Despite explicit commitments to gender equality, women experience complex modes of disadvantage and discrimination in all nations of the world. Offering sophisticated insights into the persistence of gendered differences in opportunities, roles, power, and rights in societies across the globe, this volume investigates factors that both enable and constrain women's advancement. From intimate relations within families, to social norms, relations, ideologies, and structures of power, to political institutions, electoral systems, and public policies, the chapters analyze possibilities for and obstacles to inclusive democratic practices and identify interventions essential to enable democratic values to take root. Contributors from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the USA provide detailed assessments of the social, economic, and political condition of women, their mobilizations to produce transform gendered power and authority in diverse nations, and their efforts to enhance the quality of their lives, their communities, and democratic governance.

List of FiguresList of TablesForeword: Gender, Power and the Worldwide Struggle for Equality; Raewyn ConnellAcknowledgementsNotes on ContributorsIntroduction; Fatima SadiqiI. DEMOCRATIC DEFICITS: SITES, CONTEXTS, AND TACTICS OF REDRESSSection Intro; Michal Palgi1. Women's Political Representation in Brazil; José Álvaro Moisés and Beatriz Rodrigues Sanchez2. Women and Political Participation in Morocco; Moha Ennaji3. Gender, Policy and Leadership: A Comparative Perspective; Joyce Gelb4. Probing the Parameters of Gender, Power and Democracy in Nigeria; Leslye Obiora5. Building Women's and Men's Political Representation in Post-Communist European Countries; Renata Siemienska6. Women's Participation in Global Executive Positions; Michal PalgiII. EXPLAINING INEQUALITIES: MULTIDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVESSection Intro, Luigi Zoja7. Economics, Gender and Power; Elisabetta Addis8. Feminine Creativity and Masculine Power; Elena Caramazza9. The Centrality of Women in the Human Adventure; Piero Giorgi10. Gender and Power; Mino Vianello11. The Submissiveness Trap; Luigi Zoja12. A Different Power; Valeria PeruccaIII. RECONCEPTUALIZING THE QUALITY OF DEMOCRACYSection Intro, José Alvaro Moisès13. Gender and Democratic Governance: Reprising the Politics of Exclusion; Mary Hawkesworth14. Quality of Democracy and Political Inclusion; José Alvaro Moisès15. Gender and Democracy; Mino VianelloIV. STRATEGIES FOR SOCIAL AND POLITICAL TRANSFORMATIONSection Intro, Jane Bayes16. The Feminization of Authority in Morocco; Fatima Sadiqi17. Gender, Power, and Networks: Women's Organizing and Changing Gender Relationships in Africa and Latin America; Jane Bayes18. Gender Power and Violence: Perspectives for Change; Elena Liotta19. Gender Issues in Primary Childcare and their Implications for Democracy; Eva Pattis20. Women's Mobilizations for Political Representation in Patriarchal States: Models from Japan and South Korea; Ki-young ShinConclusion; Renata SiemienskaIndex