Gendered Perceptions and Political Candidacies: A Central Barrier to Women's Equality in Electoral Politics

Fox, Richard L.; Lawless, Jennifer L.

doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2010.00484.x

Cited by 174 publications

(130 citation statements)

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“…The political ambition literature suggests that women need to feel more qualified than men before they throw their hat into the ring (Fox and Lawless 2011). Thus, it is possible that female Democratic women candidates require an even friendlier fundraising path before they will commit to a candidacy.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The belief that he or she can put together a donor network and raise the necessary funds to win will be crucial to a candidate's decision. The political ambition literature tells us that women are less likely to view themselves as qualified to run for office, and they are more likely to express concerns about fundraising (Fox and Lawless 2011;Fulton et al 2006;Jenkins 2007). Thus, more Democratic women than Republican women may run because the Democratic women see more potential avenues for fundraising, which helps them overcome this ambition deficit.…”

Section: Evaluating Gender and Partisan Differences In Fundraising: Amentioning

confidence: 99%

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Why Aren't There More Republican Women in Congress? Gender, Partisanship, and Fundraising Support in the 2010 and 2012 Elections

Kitchens

Swers

2016

Pol & Gen

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S ince the early 1990s, women have slowly increased their presence in Congress. However, a gap has opened up such that the number of Democratic women far outpaces the number of Republican women. Indeed, in the 114th Congress, women constituted one-third of the Democratic caucus but less than 10% of the Republican caucus (Center for the American Woman and Politics 2015). To better understand the electoral environment women candidates face and how challenges vary for Republican and Democratic women, we focus on one of the most critical elements of a viable candidacy: fundraising. Previous studies of the impact of gender on fundraising analyze general election nominees but do not evaluate differences in the experience of all primary candidates. Moreover, past studies do not fully examine differences in sources and levels of financial support across all partisan and gender groups, including Democratic men and women and Republican men

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Evaluating Gender and Partisan Differences In Fundraising: Amentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Aren't There More Republican Women in Congress? Gender, Partisanship, and Fundraising Support in the 2010 and 2012 Elections

Kitchens

Swers

2016

Pol & Gen

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“…26,27 Although there is little evidence of certain overt forms of gender discrimination such as voter bias in contemporary electoral contexts, 18,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37 women continue to face stereotyping by voters, 38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46 in the media's treatment of them, 39,47,48,49,50,51,52,53 and in political recruitment. 4,18,44,54,55,56,57,58 Institutional and structural factors in the political system also matter.…”

Section: Demand-side Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender, risk assessment, and political ambition

Sweet-Cushman

2016

Polit. life sci.

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ABSTRACT. In the United States, women have long held the right to vote and can participate fully in the political process, and yet they are underrepresented at all levels of elected office. Worldwide, men's dominance in the realm of politics has also been the norm. To date, scholars have focused on supply-side and demand-side explanations of women's underrepresentation but differences in how men and women assess electoral risk (the risk involved in seeking political office) are not fully explained. To fill this gap, I explore how evolutionary theory offers insights into gendered differences in political ambition and the evaluation of electoral risk. Using the framework of life-history theory, I hypothesize that both cognitive and environmental factors in human evolution, particularly as they relate to sexual selection and social roles, have shaped the psychology of ambition in gendered ways affecting contemporary politics. Cognitive risk-assessment mechanisms evolving in the hominid line came to be expressed differently in females and males, in women and men. These gendered expressions plausibly reflect differentiable environmental pressures in the past and may help explain behaviors in and barriers to women's electoral political activity in the present. If so, then the success of efforts to increase such activity -or, regressively, to suppress it -may be better understood.Key words: Political ambition, gender differences, evolutionary theory, electoral risk assessment M ale officeholders are the norm in political representation both worldwide and in the United States in particular. Across the globe, gender parity in political representation is unusual, and instances of women's overrepresentation are extremely rare. 1 In the United States, women make up slightly more than half of the population and earned the right to vote and participate fully in the political process many decades ago. Nevertheless, in recent U.S. history, less than a quarter of state legislators have been women; women have held few state executive offices; and women have comprised less than 20 percent of the membership of the U.S. Congress. 2 Proponents of greater gender equality in U.S. political representation continue to wonder why more women do not run for or hold political office when so many of the societal and structural barriers to their participation have diminished. The leading explanations tend to focus on candidate emergence and cultural doi: 10.1017/pls.2016.13Correspondence: Jennie Sweet-Cushman, Department of History, Political Science, and International Studies, Chatham University, 0 Woodland Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15232. Email: jsweetcushman@chatham.edu and psychological factors that contribute to men and women having different levels of political ambition. 3,4 However, these theories do not address what I consider to be critical questions: What role does electoral risk play in political ambition, and can evolutionary theory provide insight into gendered differences in risk assessment and political ambition? I argue that the ...

