Fiona Mackay

This collection of essays brings together auto-ethnographic, critical, and comparative reflections on doing feminisms in the academy in contemporary India and the United Kingdom. Written by emergent and seasoned academics from a range of disciplines and and geopolitical locations, these essays explore the transformative potential, dilemmas, and challenges of teaching, learning, researching, and working as feminist academics. The contributors engage with a wide variety of issues: identity and difference; institutional and classroom pedagogies; reflexivity and accountability; and the production and circulation of feminist and non-feminist knowledge. This collection also provides the frame and the lens through which to view the wider landscape of contemporary higher education. Anchored in feminist scholarship and written in an accessible style, Doing Feminisms in the Academy will be an essential read for anyone interested in feminist, women’s, and gender studies.

This volume draws upon academic research to provide an accessible account of the way that the changes introduced by devolved governance are transforming the role of women in contemporary Welsh politics. It sets out current ideas in academic thinking and why political and social scientists are excited about, and interested in, devolution. It is based on original interviews with participants as well as a wide range of secondary sources. It draws upon research in Scotland and Northern Ireland in order to place the events reported on within the wider context of devolution in the UK. The volume begins by examining how women activists used the political opportunities afforded by constitutional reform to further gender equality and women's participation in politics. These actions led to unique, and as yet little known, innovations such as the Welsh Assembly's statutory duty to promote equality of opportunity. This account examines the background to, and effects of affirmative action taken by three political parties such that the new Welsh legislature has the second highest proportion of women elected representatives amongst national government bodies in Europe. It explores the notable development whereby women are in a majority in the Welsh executive's cabinet. Against the background of pro-devolution rhetoric that stated the case for a 'new politics' based on 'inclusiveness', this volume presents a timely assessment of a new phase in Wales's history; one that has redefined women's role in contemporary Welsh politics.

This volume is the first to use insights from recent feminist theory on the "ethic of care" to study the slow progress women have made toward political equality.Using empirical case-study materials, including her own interviews with female politicians, Mackay examines "care" as both a political practice and a political idea, using it to explain the current situation with regard to women's representation and to offer a prescription and resource for change.