Hard Heads and Soft Hearts

Various Australian politicians have argued for the need to combine ‘hard heads and soft hearts’ in politics. Unfortunately, this article argues that that recognition is not yet fully accepted in Australian political science. While there has been a significant progress, both in terms of the number of senior women in the discipline and the gender content of Australian political science, problems still remain. Unfortunately, some of the issues are still those identified by Carole Pateman in her famous 1981 address as President of the Australian Political Studies Association when she noted both the underrepresentation of women in political science and that there was a tendency to define ‘the political’ in narrow ways that excluded the study of women and issues that were of concern to them. This article will explore why political science has been less open to incorporating feminist insights than some other related disciplines. It will analyse a number of issues regarding the gendering of Australian political science. These include narrow definitions of the ‘political’; a continuing implicit (gendered) prioritising of various fields and approaches as ‘hard’ political science and the denigration of other fields as ‘soft’; and the impact of neo-liberalism and the importance of the ‘political’ as a site for constructions of gender identity. It argues that the continuing resistance to ‘reinventing’ political science to take account of gender is particularly concerning given the potential impact on definitions of research ‘excellence’. The article also identifies some areas where more research needs to be done. This article will argue that many of the contemporary problems in political science, regarding both the incorporation of gendered perspectives and the underrepresentation of women, are long-standing ones that have been identified in previous feminist critiques. Indeed, those earlier feminist analyses help to answer the question of why, as will be suggested later in this article, political science has been even more resistant to change than some other social science disciplines. They also throw light on how the increasing influence of neo-liberalism in the academy has reinforced the traditional barriers to incorporating feminist research in western political science, such as conceptions of a public/private division, making it even harder to transform the discipline in genderinclusive ways. Nonetheless, it will be suggested that there are a number of areas where new insights can be gained and where additional research is needed. These areas include exploring the intersection between the ‘performance’ of being a first-rate political scientist and the performance of masculinity and the impact of new conceptions of ‘excellence’ on the gendered nature of political science, both of which impact on issues ranging from evaluation to frequency of citation. While the main focus of this article is on Australian political science, it will be argued that Australian political science both reflects the Australian Feminist Studies, 2014 Vol. 29, No. 80, 121–136, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2014.928191 © 2014 Taylor & Francis D ow nl oa de d by [ 11 5. 85 .2 5. 19 4] a t 2 2: 45 3 1 M ar ch 2 01 5 influence of, and issues that are often found in, western political science more broadly. An analysis of Australian political science can therefore throw useful light on issues of gender and political science internationally. Judith Squires has noted that: ‘Until the emergence of feminist theory as a recognized academic perspective, contemporary political theory was largely assumed to be gender-neutral in focus’ (1999, 1). The assumption of ‘neutrality’ was even more the case for other, especially more quantitative, forms of political science. From the emergence of the so-called ‘second-wave’ feminism onwards, however, political science came under sustained feminist critique, not least because feminists were searching for answers to the substantial underrepresentation of women in contemporary political life. In the process, feminists discovered that conventional political science not only had few insights to offer into the relationship between gender and politics but often failed to even recognise gender as a significant political issue. Indeed conventional political science tended to reproduce the same gendered (and also discursively constructed) public/private division that contributed to women’s actual political underrepresentation in public political life (Okin 1979; Coole 1988). It should be noted though that the comments here focus on ‘Western’ societies. The topic would be analysed somewhat differently if incorporating material on societies where the division between the state and civil society can take somewhat different forms (see, for example, Vickers 2008, 34). The situation was summed up particularly well by a former President of the Australian Political Studies Association (APSA), Carole Pateman. Pateman (1988, 1996) has herself made major contributions to feminist analyses of traditional political science in her work, demonstrating how the marriage contract underlay the social contract: the gendered nature of conventional democracy and the gendered nature of the welfare state. In her APSA Presidential Address in 