GENDER STRUGGLES IN THE BRITISH LABOR-PARTY FROM 1979 TO 1995

This report examines the internal struggles that have taken place in t he British Labour Party since 1979 to make gender a salient political issue and to increase the representation of women. I argue that the cu lture and organization of the Labour Party in 1979 provided an inhospi table terrain for women to organize around gender issues, but that sin ce that time women have been able to use the spaces created by other a gendas for party adaptation and change, particularly demands for party democratization and party modernization, to develop a gender-party dy namic which has allowed women to press their claims more effectively, but only in ways that are congruent with the leadership's modernizatio n strategy.