I would like to take the time to acknowledge and thank those who helped me complete this project. This dissertation also involved interviewees, legislative assistants, and librarians, who enthusiastically helped me with my work despite the circumstances of this year. He made meals (and made sure I ate them), cleaned our house, took care of our dog, and gave me tremendous emotional support without which this project would never have been completed.
Maxwell Swann played countless roles in completing this project, including reading every word of this dissertation more times than I care to admit.
Introduction
In this article, I explore how institutional activism was (or was not) effective in changing three states. First, I provide an idiocultural analysis (Fine, 1979) of each state to provide insight into the 'system of knowledge, beliefs, behaviors and customs shared by members of an interacting group, to which members can refer and which can be used as a basis serve. of further interaction” that is hyper-specific to the localized cultures of the states (Fine, 1979, p. 734). This is followed by a discussion of the opportunity structures and framing devices used by institutional activists to provide insight into how movement outcomes are influenced by structural and cultural phenomena.
Finally, there is an analysis of the results and the conclusion that addresses weakness of the study and possible future research.
Literature Review and Theory…
The collaborative strategy these three groups use to succeed in responding to the broader discursive environment and relevant political opportunities through strategic framing of the issue. However, the effectiveness of framing is dependent on how the frame is communicated as well as the broader cultural environment where the frame is deployed (McCammon et al., 2007). While framing is the means by which activists can communicate their message in a way that resonates with the public more broadly, there cannot be an understanding of what will resonate with the public without considering the cultural realities of the specific setting in which the frames cannot be known. deploy.
Like political opportunities, discursive opportunity structures can be stable or volatile (McCammon et al., 2007; Gamson & Meyer, 1996). The audience's underlying principles and stories about the cultural environment must align with the movement for framing to succeed (McCammon et al., 2007). In the case of women's issues, framing the movement around salient and culturally significant issues that resonate with the public serves as a frame-bridging tool for those who care about these issues but have not recognized them as a facet of the larger movement ( Snow et al., 1986).
This means that the underlying principles of the public and the narratives of the cultural setting must match the goals of the movement for the framing to be effective and lead to a successful outcome (McCammon et al., 2007). The movement frame that succeeds in persuading legislators to change the law is thus the result of the combined effect of the discursive opportunity structure and movement actors” (McCammon et al., 2007).
Expectations
Similar to political mediation theory, discursive opportunities can serve as moderating variables for shaping success (McCammon et al., 2007) and are a valuable tool for understanding how institutional activists position their issue in public, especially when it requires a public referendum. successful result.
Methods and Data
Findings
The state legislature can directly call for a constitutional convention, but this has never happened in the history of the state. Other major changes occurred to the document in 1793, which the state viewed as simply a recodification of the 1784 document. In 2010, this abandoned bill was reintroduced in the Senate but did not proceed out of the House Judiciary Committee (Weber, personal communication, 2020; New Hampshire House of Representative, 2010).
Assemblywoman Sandy Galef (D-Ossining) was elected in 1992, which was popularly called the “Year of the Woman” due to the number of women who ran for and were elected to office that year (Zhou, 2018). She noted that her interest in running arose after the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment in New York in the 1970s, a campaign in which she was heavily involved with the League of Women Voters (Galef personal communication, 2019). However, they mention that this is only true because of the long legacy of women involved in New Hampshire politics (Perret, 2008).
Due to the symbolic nature of the proposed change to the language of the constitution, MP Galef tried to show the seriousness of inclusion in the language by hypothesizing the lack of language that would have a masculine gender in the constitution. The role-reversal framework convinced enough people of the amendment's value that it passed the state legislature unanimously and placed it on the ballot. Ellsworth), who urged legislators to let voters decide the issue rather than intervene themselves (Maine 113th Legislature, 1988b, p. 572).