1981, Pateman argued that ‘women’s position in the profession of political studies is very similar to our position in other professions and in public life generally; we are marginal participants in organisations that are numerically and structurally dominated by men’ (Pateman 1982, 1). In particular, Pateman problematised the conceptual construction of the ‘political’ in political science, arguing that not only was the gendered nature of public life neglected, but that the public/private distinction meant that politics was all too often seen as stopping at the garden gate, thereby neglecting the political nature of personal life (Pateman 1982, 1–6). (Pateman, it should be noted, left Australia for a distinguished international career after she was unable to gain a chair of political science in Australia, despite being Australia’s most cited political scientist). Indeed, the critique of the narrow conception of the ‘political’ in political science has been the subject of numerous feminist critiques, both before and since Pateman’s clear statement of the position. It is a reason why Jill Vickers (1997) has argued that political science, as a field, requires nothing less than a ‘reinvention’, albeit one in which feminist political scientists also engage with, develop and adapt existing ‘mainstream’ political analytical tools and concepts as well as developing new ones (see further Vickers 2012, 155–6; Mackay 2011, 183, 193). As Emma Foster et al. stated when arguing for the continuing need for ‘a more expansive notion of both “the political” and “gender”’ that goes beyond issues of women’s underrepresentation: At the level of representation, gender remains a problem mainly for women; however, at the level of identity, it becomes a problem for everyone. Constructions of femininity, masculinity, motherhood, fatherhood and everyday gender and family 122 CAROL JOHNSON D ow nl oa de d by [ 11 5. 85 .2 5. 19 4] a t 2 2: 45 3 1 M ar ch 2 01 5 norms are all issues directly relevant, not only to student experiences, but also to the concerns of policy-makers and practitioners at all level of decision-making and governance. (Foster et al. 2013, 582) The Contemporary Situation Unfortunately, despite significant increases in both women’s political representation in legislatures and in political science, the situation in Australian and international political science today still shows some similarities with the problems Carole Pateman identified over 30 years ago, including the persistent influence of a very narrow conception of the ‘political’ (see further Foster et al. 2013). This should not surprise us too much given that broadening the conception of the ‘political’—for example to include aspects of personal life from family norms and gendered power relations to constructions of masculinity and femininity—would require sustained radical social critique. The impact of neo-liberalism on academic life (Gill 2009; Thornton 2008) has discouraged conceptions that see such critique as a crucial part of the mission of universities. Rather, the central role of universities is now seen as providing education and training that will assist in integrating students into the economy. The influence of neoliberal ideology reinforces traditional divisions of public and private, given the neoliberalism’s privileging of ‘public’ economic life in terms of capitalist economic relations in the market and the undervaluing of ‘private’ economic life, for example, in the sphere of the family (Waring 1988; Beasley 1994). Certainly the ‘reinvention’ of political science called for by Jill Vickers has not occurred. Furthermore one could suggest that it was partly because such a fundamental reinvention of the discipline was required that it has been so resistant to change. Admittedly, Vickers has also argued that some feminist scholars have not engaged with mainstream conceptions, for example ‘power’ and the ‘state’, as effectively as they could have (Vickers 2012) and that that has exacerbated such resistance. That partial explanation, however, seems even less likely in the case of Australian political science, given that Australia was one of the countries where such engagement did occur (Vickers 2012, 149; Sawer 1989). Arguably it has been somewhat easier to incorporate feminist insights into disciplines where discursive constructions of a public/private division are not so pervasive and where gendered roles in public life are not reflected quite so much in the composition of the discipline. The particular ‘resistance’ to transforming political science has been noted internationally, despite the extraordinary insights that feminist research has contributed in diverse fields (Simms and Bayes 2012, 226; Abu-Laban 2008; Arscott and Tremblay 1999; Prügl 2011). Certainly, political scientists have not been troubled by the dilemmas identified by some colleagues in disciplines such as history; namely, the need to ensure that the relative success of feminist history in the discipline does not undermine the critical edge associated with a location of marginality (see further Morgan 2009, 399). A comparison with other contributions to this volume also suggests that political science has been more resistant to the incorporation of gendered insights than some other social science disciplines. The result has been that political science has been less self-reflective around a range of gender issues than many other disciplines. An American Political Science Association paper argued that: ‘Political Science has Studied Itself with GENDERING OF AUSTRALIAN POLITICAL SCIENCE 123 D ow nl oa de d by [ 11 5. 