Feminist Institution Building: Political Science and <i>Politics &amp; Gender</i>

The twentieth anniversary of Politics & Gender is a good time to reflect on feminist institution building in political science and its role in sustaining an epistemic community advancing gender-related knowledge.These reflections stem in part from my experience as co-founder in 1979 of the Women's Caucus of the Australian Political Studies Association and continuing involvement in disciplinary initiatives including the Gender and Diversity Monitoring Reports of the International Political Science Association.Until the 1960s, when I did my undergraduate degree, political science rested on assumptions that the absence of women from public life was natural, a condition rather than a problem.There was a general lack of interest in the structures of power that might explain women's absence.Influential political scientists such as Robert E Lane, President of the American Political Science Association (APSA) in 1970-71, helped reinforce beliefs that the absence of women from public decision-making was in fact desirable as their presence would be at the expense of their primary social role.Lane questioned the wisdom of the feminist movement in encouraging women's political activity, noting that interest in politics moved women away from what was "considered by the culture" to be their proper role and sphere of competence.Moreover, such "extra-curricular interests" meant borrowing time and attention from their children (Lane 1959, 355).Such beliefs were clearly shared by the political scientists supposedly writing about them from a completely objective point of view.The trope of the neglected child, victim of the political woman, dates back at least to the Victorian era and the portrait of Mrs Jellyby in Dickens' Bleak House.In their classic study, The Civic Culture, Almond and Verba attributed a more benign role to the political woman but saw this role as shaping the political socialization of children rather than