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“…7 Data from 2011 to 2012 reveal that men comprise roughly 57% of NCAA athletes, a proportion that has held steady for the last decade (Brown 2012). Data from 2008 to 2009 show that 55% of students participated in high school athletics, but the gender gap was sizeable; 3.1 million high school athletes were female, compared to 4.4 million who were male (Howard and Gillis 2009 of whether they are qualified to run for office (Fox and Lawless 2011). Evidence suggests, however, that whereas men are socialized to be confident, assertive, and self-promoting, cultural attitudes toward women as political leaders continue to leave an imprint suggesting to women-if even only subtly-that it is often inappropriate or undesirable to possess these characteristics (Enloe 2004;Flammang 1997).…”

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confidence: 99%

Uncovering the Origins of the Gender Gap in Political Ambition

2014

Self Cite

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women and men who work in the professions from which most candidates for elective office emergereveal a striking gender gap in political ambition (Lawless and Fox 2012;. Women are less likely than similarly situated men to consider running for office; less likely to run for office; less like to believe they are qualified to seek office; less likely to receive encouragement to run for office; and more likely to perceive a competitive, biased electoral environment (see also Fulton et al. 2006).Although the existing work on candidate emergence identifies and explicates the contours of the gender gap in political ambition among well-established potential candidates, virtually no political science research examines its origins (but see Elder 2004). We are very limited in the conclusions we can draw about the roots of the gap or the manner in which early life experiences shape it. This omission in the literature is critical because a general interest in, or openness toward, running for office early in life can set the stage for a political candidacy decades later. Young people's career goals, after all, tend to be excellent predictors of the occupations they ultimately attain (Ashby and Schoon 2010;Mello 2008;Trice and McClellan 1993). Many gendered attitudes about running for office, then, may result from deeply embedded socialized norms that are conveyed long before women and men find themselves in the candidate eligibility pool. Yet we simply do not know when young women and men's political ambition diverges, the extent to which it does so, or the factors that contribute to it. If the seeds of political ambition are planted at an early age, then gaining a complete understanding of the gender gap in ambition and prospects for women's representation demands that we pinpoint and explicate its origins.This article provides the first investigation to do just that. Based on survey responses from a national random sample of nearly 4,000 high school (ages 13 to 17) and college (ages 18 to 25) students, we uncover a substantial gender gap in political ambition. This is striking evidence that the gap is, in fact, present well before women and men enter the professions from which most candidates emerge. We then employ 499 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core.

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Gendered Perceptions and Political Candidacies: A Central Barrier to Women's Equality in Electoral Politics

Cited by 174 publications

References 52 publications

Why Aren't There More Republican Women in Congress? Gender, Partisanship, and Fundraising Support in the 2010 and 2012 Elections

Why Aren't There More Republican Women in Congress? Gender, Partisanship, and Fundraising Support in the 2010 and 2012 Elections

Gender, risk assessment, and political ambition

Uncovering the Origins of the Gender Gap in Political Ambition

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