85 .2 5. 19 4] a t 2 2: 45 3 1 M ar ch 2 01 5 Respect to Women’s Advancement Far Less than Economics, Sociology, and a Number of the Hard Sciences’ (APSA 2005; as cited in Bates, Jenkins, and Pflaeger 2012, 139). Ritter and Mellow also argue that ‘compared to anthropology, psychology, and sociology, political science has been a laggard in the area of gender studies’ (2000, 122). A recent study of the 22 best-selling political science textbooks used in American universities found that there was very little evidence of successful gender mainstreaming in those textbooks (Cassese and Boss 2013). The content on women, when it did occur, was still often marginalised. For example 31 per cent of the gender-related content was located in sections of the textbooks dealing with civil rights which ‘reinforces the conceptualization of women as political outsiders’ (Cassese and Boss 2013, 220). Similarly, a study of the incorporation of feminist scholarship in 16 textbooks used in introductory politics courses in Australian universities revealed that feminist scholarship was usually neglected or largely confined to a single chapter (Jose et al. 2011). The consequence was that: ‘For the novice student (and even more seasoned students and academics) it would appear that feminist scholarship had little to offer on subjects such as nationalism, globalisation, democracy and human rights’ (Jose et al. 2011, 544). Incorporation of Feminist Insights into ‘Mainstream’ Political Science This is not to deny that there have been significant improvements in Australian political science since Pateman gave her presidential address, including major feminist research contributions by political scientists such as Marian Sawer and Louise Chappell, amongst a long list of others (see for example: Sawer and Simms 1984; Sawer 1989; Sawer and Maddison 2012; Bacchi 1999; Chappell 2002). Nonetheless, the ongoing problems with the incorporation of feminist insights into ‘mainstream’ Australian political science have been identified by Sawer (2004), Brennan and Chappell (2009) and, more recently, Gerard (2012). Brennan and Chappell have argued that contemporary Australian political science falls far short of what a political science ‘transformed’ by feminism would look like, in terms of: (1) having ‘wider conceptual foundations’ including a broader conception of the ‘political’; (2) rectifying ‘sexist assumptions’; and (3) emphasising gender and politics (2009, 339–40). Indeed, the resistance to transforming political science is reflected in the very book on The Australian Study of Politics, in which Brennan and Chappell’s 2009 chapter appears. Outside the chapter that specifically deals with gender, the book includes relatively few references to gender, feminism or women in its 524 pages. Furthermore, many—although certainly not all—of those references (there are some honourable male exceptions, for example Goot and Rhodes) occur in chapters written by female authors. By contrast, Australian feminist political scientists have regularly incorporated feminist insights into the study of ‘mainstream’ Australian political issues, ranging from the study of Australian social liberalism (for instance Sawer 2003), to the study of Australian Labor and Liberal governments (Johnson 2000), to the study of Australian institutions such as federalism (see Chappell and Curtin 2012) and the construction of public policy ‘problems’ (Bacchi 1999). The definition of the ‘political’ is not so narrow now that it totally excludes consideration of gender. The study of gender (both femininity and masculinity), however, still tends to be an ‘add on’ rather than being both a specialist focus of study and fully integrated into relevant work in ‘mainstream’ political science. There is still resistance to incorporating gendered analysis into traditional concepts such as the state. As Louise 124 CAROL JOHNSON D ow nl oa de d by [ 11 5. 85 .2 5. 19 4] a t 2 2: 45 3 1 M ar ch 2 01 5 Chappell writes: ‘One thing that has remained constant over the course of the past three decades has been the feminist lament that their contribution to understanding the state has not been taken seriously by the mainstream’ (2013, 621). Furthermore, gender perspectives are not being automatically incorporated into new approaches. Rather, feminist political scientists still have to raise them, as Mackay, Kenny, and Chappell (2010) have pointed out in regard to the need to incorporate gender into ‘new’ institutional approaches. There still seems to be little understanding in mainstream work that applying a gender ‘lens’ could change how one views not just how political institutions work but a range of fields ranging from major policy areas (Sawer 1989; Bacchi 1999), constructions of the nation (Abu-Laban 2008), to understandings of international relations (Lee-Koo 2010); consequently, political scientists risk missing out on the insights that feminist approaches can offer. For example, Fiona Mackay points out that feminist analyses can assist new insitutionalist