Gender in Third World Politics.(Review)

Georgina Waylen, (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1996), pp. xi + 163, [pounds]45.00, [pounds]14.99 pb.

Georgina Waylen's Gender in Third World Politics is a thoughtful and concise introduction to the growing field of comparative women's political participation. Waylen's strength is that she clears away the underbrush. She begins by justifying the use of 'third world' as a category of states, then crisply compares the major feminist approaches to the study of women and politics (radical, socialist and liberal) and the views of those who criticise these theories for overgeneralising about 'women'.

Waylen finds elements of Joan Scott's defence of gender as …