Janet Elise Johnson, Associate Professor, Brooklyn College, CUNY  

Boxing in Fast-Tracked Women:  Lessons from Russia about How Informal Politics Undermine Women’s Representation.

In the last two decades, authoritarian-leaning regimes have been recruiting women into politics; however, this influx has not led to real political advancement for these women or the broader representation of women’s interests. I examine this puzzle through the case of Putin’s Russia, bringing together new subfields of comparative politics, the study of Russia’s regime dynamics and feminist institutionalism.  I show how women are being informally fast-tracked into politics and then boxed in by informal rules, revealing dynamics probably at work in many types of regimes.

Date: October 22, 2015 – 4.15 – 6.15 pm

Place: The Political Science Lounge, Room: 5200,  CUNY Graduate Center