Wilma Rule Award: IPSA Award for the Best Paper on Gender and Politics

This award was instituted by the Executive Committee on the recommendation of the Committee on Participation and the Committee on Awards. It was
designed to encourage research in the area of gender and politics and was launched at the congress in Québec City in 2000. It is given to the
best paper in the area of gender and politics. The IPSA Awards Committee has recommended naming the award in tribute to the work of Wilma Rule.

The purpose of the award is to encourage scholars to write and present excellent papers at the IPSA World Congress. The subject matter of the paper should include aspects relating to issues of women’s participation and representation in politics and society, especially the identification of entry barriers to decision making arenas that might help further their achievement of higher positions. Any scholar, male or female, who has prepared a written, original paper for the congress, with the intention of presenting it personally, may be recommended for the award by the convenor or chair of his or her panel.

Guidelines

Chairs and convenors of sessions at the IPSA World Congress are invited to submit nominations of papers prepared for presentation at the world congress for consideration for the Wilma Rule Award for the best paper on gender and politics. Each nomination should be accompanied by (1) a copy of the paper, and (2) a letter of recommendation from the nominating chair or convenor. Each paper nominated will be assessed by a panel drawn from IPSA’s committee on awards and its committee on participation.

Nominations should be received by the IPSA secretariat by June 26th, 2012.

Wilma Rule (1925-2004)

Wilma Rule received a B.A. in Political Science and in Journalism in 1949 and an M.A. in political science in 1950 from the University of
California at Berkeley. Her Ph.D. was granted by the University of Hawaii in 1968. She was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship for the
Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan and did additional postdoctoral work in
organizational behavior at Northwestern University. She was an assistant professor at Northern Illinois University from 1969 to 1975. She
served as long-time Secretary Treasurer of the Representation and Electoral Systems Section of the American Political Science Association.

Her study of gender and politics led to a lifetime of research on electoral systems and how they facilitated or hindered the election of women
and underrepresented minorities to public office. Wilma Rule was a leading writer and political science researcher whose work resulted in a
number of articles and books that challenge conventional notions about the reasons for the lack of political representation by women in the US.

Wilma Rule Award Recipients

2009
- Anne Marie Holli and Milja Saari
Paper: The Representation of Women in the Parliamentary Standing Committee Hearings in Finland 

2006
- Manon Tremblay, Université d’Ottawa (Canada).
Article: Democracy, Representation, and Women: A Worldwide Comparative Analysis

2000
- Karen Bird , McMaster University(Canada).
Paper: Gender Parity and the Political Representation of Women in France.
- Marian Sawer, Australian National University (Australia).
Paper: Representation of Women: Questions of Accountability.