scholars to understand better ‘the gendered nature of formal institutions, the operation and importance of informal institutions, the relations of power within and between institutions, and the sources and variable outcomes of attempted institutional change’ (Mackay 2011, 193). The narrow definition of the ‘political’ also has other implications, influencing constructions of what are prioritised and privileged as areas for political scientists to work in. Even if issues are recognised as being ‘political’, they may not be recognised as being important (see further Kantola 2008). In other words, while contemporary definitions of the ‘political’ may not actually exclude some material and issues, such as women’s underrepresentation or family policy, political scientists are still facing a narrow definition of what is considered to be politically important. Furthermore, this narrow definition contributes to a gendered hierarchy of knowledge within the discipline. As a report into women in Australian political science pointed out: in political science, the more abstract model-building or mathematical parts of the discipline are frequently regarded as more prestigious than the more contextual (institutional and discursive) areas where women work. This gendered pattern actually shapes how women’s work is perceived: [Fiona] Jenkins described how, even when speaking on ‘hard’ topics, women are often heard as presenting ‘soft’ materials. Thus, these dynamics can make it difficult for women to be regarded as ‘excellent’ political scientists. The marginalisation of women scholars is more widespread than the marginalisation of feminist scholarship. (Cowden et al. 2012, 21–22) There are also gender biases in the construction of the ‘normative political scientist’ (Cowden et al. 2012, 20–22) that may be less evident in fields such as history where qualitative research is more highly valued. In fields from public administration to international studies, this can take the form of literally not noticing the work of female academics (Lee-Koo 2010; Burnier 2006). This issue also involves far more complex and subtle questions regarding the ways in which the ‘performance’, in Butlerite terms (Butler 1990) of being a first-class political scientist intersects with aspects of the ‘performance’ of privileged forms of masculinity. Arguably such performances of identity are then intersecting in complex ways with the new forms of academic subjectivity that are being encouraged in the neo-liberal university (Watson 2011) that downplay critical social analysis. The role of education is GENDERING OF AUSTRALIAN POLITICAL SCIENCE 125 D ow nl oa de d by [ 11 5. 85 .2 5. 19 4] a t 2 2: 45 3 1 M ar ch 2 01 5 increasingly tied to jobs and training for the economy. Academic behaviour in Australia (as in other countries such as Britain) is increasingly shaped by the need to obtain private funding or by government-funded performance criteria and research priorities that can discourage critical analyses of existing political, social and economic relations (see further Gill 2009; Thornton 2008, 2013). Even academics in countries traditionally seen as supporting stronger state sectors, such as the Nordic ones, are complaining about the impact of neo-liberalism, including an increase in individual competiveness (Lundberg 2012). Far more research needs to be done to analyse precisely what is occurring here (see the suggestions for future research later in this article), not least because of the shifting nature of perceptions of women’s as compared to men’s research noted above. There are also some fields in which the normalising aspects do not seem to be quite as strong as in others. For example, it is arguably less easy to avoid the role of women, or the importance of feminist research, if one works in fields such as the politics of social movements; not only because of the continuing existence of the women’s movement but also because social movement activism also spreads across traditional public/private divides (Maddison and Sawer 2013). Voting studies are now much more likely to take the analysis of sex variables into account (McAllister 2011, 48–50, 64–70, 112–118), even if gender analysis, of both male and female voters, is often not integrated fully into every topic and social category covered. In fields such as political theory, however, there is a long tradition in Western scholarship of a public/private divide (Okin 1979), and we have already noted a tendency to ‘quarantine’ feminist political theory rather than to apply it to other areas. Frequently the normative political scientist (in terms of the privileged construction of an ideal political scientist) appears to focus more on what are conceived as ‘hard’ facts and figures (which sometimes seem to be strangely disconnected from the social relations, including gender ones, in which they are located). If the normative political scientist studies institutions they all too often seem to be similarly abstracted from their social context; indeed, context-stripping can be a distinctive methodological feature, hence the neglect of gender noted by Mackay, Kenny, and Chappell (2010) in studies of institutions. Indeed, the political actor often seems to be constructed as a political science version of the hardnosed abstract ‘rational