Rita Mae Kelly

Rita Mae Kelly (née Cawley; December 10, 1939 – September 16, 2001) was an American political scientist. She was a professor of political science at the University of Texas at Dallas, where she held the Andrew R. Cecil Endowed Chair in Applied Ethics. She was also the Dean of the School of Social Sciences at UT Dallas.

Education and positions Kelly attended the University of Minnesota, where she obtained a B.A. degree in Russian and history. At Arizona State University, she was the Chair of the Justice Studies Department.

Kelly was the 1988–1989 President of the Policy Studies Organization, and in that same year was the President of the Western Political Science Association. which is a study of the place of women in the economy of the United States, with a particular focus on the economy of Arizona. In 1995, Kelly co-edited Gender Power, Leadership, and Governance with Georgia Duerst-Lahti. This book is an edited collection of work on the gender imbalances in leadership and governance, studying how imbalances in power by gender have been encoded into political institutions, and how those institutions then reinforce differentials in political power by gender. By studying the exclusionary mechanisms of political institutions, the work in Gender power was noted for having concrete implications for women in government.

Kelly was given an Honorary Doctorate in Political Science by Umeå University.

Selected works

Selected awards Honorary Doctorate in Political Science, Umeå University Distinguished Research Award for Research on Women in Public Administration, American Society for Public Administration (1991) Aaron Wildavsky Award, Policy Studies Organization (1992) Merriam Mills Award, Policy Studies Organization (1995)