Shirin Rai provides a comprehensive assessment of how gender politics has emerged and developed in post-colonial states. In chapters on key issues of nationalism and nation-building, the third wave of democratization and globalization and governance, Rai argues that the gendered way in which nationalist statebuilding occured created deep fissures and pressures for development. She goes on to show how women have engaged with institutions of governance in developing countries, looking in particular at political participation, deliberative democracy, representation, leadership and state feminism.