economic man’ beloved of neo-liberalism (Ferber and Nelson 1993). The particular construction of ‘rationality’ is also one that seems to lead to political science downplaying fields such as the study of emotions, despite them being seen as major fields of work in other disciplines, such as sociology (Barbalet 1998, 21; Demertzis 2006, 103). After all, while feelings in fact play a crucial role in political decisionmaking (Westen 2007; Neuman et al. 2007), emotion was frequently relegated to the feminised private sphere of home and family in Western thought (Lloyd 1984). There is a strong resistance to considering the personal as political, even when it is a significant issue in party politics with electoral and legislative ramifications. (This neglect is not just confined to gender per se, but the relative neglect of the analysis of same-sex issues in Australian political science demonstrates that resistance particularly graphically.) Meanwhile, the shifts in perception that Jenkins notes (Cowden et al. 2012, 21–22) can operate in relatively subtle ways. For example, an analysis of the framing of policy discourse can be interpreted as ‘hard’ work on policy or dismissed as ‘soft’ work on mere rhetoric depending upon who is speaking (although it has to be said that the study of discursive approaches generally still tends to be undervalued in Australian political science). Leading Australian politicians (Rudd 2008; Gillard 2011) may have argued for the 126 CAROL JOHNSON D ow nl oa de d by [ 11 5. 85 .2 5. 19 4] a t 2 2: 45 3 1 M ar ch 2 01 5 importance of incorporating both the so-called ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ political perspectives, but unfortunately Australian political scientists seem to be repeatedly privileging those perspectives constructed as ‘hard’. Once again, such constructions intersect with the neoliberal research imperatives mentioned previously. The hierarchical gendering of political science can potentially disadvantage some men as well, as when particular forms of masculinity and the objects such men study are privileged over other forms of masculinity. In other words, it needs to be recognised that hierarchies of masculinity are being reinforced in constructions of the normative political scientist. Needless to say, gendering the identity of the normative political scientist in terms of hierarchies of masculinity, in which some forms of political science activity and behaviour are classified as more masculine than others, can contribute to the marginalisation of female political scientists. Women seem to be overrepresented in some of the areas of research that are characterised as ‘soft’, whether they specifically work on gender or not (although this is one of the many areas in which more data would be desirable). Consequently, while it might be quite prestigious for male colleagues to work in the areas of emotion, mentioned earlier or the social relations of everyday life within fields such as sociology or history (see e.g. Barbalet 1998, Reddy 2001) for example, these areas can still be relatively marginalised in political science. Unlike politics, disciplines such as sociology and history do not focus on studying an area (public political life) from which women have been historically largely excluded and are still substantially underrepresented in most countries (Dahlerup and Leyenaar 2013). Indeed, it seems that even in countries where women have now significantly increased their representation in parliament, such as Finland, the recognition of gender as an important political issue, and the encouragement and representation of women in the political science professions, can still lag behind (Kantola 2008). Public political life is a key site where conceptions of masculinity and femininity and the (related) divisions between public and private are constructed. It is therefore also a particularly problematic site in gender terms. Hence the gender anxieties unleashed when women take, or attempt to take, positions of political leadership that we have seen most recently in the demonisation of Hillary Clinton (Ritchie 2013) or Julia Gillard (Sawer 2013, 111–114; Johnson 2013, 19–24). Arguably, the fact that the ‘political’ is so deeply gendered is precisely why it has been so hard to ‘reinvent’ political science. In short, the gendering of political science has proved to be particularly persistent, although it can now present in somewhat more subtle forms than Pateman originally analysed as many gender gaps in research are filled but not necessarily valued and as a gendered hierarchy of fields and approaches plays a significant role. Nonetheless, when it comes to politics, as Pateman originally noted, the very problems (of women’s marginalisation) in the field studied are reflected in the discipline that studies it. Effects of the Gendering of Political Science on ‘Excellence’ in Research Evaluation The persistence of such forms of gender bias in political science is particularly concerning in a period in which universities are under increasing pressure to identify and reward ‘excellence’ in research, rather than to provide adequate levels of general funding for combined teaching/research academics. Liisu Husu (2012) has noted that an increased emphasis on identifying and funding ‘excellence’ in European universities has led to decreasing gender equity as entrenched GENDERING OF AUSTRALIAN POLITICAL SCIENCE 127 D ow nl oa de d by [ 11 5. 