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Women and Elective Office
THIRD EDITION
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Acknowledgments vii
About the Contributors ix
1. Introduction 1
SUE THOM A S
14. Indelible Effects: The Impact of Women of Color in the U.S. Congress 235
L I S A G A R C I Á B E D O L L A , K AT H E R I N E TAT E , A N D J A N E L L E W O N G
16. Trends in the Geography of Women in the U.S. State Legislatures 273
B A R B A R A N O R R A N D E R A N D C LY D E W I L C OX
References 307
Index 347
We wish to thank Rachel Blum and Patty Baker for their careful, thoughtful, and
stellar work on this volume. Their production assistance has been invaluable and
has made this third edition of Women and Elective Office much better than it would
have been otherwise. Thanks also to Shauna Shames for her helpful suggestions
and encouragement as the project progressed. Much gratitude also goes to David
McBride and Sarah Rosenthal at Oxford University Press for their support of this
topic and us. Oxford has been a wonderful home for this series, and we look forward
to future collaboration.
vii
Sue Thomas is senior research scientist at the Pacific Institute for Research and
Evaluation (PIRE) and director of PIRE–Santa Cruz. Her research specialty is
women and politics and, among her books, journal articles, book chapters, ency-
clopedia entries, and book reviews are How Women Legislate and The Year of the
Woman: Myths and Realities. She is also a coauthor of an award-winning text on
American government titled Understanding American Government, now in its
14th edition. Prior to joining PIRE, Dr. Thomas served as associate professor of
government and director of women’s studies at Georgetown University, and her
pre-academic career included serving as a legislative advocate in California on
behalf of women’s issues and as a Title IX specialist in the Los Angeles Unified
School District. More recently, Dr. Thomas has also taught courses on women and
politics at University of California, Santa Cruz and served as an associate editor and
book editor of Politics & Gender.
Clyde Wilcox is professor of government at Georgetown University. He writes on
religion and politics, gender politics, social movements and social issues, interest
groups and campaign finance, and science fiction and politics. His latest book is
Religion, Sexuality, and Politics in the U.S. and Canada (coedited with David Rayside,
University of British Columbia Press, 2011).
Gail Baitinger is a third-year Ph.D. student in political science at American
University. Her research focuses on women and politics, political communication,
and public opinion. Her dissertation will examine gender dynamics and agenda set-
ting on the Sunday morning political shows.
Lisa Garciá Bedolla is Professor, Social and Cultural Studies, UC Berkeley
Graduate School of Education, and chair of Berkeley’s Center for Latino Policy
Research. She received her Ph.D. in political science from Yale University and her
B.A. in Latin American studies and comparative literature from the University
ix
of California, Berkeley. She is author of Fluid Borders: Latino Power, Identity, and
Politics in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), which was
the winner of the American Political Science Association’s (APSA) Ralph Bunche
Award, and the best book award from APSA’s Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Section;
and Latino Politics (Malden, MA: Polity, 2009), winner of a best book award from
APSA’s Latino Caucus. She is coauthor, with Melissa R. Michelson, of Mobilizing
Inclusion: Transforming the Electorate through Get-Out-the-Vote Campaigns (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012). Her work has appeared in numerous aca-
demic journals and edited volumes. Dr. Garciá Bedolla’s research focuses on how
marginalization and inequality structure the political opportunities available to
members of ethnoracial groups, with a particular emphasis on the intersections of
race, class, and gender.
Chelsie Lynn Moore Bright is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the
University of Kansas studying the fields of American government and public policy.
Her research focuses on policy analysis, with an emphasis on education policy.
Kathleen Dolan is professor in the Department of Political Science at the University
of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Her research focuses on public opinion, elections, and
voting behavior. Dolan is the author of the book Voting for Women: How the Public
Evaluates Women Candidates (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004) and the forth-
coming book Does Gender Matter in Elections (New York: Oxford University Press).
Her work has also appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals. She has served as
coeditor of the journal Politics & Gender and is currently a member of the board of
the American National Election Studies.
Richard L. Fox is professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University.
His research examines how gender affects voting behavior, state executive elections,
congressional elections, and political ambition. He is author of Gender Dynamics
in Congressional Elections (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 1997) and coauthor of It
Still Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don’t Run for Office with Jennifer L. Lawless
( New York Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Tabloid Justice: The Criminal
Justice System in the Age of Media Frenzy with Robert W. Van Sickel and Thomas
L. Steiger (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001). He is also coeditor of Gender and
Elections with Susan J. Carroll (New York Cambridge University Press, 2010) and
iPolitics: Citizens, Elections, and Governing in the New Media Era with Jennifer
M. Ramos (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). His work has appeared
in academic journals including Political Psychology, Journal of Politics, American
Journal of Political Science, Social Problems, PS, and Politics & Gender. His op-ed arti-
cles have appeared in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
Kim L. Fridkin received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
She has contributed articles to the American Political Science Review, American
Journal of Political Science, and Journal of Politics. She is the coauthor (with Patrick
J. Kenney) of The Changing Face of Representation: The Gender of U.S. Senators and
Sally J. Kenney is the Newcomb College Endowed Chair, executive director of the
Newcomb College Institute, and professor of political science at Tulane University.
Prior to 2010, she served on the faculties of the University of Minnesota, the
University of Iowa, and the University of Illinois. Her research interests include
gender and judging, judicial selection, feminist social movements, women and elec-
toral politics, the European Court of Justice, exclusionary employment policies, and
pregnancy discrimination. Her latest book is Gender and Justice: Why Women in the
Judiciary Really Matter (New York: Routledge, 2013). She has produced more than
25 case studies on women and public policy and is currently studying women state
Supreme Court justices.
