Karen M. Kedrowski - Böcker

Breastfeeding Rights in the United States shows that the right to breastfeed in this country exists only in a negative sense: you can do it unless someone takes you to court. Kedrowski and Lipscomb catalog and analyze all the laws, policies, judicial opinions, cultural mores, and public attitudes that bear on breastfeeding in America. They then explore the classic double bind: social norms promulgated by the medical and public health establishment say breast is best; but social practices in the workplace and in public spaces make breastfeeding difficult. Aggravating the double bind is the prominence of the breast in American culture as a sexual object. The double bind creates coercively structured choices that are incompatible with the meaningful exercise of rights.The authors conclude that the solution to this problem requires new theory and new strategy. They posit a new democratic, feminist theory of the breastfeeding right that is predicated on the following distinctions: DT It is not a right to breastfeed, but a right to choose to breastfeed. DT It is a woman's right to choose, not a baby's right to be breastfeed. DT It is a right, not a duty. The authors predict that framing the breastfeeding right in this way provides the basis for a new strategic coalition between breastfeeding advocates and liberal feminists, who have historically been wary of one another's rhetoric. Breastfeeding Rights in the United States represents an important advance toward policy change.

Walking the Gendered Tightrope analyzes the gendered expectations for women in high offices through the examples of British Prime Minister Theresa May and U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Even at their highest positions, and while completing their greatest achievements, both May and Pelosi faced gendered critiques and intraparty challenges to their leadership. While other books have analyzed the barriers to higher office that women face, this book reveals how women in positions of power are still forced to balance feminine stereotypes with the perception of power as masculine in order to prove their legitimacy. By examining intraparty dynamics, this book offers a unique comparison between a majoritarian presidential and Westminster parliamentary system. While their parties promoted Pelosi and May to highlight their progressive values, both women faced continually gendered critiques about their abilities to lead their caucuses on difficult policy issues, such as the Affordable Care Act and two Trump impeachment votes for Nancy Pelosi, or finishing Brexit for Theresa May. Grounded in the legislative literature from the United States and Britain, as well as historical accounts and personal interviews, Walking the Gendered Tightrope contributes to the fields of gender and politics, legislative studies, American politics, and British politics.

Walking the Gendered Tightrope analyzes the gendered expectations for women in high offices through the examples of British Prime Minister Theresa May and U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Even at their highest positions, and while completing their greatest achievements, both May and Pelosi faced gendered critiques and intraparty challenges to their leadership. While other books have analyzed the barriers to higher office that women face, this book reveals how women in positions of power are still forced to balance feminine stereotypes with the perception of power as masculine in order to prove their legitimacy. By examining intraparty dynamics, this book offers a unique comparison between a majoritarian presidential and Westminster parliamentary system. While their parties promoted Pelosi and May to highlight their progressive values, both women faced continually gendered critiques about their abilities to lead their caucuses on difficult policy issues, such as the Affordable Care Act and two Trump impeachment votes for Nancy Pelosi, or finishing Brexit for Theresa May. Grounded in the legislative literature from the United States and Britain, as well as historical accounts and personal interviews, Walking the Gendered Tightrope contributes to the fields of gender and politics, legislative studies, American politics, and British politics.

This book examines how fashion intersects with political expression in the United States and across the globe. The chapters cover a diversity of perspectives, including experiences of men, minoritized people and women, and LGBTQ persons, as well as examining strategic choices by political actors ranging from dictators to elected officials and from protesters to mothers. Perhaps more importantly, this handbook allows chapters written about the US by mainly US-based academics to be in dialogue with scholarship about other regions of the world largely written by non-US and non-European scholars. Several chapters address regions of the world often understudied by political scientists, including Africa (Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Sudan, Liberia, Nigeria, and Cameroon); Asia (North Korea, Turkmenistan, Indonesia, and Pakistan); and Latin America (Argentina and Mexico). This work goes beyond the usual analyses that cast clothing choices as trivial or constraining and shows how political actors from dictators to elected officials and from citizen activists to social movement leaders incorporate strategic choices about their clothing – ranging from uniforms and business attire to hijab and traditional ethnic attire – in order to advance their political agendas.