Unfinished Transitions: Women and the Gendered Development of Democracy in Venezuela, 1936-1996 [Paperback]

Elisabeth J. Friedman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0271020245 | ISBN-13: 978-0271020242

This analysis of Venezuelan women's organizing traces a sixty-year struggle to democratize political practice and represent women's interests. It also helps to explain some of the unfinished business of Latin American democratization: why women have had difficulty participating in regimes they fought to restore, and how they seek inclusion. Friedman's innovative theoretical approach uses gender analysis to explain the impact of the political opportunity structure the institutions, actors, and discourses of democratization on women's participation.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Elisabeth Friedman offers a clear-eyed look at how women's political participation has evolved in Venezuela, where women have been successful at putting together effective coalitions on specific issues but continue to be politically marginalized. Because she is writing about Venezuela, which remained democratic while much of the region fell under military rule in the 1960s and 1970s, Friedman has an opportunity to think in longer historical terms about women's roles in democratization. She presents the case in a highly readable narrative style with thoughtful analysis of its implications for women's political strategies in the region and, implicitly, in all democratizing states. --Jane Jaquette, Occidental College

As a participant observer in Venezuelan women's organizations in 1994-95, Friedman reflects both a scholarly and personal engagement with the issues. This is a groundbreaking study of gendered politics, of interest for its theoretical thrust as well as for its contribution to Venezuelan political history. --J. Ewell, CHOICE

Venezuela has long reflected the best and worst of developing democracy in Latin America, and, as Elisabeth J. Friedman demonstrates in this study, while democracy can produce political progress for men, it does not necessarily have the same consequence for women. Indeed, Friedman finds that, paradoxically, women's movements flourish under politically authoritarian rule and tend to fracture and be diminished during periods of democracy. . . . Unfinished Transitions provides a substantial picture of the barriers that feminist organizations face in their quest to change the political reality of Latin America. --Susan Socolow, Times Literary Supplement

About the Author

Elisabeth J. Friedman is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her articles have appeared in Latin American Research Review, World Politics, Debates IESA, and Meridiana.

Product Details

• Paperback: 324 pages
• Publisher: Pennsylvania State Univ Pr (Txt) (August 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0271020245
• ISBN-13: 978-0271020242
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,225,145 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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