85 .2 5. 19 4] a t 2 2: 45 3 1 M ar ch 2 01 5 gender biases influence decisions regarding what is ‘excellent’ research. The European Union has begun partly to address such issues, and there is more acknowledgement that ‘excellence’ needs to have an equity component. It is argued increasingly that a knowledge society needs to ensure that the capabilities, skills, merit, in short ‘excellence’, of all sections of the population are being adequately recognised and that this is essential for developing a nation’s human capital (see European Commission 2008; League of European Research Universities 2012). There are various national initiatives attempting to integrate these insights into research policy (see Zuber 2010). Nonetheless, it is noticeable that many of those strategies still have to be articulated strategically within the dominant economic discourse in which ‘knowledge institutions have become a central component of developing human capital for the new knowledge economy’, a perspective which Jayasuriya (2010, 18) sees as a form of ‘socialised neo-liberalism’. Unfortunately, in Australian research universities and funding bodies, ‘excellence’ all too often seems to be assumed to be a much more socially neutral and unproblematic category, rather than one that needs to be examined to ensure that particular conceptions of ‘excellence’ are not reproducing long-standing inequalities. Significantly, in Australia, Marian Sawer has pointed out that although 30 per cent of political scientists were women, only 12 per cent of ‘Chief Investigators’ on funded Australian Research Council (ARC) discovery applications in the 2009–2011 rounds were women (Sawer cited in Cowden et al. 2012, 21). This is a particularly concerning figure given that all Australian universities are expected to engage in research. ARCs are crucial for providing essential research assistance and teaching relief that facilitates publishing and play a major role in appointment and promotion criteria. Furthermore, while it is possible for political science research on gender to gain ARC funding (as Sawer’s own record demonstrates), it is often not easy to fit that research within the government’s existing research priorities (see Australian Government n.d.). Gendered conceptions of ‘excellence’ also seem to be influencing promotion and appointments policies. For example, a 2012 study found 74.32 per cent of political scientists at the level of Professor and Associate Professor were male, and only 25.68 per cent were female (Cowden et al. 2012, 17). The figures were acknowledged to be roughly equivalent to those in other Anglo-American countries, which are also characterised by an underrepresentation of women in the discipline (see Tolleson-Rhinehart and Caroll 2006; Bates, Jenkins, and Pflaeger 2012). In Australia substantially fewer women than men are still being appointed in many departments. For example, in the case of one prominent Australian political science department, it was calculated that of 13 new continuing staff recruited over the previous three years, 77 per cent had been men and 23 per cent had been women. It should also be noted that at least two female professors have retired since the above figures on the profession as a whole were produced. The lack of female professors has flow-on effects. For example, it is increasingly difficult to get candidates elected to be Fellows of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) who are not already professors. In 2012 only 16 of the 62 ASSA fellows in political science were female. As in Carole Pateman’s day, there are questions over whether female candidates for chairs are sometimes required to be of a higher level than male professors before their ‘merit’ is recognised. There is some anecdotal evidence to support views that this is still happening; for example, cases where professors who were referees for female chair candidates they considered to be highly capable then heard back on the grapevine that there were no ‘appointable’ female candidates for that position. In other words, a ‘glass 128 CAROL JOHNSON D ow nl oa de d by [ 11 5. 85 .2 5. 19 4] a t 2 2: 45 3 1 M ar ch 2 01 5 ceiling’ may be operating in political science, just as in public life generally, which makes it more difficult (though not impossible) for women to reach the highest positions. Furthermore, Jennifer Curtin’s analysis of the position of women in the New Zealand political studies discipline has noted a particular problem with current strategies for improving a university’s research performance. Many universities have focused on poaching and recruiting academic ‘stars’; this is not a process that is likely to be genderneutral. As Curtin notes: overseas evidence suggests that strategic appointments at the level of professor are more likely to be awarded to men. This is in part because male academics are a larger proportion of those already at associate professor level, and tend to be more likely to move cities or countries to take up promotion. (2013, 69) Curtin suggests that university policies that focus on improving the research performance of existing staff may therefore be more beneficial for women because ‘by contrast, female