Lisa Baldez, Ph.D.

lisa.baldez@dartmouth.edu

Dartmouth College

Country: United States (New Hampshire)

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About Me:

Dr. Lisa Baldez is Professor of Government and Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. She is the author of Why Women Protest: Women’s Movements in Chile (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and Defying Convention: US Resistance to the UN Treaty on Women’s Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Defying Convention won the 2015 Victoria Schuck Award for best book on women and politics and 2015 best book on human rights, both from the American Political Science Association. She is one of the founding editors, with Karen Beckwith, of Politics & Gender, the official journal of the Women and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. From 2015-2018, she served as the Cheheyl Professor and Director of the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning (DCAL). Dr. Baldez is the recipient of the 2019 Midwest Women’s Caucus for Political Science Outstanding Professional Achievement Award.

Research Interests

Gender and Politics

Human Rights

International Law & Organization

Latin American And Caribbean Politics

Human Rights Treaties

Gender Quotas

Conservative Women

Countries of Interest

United States

Chile

Publications:

Books Written:

(2014) Defying Convention: U.S. Resistance to the U.N. Treaty on Women's Rights, Cambridge University Press

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) articulates what has now become a global norm. CEDAW establishes the moral, civic, and political equality of women; women's right to be free from discrimination and violence; and the responsibility of governments to take positive action to achieve these goals. The United States is not among the 187 countries that have ratified the treaty. To explain why the United States has not ratified CEDAW, this book highlights the emergence of the treaty in the context of the Cold War, the deeply partisan nature of women's rights issues in the United States, and basic disagreements about how human rights treaties work.

(2009) Political Women and American Democracy, Cambridge University Press

What do we know about women, politics, and democracy in the United States? The last thirty years have witnessed a remarkable increase in women's participation in American politics and an explosion of research on female political actors, and the transformations effected by them, during the same period. Political Women and American Democracy provides a critical synthesis of scholarly research by leading experts in the field. The collected essays examine women as citizens, voters, participants, movement activists, partisans, candidates, and legislators. The authors provide frameworks for understanding and organizing existing scholarship; focus on theoretical, methodological, and empirical debates; and map out productive directions for future research. As the only book to offer "state of the field" essays on women and gender in U.S. politics, Political Women and American Democracy will be an invaluable resource for scholars and students studying and conducting women and politics research.

(2002) Why Women Protest: Women's Movements in Chile, Cambridge University Press

What are the conditions under which women mobilize on the basis of their collective identity as women? This book compares two ideologically opposed examples of women's movements in Chile. It studies the women who mobilized against the democratically elected government of President Salvador Allende (1970-1973) and those who mobilized against the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). The study documents and explains the similarities that exist between these two very different movements in terms of the moment at which they emerge and the way in which they frame their demands.