More Than a Journal: <i>Politics &amp; Gender</i> and the Study of Women as National Leaders

Politics & Gender has established its identity as the premier outlet dedicated to publishing path breaking research on gender and politics topics.The journal launched in 2005, the year I first started working in a tenure track position.While the academic influence the journal has had on countless substantive areas is of tremendous significance (and the subject of several contributions to this special anniversary issue), I aim primarily to focus on the personal influence Politics & Gender has had on my trajectory as a gender and politics scholar.The journal helped me establish a new area of research-women as national executives around the world.Politics & Gender has profoundly influenced my research profile and, at the same time, expanded an area of research that was considered outside the mainstream.As I came into my own professionally and academically, my ability to forge an identity as a leading scholar on women national executives has much to do with Politics & Gender and its stellar editors, reviewers, and readers.Politics & Gender is more than a journal.It is the embodiment of a supportive community built by scholars who set a standard of academic rigor but also collegiality, professionalism, and mentorship.As both an undergraduate and graduate student, I had been drawn to the subject of women as national leaders.My background as a first generation American, the daughter of Pakistani immigrants, presented a paradox.The United States had never had a woman president, while Pakistan had a woman as prime minister, the late Benazir Bhutto.This was puzzling given the relatively higher social and political status of women in the US compared to Pakistan.This topic was quite salient to me when I would visit my extended family and faced several cultural and religious practices that constricted my behavior as a woman.From this question, 20 years and counting, my research agenda was launched.My work first uncovered the backgrounds of women leaders (Jalalzai 2004) and later the conditions that appeared to facilitate women's emergence as leaders