Patterns of Inter-Level Gender Gaps in Women’s Descriptive Representation

Kjær, Ulrik

doi:10.4335/17.1.53-70(2019)

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…21 After all, politics arguably represents a third shift for women who shoulder paid work and the second shift of household labor. 22 Women's decision-making about candidacy is also more "relationally embedded" than men's, meaning that women are more likely to take into account the perspectives of others, including family members, in deciding to become a candidate. 23 Social norms, roles, and stereotypes have been subject to contestation and transformation, however.…”

Section: (1) Winter 2020mentioning

confidence: 99%

Women's Underrepresentation in the U.S. Congress

Sanbonmatsu

2020

Daedalus

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Women's elective office-holding stands at an all-time high in the United States. Yet women are far from parity. This underrepresentation is surprising given that more women than men vote. Gender–as a feature of both society and politics–has always worked alongside race to determine which groups possess the formal and informal resources and opportunities critical for winning elective office. But how gender connects to office-holding is not fixed; instead, women's access to office has been shaped by changes in law, policy, and social roles, as well as the activities and strategies of social movement actors, political parties, and organizations. In the contemporary period, data from the Center for American Women and Politics reveal that while women are a growing share of Democratic officeholders, they are a declining share of Republican officeholders. Thus, in an era of heightened partisan polarization, women's situation as candidates increasingly depends on party.

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Section: (1) Winter 2020mentioning

confidence: 99%

Women's Underrepresentation in the U.S. Congress

Sanbonmatsu

2020

Daedalus

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“…The general condition that “it is relatively easier to obtain data about nations than about sub-national units” (Lijphart 1975, 167) is definitely true when it comes to studies of women and politics. Data at other political levels are available through easy-to-use databases such as those provided by the Inter-Parliamentary Union on countries around the world (www.ipu.org) and the CAWP on the state- and federal-level representation in the United States (www.cawp.rutgers.edu), whereas this is not the case when it comes to local politics (Kjaer 2019). Calls have been made for a general database on municipalities (Marschall, Shah, and Ruhil 2011), but these calls have not yet been answered.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The tendency for women’s underrepresentation in local politics to fly under the radar might be due in part to the widespread perception that women are doing relatively better the lower you go in the political hierarchy (Darcy, Welch, and Clark 1994, 33; Crowder-Meyer 2013, 399)—a truism which has, however, recently been challenged both theoretically and empirically (Kjaer 2019). For example, while women remain underrepresented at all levels of American politics, the proportion of women as mayors in cities over 30,000 (21.8 percent) is lower than the proportion of women as state legislators (25.4 percent; Center for American Women and Politics [CAWP] 2018).…”

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confidence: 99%

Council Size Matters: Filling Blanks in Women’s Municipal Representation in New Jersey

Kjær

Dittmar

Carroll

2018

State and Local Government Review

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This article “goes local” to investigate the representation of women on city councils, seeking explanations for the variation in women’s descriptive representation at the municipal level. Using the State of New Jersey (NJ) as a case, it is asked: what explains why women fare electorally better in some NJ municipalities than in others? More specifically, what explains “blanks”—or councils on which women are absent—in women’s representation in local politics? It is demonstrated that council size is a significant predictor of women’s presence or absence, but not percentage representation, on city councils.

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A gender-generation gap in political representation? The contingent impact of preference voting in Norwegian municipal elections

Segaard

Saglie

2020

Local Government Studies

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The article analyses the impact of preference votes on the gender balance in municipal councils in Norway, and to what extent this impact varies with candidates' age, party and local context. We compare actual representation with a hypothetical closed-list outcome. The analyses show that both local political representation and the impact of preference votes are characterised by a gender-generation gap. Older women are underrepresented, while young women are represented on equal terms with young men. Young female candidates benefit from preference voting in larger municipalities, whereas the older generation of women loses out in both large and small municipalities. In conclusion, we argue that an intersectionality approach should pay more attention to variables other than ethnicity, including age and local context. Moreover, research on gender and political representation should take into account a gender-generation perspective.

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Patterns of Inter-Level Gender Gaps in Women’s Descriptive Representation

Cited by 5 publications

References 8 publications

Women's Underrepresentation in the U.S. Congress

Women's Underrepresentation in the U.S. Congress

Council Size Matters: Filling Blanks in Women’s Municipal Representation in New Jersey

A gender-generation gap in political representation? The contingent impact of preference voting in Norwegian municipal elections

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