academics, especially those with children, may be less mobile and so more likely to seek promotion internally’ (Curtin 2013, 69). In other words, it is not just that women can face the traditional work–life balance problems of being primary carers for children, but it is also that women seem to be more likely to be tied geographically by family responsibilities and the jobs of their spouse, and this can disadvantage them when it comes to the recruitment of ‘stars’. Some Implications for Research Evaluation Exercises in Political Science Research evaluation exercises proceed all too often in the absence of analyses of the social construction of knowledge, particularly in regard to the power relations involved in that construction. If the field of a discipline is subject to contestation, and if there are gendered hierarchies of knowledge within it, then that clearly has the potential to impact on research evaluation, including via peer review. It is also significant that ARC grant success and ASSA fellowships are both indicators of excellence for research evaluation purposes. The narrow definition of politics can also have significant effects. At the time that Research Quality Framework and Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) lists of journal rankings were being prepared as part of the Australian government’s research evaluation exercise, members of the APSA women’s caucus expressed their concern that many feminist journals, especially ones that did not explicitly have ‘politics’ in the title, were not being allocated a Politics Field of Research Code (and others that were allocated the code were often ranked relatively lowly; for example Politics and Gender was ranked as B). Admittedly, this is now possibly of less concern given that the rankings list has ostensibly been abolished and articles no longer have to be allocated the journal’s Field of Research code. Given that the process for identifying and ranking Politics journals was actually undertaken with far more democratic input than in many equivalent disciplines, this does demonstrate ongoing issues with narrow definitions of the ‘political’ at the discipline level (as well as issues with disciplinary criteria in government research management). It also still raises issues regarding which work is automatically seen as central to the discipline and which is not and how the latter work may be ranked by peer reviewers. Some of the issues of low journal rankings for current politics journals with material on gender were GENDERING OF AUSTRALIAN POLITICAL SCIENCE 129 D ow nl oa de d by [ 11 5. 85 .2 5. 19 4] a t 2 2: 45 3 1 M ar ch 2 01 5 reconsidered by APSA in its 2013 internal review of rankings in its preferred journal list, with Politics and Gender moving to an A ranking. The exercise, however, did not result in calling for a significant broadening of the journals granted an official politics Field of Research Code for Australian research evaluation exercises. (The fact that such an internal review was considered necessary reflects the ongoing influence of such ranked journal lists.) At present, citations are not used as a measure of excellence in Political Science for ERA purposes. There are some female and feminist political scientists with excellent citation records (for example, Marian Sawer and Carol Bacchi). Nonetheless, given the gender biases noted above and questions over possible gender biases in citations in other fields (see Ferber and Brun 2011), there will be a need for vigilance and ongoing research in relation to this. The research into textbooks that was noted previously does suggest that feminist work is not being given the importance it deserves across a range of fields. Furthermore, a recent study by Maliniak, Powers, and Walter (2013) found that articles authored by women were less likely to be cited by male scholars (who are numerically significantly overrepresented) in the International Relations discipline, and that work authored by women also tends to be seen as less central to the discipline. It is also possible that impact measures may be reintroduced in research evaluation exercises. Australian feminist scholarship has undoubtedly impacted upon, and been used and cited by, the Australian women’s movement; indeed, leading Australian feminist political scientists such as Sawer and Maddison themselves have histories of feminist activism. If impact measures are reintroduced, however, questions need to be raised about how those measures will allow for gender biases in public policy that could impact on whether work on gender has the impact its academic merit would suggest it deserves. Obviously, there are also issues about how wider neoliberal economic imperatives and socially conservative ideological factors will influence the impact of such research or shape the way it is constructed (see further Goodwin 2012). For example, under the Howard government in Australia, a conception of a ‘mainstream’ disadvantaged by ‘politically correct’ ‘special interests’ was repeatedly mobilised against advocacy organisations for marginalised groups, including feminist ones (Johnson 2000). Thornton (2013) also notes the Howard Government’s interventionist actions in regard to research grants. Finally, some other disciplines are arguably more aware of the ways in