raced-gendered assumptions of liberal democracy.

This essay highlights the impact of Politics & Gender on the discipline’s understanding of how gender shapes the preferences, behavior, and motivations of voters. It provides descriptive information about the prevalence of research on gender and voting in the journal, along with the proportion of articles dedicated to women voters across different regions globally. The bulk of the essay focuses on the substance of this research — drawing out major themes and identifying significant contributions within each theme — and it concludes by offering a future research agenda on gender and voting.

It is well known that marginalized communities of color, particularly young Black men, are more likely to experience police-initiated contact that other groups. Research suggests that these events contribute to legal cynicism, or the belief that the law and its agencies are ineffective, unwilling to help, and untrustworthy. In turn, cynical orientations limit one’s willingness to call the police to help. However, recent work on marginalized women suggests that despite holding cynical attitudes towards the police, their immediate needs for safety and services supersede these beliefs. The current study examines the racialized and gendered linkages between police-initiated contact and help-seeking outcomes (reporting crime, calling for an emergency, and seeking help from police for non-emergencies). Using data from the Police Public Contact Survey (from the Police Public Contact Survey–2020) results indicate that Black and Hispanic participants were less likely than White participants to seek help. However, Black and Hispanic women were more likely than their male counterparts for calls for help regarding a crime or disturbance. Across all outcomes, police-initiated contact was associated with higher rates of help-seeking. Perceived illegitimacy of street stops reduced the odds of reporting crimes to the police. However, perceived traffic stop illegitimacy was not related to help-seeking. Police initiated contacts and perceptions of legitimacy did not moderate the relationships between demographic variables and help-seeking outcomes. Implications for theories on legal socialization and the impact of police-initiated contacts on help-seeking are discussed.

In a context promoting partners’ active participation in their divorce or dissolution, family lawyers often put their clients to work – from stating goals and supplying information for the written file, to embodying the case at the hearing. This article focuses on the coproduction of legal work between family lawyers and their clients, based on long-term collective research on family law in mainland France: interviews with attorneys, observations of encounters between lawyers and clients in lawyer offices and in courts, as well as a “3,000 family cases” database. Using a relational, materialist, structural, and intersectional theoretical approach, we show that coproduction of legal work and its meaning varies greatly depending on the power dynamics between lawyers and clients, – on a spectrum that goes from exploitation to empowerment of the client. Coproduced legal work varies according to configurations of class, race, gender, and age on both side of the desk, as well as according to the structure of the legal market. Interactions between lawyers and their clients thus contribute to shape inequality before the law.

Sociologists often interpret racial differences in help-seeking behavior in the United States as stemming from differences in cultural capital, an implication being that those who hesitate to seek help lack understanding of how important it is for success. In this paper, we draw on the work of W. E. B Du Bois and research on gender and racial stereotypes to show that it is not a lack of understanding about the importance of help-seeking, but rather, Black women’s double consciousness that underlies their reluctance to seek help relative to White women. Through twenty-nine in-depth interviews with Black and White college-aged women, we investigate how they make meaning of two competing ideals: the need to be seen as a strong woman and the need for help and social support. We identify a discourse around gender stereotypes for White participants and intersectional stereotypes for Black participants. Where Black and White women experience a consciousness born out of their marginalization relative to men, comparing how they differently navigate stereotypes about strong women reveals the analytic power of Du Bois’s concept of double consciousness. First, the “veil” reveals the racialized gender stereotypes Black women worry they might confirm by seeking help. Second, Black women’s sense of “twoness” means they more often than White women saw their help-seeking behaviors as reflecting negatively on their broader community. Finally, consistent with Du Bois’s point that “second sight” brings awareness but not liberation, we find that even though Black women were hyperaware of the disadvantages of not seeking help, they tended more often than White women to reach a breaking point before seeking it.

Former refugee women’s entrepreneurial journeys are embedded in social, cultural, and legal environments in their home, transition, and host countries. Their multiple context embeddedness creates contradictions and identity issues. Thus, women adopt behaviours that make them visible or invisible simultaneously when navigating these contradictions. Using intersectionality and translocational positionality lenses, this study explored this phenomenon. We collected narrative data using semi-structured interviews from refugee women resettled in New Zealand. The findings illustrate that multi-country social processes, that is, ‘translocational’ experiences, create (in)visibility paradoxes for women entrepreneurs. Women dynamically create visibility for themselves through reliance on or defiance of ethnic, cultural or refugee identities in their ventures and by creating a business identity aligning with the host country’s values. In contrast, cultural conformity and playing a role behind the ‘shopfront’ make women invisible. This study synthesises these paradoxical entrepreneurial strategies, develops a conceptual framework and contributes to women’s entrepreneurial identity studies.

In 2020, the Israeli Supreme Court held section 4 of the Law on Prevention of Infiltration and Ensuring the Departure of Infiltrators from Israel, also known as the Deposit Law, to be unconstitutional. Among other provisions, that law required 36 per cent of the wages of foreign workers to be paid into a dedicated account and returned when the person left the country. For years the Deposit Law had a negative impact on the lives of asylum seekers because of its racialised, gendered, ethnonational and religious impact. Its intersectional impact illustrates cultural, structural and systematic violence, which has been particularly punitive for asylum-seeking women, who are more exposed to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV).

In this context, this interdisciplinary qualitative and empirical research article draws from empirical fieldwork conducted in Israel to understand the intersectional impact of the law. It therefore conducts a theoretical examination of the literature and connects that to the empirical study. Thus, the article empirically and theoretically investigates (i) the extent to which state-created categories foster unlawful multilayered and multilevel forms of vulnerability and discrimination; (ii) the intersectional impact of the Deposit Law and how it is related to SGBV; and (iii) how state-created intersecting vulnerabilities can be diagnosed. The overall goal of the article is to indicate the intertwined nature and interconnection between state-created categories and the inevitability of state-created vulnerabilities.

This article analyses the possibility of an intersectional understanding of “disability” in relation to Article 14(2)(c) of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol). Adopted in July 2003 and enforced since November 2005, the Maputo Protocol is considered a ground-breaking international human rights instrument (Johnson 2023, 329). It is the first treaty to comprehensively protect the reproductive rights of African women, including the contentious issue of abortion (Maputo Protocol 2003, Article 14(2)(c); Banda 2006, 82).

Violence against women in politics is on the rise, threatening political achievements with respect to equality. Little research, however, has been conducted on the experiences of women from minority communities. This article, therefore, takes an intersectional approach to explore how gender, religion, and other categories of difference intersect when it comes to Muslim women’s experiences in the UK. Based on a longitudinal case study of Bradford West during the 2015, 2017, and 2019 general elections that combines participant observations, qualitative interviews, and a Twitter analysis, we argue that, in addition to the violence often experienced by women, Muslim women are also confronted with Islamophobic bias and abuse, as well as intersectional intimidation and harassment from within the Muslim community in their constituencies. Our case study approach, however, also reveals the existence of appreciation and support for Muslim women in politics that needs to be nurtured to counter abuse.