The 2016 edition of the research magazine Women Talking Politics has now been published. Please check it out here.

About the 2016 issue

From the Editors Dr Greta Snyder and Dr Priya Kurian:

"We find ourselves in a moment both hopeful and deeply disturbing when it comes to the politics of sex and gender... The articles featured here span a range of issues from the local to the global, linking gender and indigeneity with the politics of development, empowerment and resistance. 

• Curtin contrasts the reluctance in New Zealand to consider gender quotas as a way of increasing the number of women MPs with the outcomes of a recent conference on gender and electoral reform in Penang, Malaysia, which endorsed recommendations, including gender quotas, as a way of both increasing the number of elected women and creating a more inclusive electoral system.
  
• Kanem and Norris deploy Black feminist frameworks, intersectionality and the matrix of domination, to explore the marginalization of indigenous Marind people of the Papua province through the ongoing processes of colonization by Indonesia – evident in practices of deforestation, destruction of food sources such as sago, and competition for market space. If sago is part of the Marind’s indigenous identity, then corn is central to Mexico’s national identity.
  
• Pantoja describes how women activists, such as Adelita San Vicente, have played a significant role in the fight by Mexican nongovernmental organisations to protect maize from genetically modified varieties.
  
• Indigenous women’s resistance is also evident in the colonized Pacific context of Guåhan (Guam), controlled by the U.S., where Frain describes how indigenous Chamoru women have used events such as the Pacific Arts Festival to call for decolonization and demilitarization.
  
• The challenges of bringing about structural change despite the possibilities to exercise individual agency is illustrated in Nandedkar’s analysis of a gender empowerment programme in India. Nandedkar turns the lens on a UNICEF-funded Deepshikha project that works with adolescent girls to explore how ideas of rights, volunteerism and community play out in the policy translation of empowerment into local development contexts.
  
• Finally, exploring policy enactment in the New Zealand context, Smith describes her on-going work on how schools and parents engage with each other, and the factors that influence such engagement.
  
• The exciting breadth of current research being undertaken by women political science scholars is also evident in the shorter research briefs by Schick on critical theory and international ethics; Townshend on the impact of religion on the foreign policy of the United Arab Emirates and Qatar; Greaves on Maori political attitudes and behaviour; and Brower on the gender disparities in the linkage between a Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF) grade and academic rank. 
  

In this issue, we have also introduced two new elements designed to encourage women to develop their political voice and engage in politics. First is a section of book and film reviews that features the work of undergraduate women who have taken political science courses. These reviews speak eloquently to the political topics and issues with which they are currently engaged and by which they are animated. Second is a section of profiles of women political science graduates who have gone on to careers in politics."

More information about WTP and back issues are available on our site here.