Gendering the Nation-State explores the gendered dimensions of a fundamental organizational unit in social and political science – the nation-state. Yasmeen Abu-Laban has drawn together work by both high-profile and emerging scholars to rescue gender from the margins of theoretical discussions on the nation, the state, public policy, and citizenship. Contributors bring the insights of feminist analysis to bear on three relationships central to popular and policy discussions in contemporary Canada and beyond: gender and nation, gender and state processes, and gender and citizenship.

Gendering the Nation-State employs a comparative framework and builds on three decades of multidisciplinary work. Nuanced and wide-ranging, the collection crosses and challenges physical, theoretical, and disciplinary borders.

Yasmeen Abu-Laban is Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta. She has published widely on issues relating to the Canadian and comparative dimensions of gender, ethnicity and racialization processes, border and migration policies, and citizenship theory. She is the co-editor of Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine: Population, Territory, and Power (with Elia Zureik and David Lyon); co-editor of Politics in North America: Redefining Continental Relations (with Radha Jhappan and François Rocher); and editor of Gendering the Nation-State: Canadian and Comparative Perspectives. She is also the co-author (with Christina Gabriel) of Selling Diversity: Immigration, Multiculturalism, Employment Equity and Globalization.

Yasmeen Abu-Laban's profile page

The 14 essayists in this book have brilliantly analyzed gender and nation, gender and state processes and gender and citizenship. This is a scholarly book showing the way to justice, equality and understanding for the role of women in the state.

Lower Island News, Vol. 25, 2008

This is an excellent collection. While its main focus is clearly on gender and the state, the book makes important contributions to our understanding of nationalism, comparative politics, neoliberalism, postcolonialism, risk society and the role of transnational actors and NGOs. The collection clearly establishes that analyzing gender is not just a matter of “adding” insights to existing analyses but that gendered perspectives often fundamentally challenge the way in which traditional categories and analyses are constructed. As Yasmeen Abu-Laban makes clear in her introduction, the collection “is a response to a disciplinary incompleteness in political science.

Canadian Journal of Political Science (2011), 44: 458-459

…political scientists and other social scientists will benefit from reading Gendering the Nation-State. It contributes to the breaking down of boundaries in political science and clearly connects theories to both empirical knowledge and the political outcomes that affect women directly.

Canadian Public Policy/Analyse de politiques, vol xxxvii, no 3