Gender and Politics — Comments on an evaluation

Abstract

Gender and Politics- Comments on an evaluation. Report nr 1 2001 from the Swedish ResearchCouncil is an evaluation of the state of political science in Sweden. One part of it deals with gender and political science. The evaluators do not think highly of gender research and remarkironically about the existence of patriarchy. The gist of my comment is that they who so muchstress the necessity of systematic empirical work, disregard the fact that we walk knee-deep in empirical studies and statistics that together demonstrates that there exists a male hegemonial norm, a patriarchy if you wish, a hierarchy of values where that which is male coded has higher status than that which is female coded. Constantly refusing to accept the existence of a male hegemonial norm is a way to keep gender research back in the infant stage the evaluators think should be over.