Denise M. Walsh's "Imperial Sexism"

Denise M. Walsh is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Women's Rights in Democratizing States, a former editor of the American Political Science Review, and has actively advocated for and published on how to diversify the profession. Walsh specializes in comparative politics, gender, human rights, and feminist theory, focusing on how democracies can become more inclusive and just. Her research has been funded by many organizations, including the Institute for Advanced Studies at Notre Dame, the National Science Foundation, and the Institute for Women's Studies at the University of Michigan.

Walsh applied the "Page 99 Test" to her new book, Imperial Sexism: Why Culture and Women's Rights Don't Clash, with the following results:

Page 99 from Imperial Sexism offers a vivid and troubling account of how well-intentioned legislation can reinforce the very inequalities it seeks to dismantle. It focuses on South Africa’s 1998 Recognition of Customary Marriages Act and its failure to protect rural women in polygynous marriages. Despite promises of legal recognition and rights, the law’s implementation was marred by bureaucratic hurdles, patriarchal norms, and the enduring legacy of apartheid. Women were often unable to register their marriages, and when they did, courts invalidated them, leaving them without access to pensions, property, or legal recourse.

This page is a strong reflection of the book’s core themes. Imperial Sexism explores how the compounding effects of colonial-era racism and sexism continue to shape contemporary gender policy debates. It shows how state institutions, even when reform-minded, often reproduce structural inequalities when they fail to account for the lived realities of marginalized women. Page 99 exemplifies this pattern: the state’s attempt to modernize customary marriage law ends up reinforcing rural African women’s second-class status.

So yes, the Page 99 Test works well for this book. A browser landing on this page would immediately grasp the stakes of the book’s argument—how gender, race, and power intersect in policy, and how women resist, navigate, and are often failed by democratic institutions. The page also reflects the book’s method: close analysis of legal reforms, public discourse, and the lived experiences of women across different national contexts.

Imperial Sexism analyzes policy debates about polygyny in South Africa, veiling in France, and Canada’s law stripping Indigenous women of their official Indian status to show how many women around the world challenge discriminatory policies by telling “compatibility stories”—narratives that refuse false binaries and demand both their rights to equality and culture.

Visit Denise M. Walsh's website.

--Marshal Zeringue