Mala Htun

Mala Htun is a Professor of Political Science at the University of New Mexico. She works on comparative politics, women's rights, social inequalities, and strategies to promote inclusive organizational climates in STEM. Htun is the author of three books, most recently The Logics of Gender Justice: State Action on Women's Rights around the World, co-authored with Laurel Weldon (Cambridge Press, 2018). She has been Vice President of APSA, served as the chair of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession, and co-chaired the Presidential Task Force on Women's Advancement. She has been an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, a fellow at the Kellogg Institute of the University of Notre Dame and the Radcliffe Institute of Harvard, and held the Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship in Japan. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard and a A.B. in international relations from Stanford. She was an assistant and then associate professor at the New School for Social Research from 2000-2011.

Htun overturns the conventional wisdom that "political modernization" typically ushers in gender equality or the full representation of disadvantaged groups more generally. In authoritarian regimes, networks of feminists and middle-class male lawyers can exploit Church-state conflict to institute wide-ranging reforms to family and personal laws, while ironically a return to democratic governance can enhance the power of Roman Catholic bishops and conservatives. Other major findings worldwide: women generally get candidate quotas in parties; ethnic groups get reserved seats in parliament. Autonomous feminist networks reduce violence against women. Feminist interests are multivalent, with different allies and enemies depending on the interest.