which knowledge is constructed—for example, sociology in regard to traditional approaches to the sociology of knowledge—and disciplines where postmodern/poststructuralist approaches are far more accepted. The reduced impact of such approaches in political science may make political scientists even less self-reflective and open to alternative fields and approaches when it comes to assessing the work of others in processes of peer review. It may, for example, make them less aware of when they could be implicated in implementing excessively restrictive processes of normalisation and governmentality or when they are implicated in establishing unduly restrictive regimes of truth (see further Goodwin 2012). Once again, the influence of a neo-liberal university, and the forms of research management and measurement associated with it (Fredman and Doughney 2012, 44), will have increased this tendency. In short, it has been argued here that there are a number of factors that have led to the politics discipline being one that is particularly resistant to change when it comes to incorporating feminist insights. These factors include: the discursive construction of public and private; the reflection of the underrepresentation of women in public political life in 130 CAROL JOHNSON D ow nl oa de d by [ 11 5. 85 .2 5. 19 4] a t 2 2: 45 3 1 M ar ch 2 01 5 the political science discipline; the masculinist construction of the normative political scientist and political citizen; and the lack of reflexivity regarding the social shaping of political science. Several of these factors, including the public/private division, the normative construction of the citizen subject and the lack of reflexivity, have been exacerbated by neo-liberalism. Possibilities for Change? It is a very positive sign that there has been considerable recent discussion of measures that need to be taken to address the position of women in political science at international (Matonyte, Sawer, and St-Laurent 2012) and national level. Australian female political scientists have been mobilising and supporting each other in various ways, including by utilising blogs and a facebook page. The report on women in political science highlighted the need to create ‘a broader understanding of what constitutes a “good” political scientist’ (Cowden et al. 2012, 20–21) that covers issues including fields of research, methodology, career trajectory, models and styles of collegiality, leadership and mentoring. There is a particular need to encourage a plurality of approaches and methodologies. The more pluralistic the approach to the study of politics, the greater the opportunity for feminist approaches to flourish and for the diverse forms of non-gender focused work undertaken by female political scientists to be valued. Indeed, it is to the discipline’s general benefit (including for some marginalised male colleagues) for pluralistic approaches to be encouraged. It needs to be recognised that a variety of approaches can provide useful insights. Intellectual rigour and excellence in scholarship can take a variety of (both qualitative and quantitative) forms. That encouragement of plurality also needs to encourage the incorporation of feminist insights into mainstream work rather than the quarantining of them. APSA appears to have responded positively to a report on women in the discipline, supporting a number of measures including gender auditing, a Carole Pateman book prize, an inclusive leadership prize and increased opportunities for mentoring. The latter raises the issue of who most needs mentoring, for example, whether it is junior female members of the profession or some senior members of the profession who may have unduly narrow views on what constitutes ‘excellence’. To return to Carole Pateman’s famous 1981 metaphor, it is not only the garden gate that we need to be worried about when it comes to gate-keeping, but also a broader gendered hierarchy of knowledge (which we need to acknowledge may have been internalised by both male and female members of the profession in some cases). Much more quantitative and qualitative research is urgently needed; for example, facts and figures, surveys and interviews of the views of members of the profession and of how they position their own and others’ research, the advice given to aspiring political scientists, content analysis of key texts and discourse analysis of how particular approaches and fields are treated in the literature. That research also needs to cover fields as diverse as research publications, textbooks, peer review processes, grant application outcomes, research evaluation exercises and appointment and promotions committees. It would also be worth undertaking more comparative research on measures, strategies and policies such as those being developed in the European Union. Such research is particularly important because, as Melissa Matthes (2013, 238) has pointed out in her analysis of gender content in American political science: ‘Political science is not a GENDERING OF AUSTRALIAN POLITICAL SCIENCE 131 D ow nl oa de d by [ 11 5. 85 .2 5. 19 4] a t 2 2: 45 3 1 M ar ch 2 01 5 field with the luxury of answering only to the career demands of the Ivory Tower; it is a discipline with a history and obligation of addressing the pressing injustices of our democracy’.