New Hampshire's House Judiciary Committee was keenly aware of the state's fiscal conservatism, which essentially pushed the amendment off the agenda when the price was assessed. First, there was a marked increase in the representation of women in the Maine State Legislature from 1986 to 1987, when many of the representatives who would eventually adopt the amended constitution were elected. Overall, percentages of the state legislature were made up of women, and percentages identified as women, making Maine a national leader in the representation of women in state government (CAWP, 2020a).
By 2008, 13 of the 24 members of the New Hampshire Senate were women; the state was number three in the nation for women's representation (CAWP, 2020b). Galef specifically mentioned the increase in women in leadership positions when discussing the shift in the political reality of the state legislature. By 2010, women held four of the top seven state offices, including the US Senate (Schweitzer, 2010).
The third wave of feminism swept the US in the 1990s and began in 1992 with the Anita Hill trial. During each of the times the amendment to the New Hampshire state constitution was advanced, women experienced increased opportunities culturally and politically, as in the cases of Maine and New York.
Institutional Activism, Movement Framing, Opportunity Structures, and Their Effects…
The discursive opportunity of the war was also used to exploit a previously less important political opportunity in New York: the charter amendment referendum. As mentioned earlier, New York City has been amending its charter to introduce incremental changes, such as making the Administration for Children's Services a permanent agency and creating a "gun-free" They decided to reframe their standard voter turnout messages and link them to post-9/11 patriotic sentiment (Snow et al., 1986).
The connection between the two events was accomplished by sending a postcard to all registered voters in New York City showing Mayor Giuliani shaking the hand of an unnamed firefighter, effectively capitalizing on the fact that he is constantly referred to as the "Mayor of 9/11" (being valorized as comedian) John Mulaney [2017] put it: "Because nobody else was mayor that day!"). Now you can decide how New York City should address the issues of public safety and public health” (Worth, 2001). The wartime discursive opportunity's emphasis on democratic values and the results of a tragedy that affected all New Yorkers was successful in eliciting voter participation and is credited with helping pass the gender-neutral changes to New York's state constitution (Galef personal communication, 2019).
The newer legislation also creates other hurdles to overcome, such as the decision that the entire amended constitution will have to be put to a vote in order to vote on the amendment itself. The state's idiocultural milieu is integral to understanding how New Hampshire can simultaneously strive to promote itself as a champion of women's equality while repeatedly failing to rid itself of its constitution's gendered language. Symbolic language is not alarming enough for the legislature to act, as evidenced by the blasé response to the inaccuracy of the required use of the honorific in the masculine gender when addressing the first female governor.
The importance of the idio-cultural environment of a state can also be seen in the cases of Maine and New York. The two states amended their constitutions in opposite political climates: Maine succeeded when there was little fanfare or political strife in the state, using quotidian circumstances to appeal to voters; and New York passed the amendment during one of its most tumultuous times, full of political and existential confusion. In New York, appeals to vote to demonstrate the resilience of New Yorkers, democratic values and how Americans have treated women in relation to other nations, that the amendment passed even after the upheaval of the September 11 Terrorist attacks.
Newman, DeMora, and Reny (2020) found that women's economic empowerment relative to men in a state drives voter support for the amendment to make constitutions gender neutral. However, women's economic power is linked to the discriminatory elements discussed in the section above that consistently hold women back from achieving economic equality with their male peers. It is not enough simply to recognize that a document is outdated or does not reflect current reality; the wider environment in which these changes are made must be suitable to promote women's success as an integral part of its identity.
Conclusion…
Retrieved from https://www.wwlp.com/news/state-politics/domb-urging-gender-neutral-lingual-for-state-constitution/1896950421. Retrieved from https://www.pewtrusts.org/it/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline states-balance-hes-and-shes. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp a-woman-as-president-the-gender-neutral-.
Retrieved from http://www.ncsl.org/Portals/1/Documents/lsss/LegalesePresentationPrint.pdf General Court of New Hampshire. Retrieved from http://www.archives.nysed.gov/research/constitutions-and-constitional-conventions New York Times Editors. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com nyregion/judith-s-kaye-first-woman-to-serve-as-new-yorks-chief-judge-dies-at-77.html.
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