Rebecca J. Kreitzer is a doctoral student in political science at the University of
Iowa. Her primary research interest is in the adoption of morality policy in the
states, with an emphasis on state abortion policies.
Mona Lena Krook is associate professor of political science at Rutgers University.
Her research analyzes gender and politics in cross-national perspective. Her first
book, Quotas for Women in Politics: Gender and Candidate Selection Reform Worldwide
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), received the American Political Science
Association’s 2010 Victoria Schuck Award for the Best Book on Women and Politics.
In addition to authoring numerous articles, she is coeditor with Sarah Childs
of Women, Gender, and Politics: A Reader (New York: Oxford University Press,
2010); with Fiona Mackay of Gender, Politics, and Institutions: Towards a Feminist
Institutionalism (New York: Palgrave, 2011); and with Susan Franceschet and
Jennifer M. Piscopo of The Impact of Gender Quotas (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2012).
Jennifer L. Lawless is associate professor of government at American University,
where she is also director of the Women & Politics Institute. Her research focuses
on representation, political ambition, and gender in the electoral process. She is the
author of Becoming a Candidate: Political Ambition and the Decision to Run for Office
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012) and the coauthor of It Still Takes
a Candidate: Why Women Don’t Run for Office (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2010). Her work has appeared in academic journals including the American
Journal of Political Science, Perspectives on Politics, Journal of Politics, Political Research
Quarterly, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and Politics & Gender. She is a nationally
recognized speaker on women and electoral politics, and her scholarly analysis
and political commentary have been quoted in numerous newspapers, magazines,
television news programs, and radio shows. In 2006, she sought the Democratic
nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives in Rhode Island’s second con-
gressional district.
Regina Lawrence holds the Jesse H. Jones Centennial Chair in the School of
Journalism. Her books include The Politics of Force: Media and the Construction of
Police Brutality (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000); When the
Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina (coauthored
with W. Lance Bennett and Steven Livingston, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2007); and Hillary Clinton’s Race for the White House: Gender Politics and the
Media on the Campaign Trail (coauthored with Melody Rose) (Boulder, CO: Lynne
Rienner, 2009). Articles she has authored and coauthored have appeared in Journal
of Communication, Political Communication, Political Research Quarterly, Journalism,
and International Journal of Press/Politics.
Timothy R. Lynch is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science
at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. His research interests include political
behavior and the role of elections in creating accountability in the U.S. Senate.
Jeanette Morehouse Mendez is professor of political science at Oklahoma State
University. Her research areas focus on social networks and political information
processing of media information. Her recent work includes studying gendered
patterns in discussion networks, the effects of facial appearance on perceptions
of maturity, competence and vote choice, and the effects of gender on representa-
tion when legislative seats change hands. Her work has been published in journals
including Journal of Politics, Social Science Quarterly, Political Psychology, Politics and
Gender, Journal of Women, Politics and Policy, PS: Political Science and Politics, Journal
of Media Psychology, and Journal of Political Science.
Barbara Norrander is professor in the School of Government and Public Policy at
the University of Arizona. She and Clyde Wilcox have written about the geography
of female state legislators in previous editions of this book. Besides an interest in
female legislators, she writes about gender differences in public opinion, the influ-
ence of public opinion on state policies, and the presidential nomination process.
Pippa Norris is the McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics in the John
F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and Laureate fellow and
professor of government and international relations at the University of Sydney.
She has also served as director of the Democratic Governance Group at the United
Nations Development Programme in New York. Her work compares democracy,
elections and public opinion, political communications, and gender politics in many
countries worldwide. A well-known public speaker and prolific author, she has pub-
lished more than 40 books. Her latest research at http://www.electoralintegritypro-
ject.com includes a forthcoming book, Why Electoral Integrity Matters, the first part
of a trilogy for Cambridge University Press. In 2011 she was given the Johan Skytte
Prize, the most prestigious award in political science.
Valerie R. O’Regan is associate professor of political science at California State
University (CSU), Fullerton. Her research and teaching focus on women and politics
and comparative politics with an emphasis on Latin America and Western Europe.
Her publications include the book Gender Matters: Female Policymakers’ Influence in
Industrialized Nations and several book chapters and articles in leading journals. She
is also director of the California State University Intelligence Community Scholars
Program at CSU Fullerton.
Tracy Osborn is associate professor in the Department of Political Science at
the University of Iowa. Her research focuses on women and politics in U.S. state
legislatures, Congress, and political behavior. Her recent book, How Women
Represent Women: Political Parties, Gender, and Representation in the State Legislatures
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), examines how Democratic and
Republican women represent women’s issues under different legislative conditions.
She has also published articles in journals including Political Research Quarterly,
American Politics Research, and Politics & Gender.
Melody Rose is chancellor of the Oregon University System. Her recent publications
include Executive Women: Pathways and Performance (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner,
2012) and Hillary Clinton’s Race for the White House: Gender Politics and the Media
on the Campaign Trail (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2009). She is also professor
of political science at Portland State University, where she founded and directed the
Center for Women, Politics & Policy.
Ronnee Schreiber is associate professor of political science at San Diego State
University. Her research interests are in the area of women and American political
institutions and women’s public policy activism. An updated version of her book,
Righting Feminism: Conservative Women and American Politics, was published with
Oxford University Press in 2012. She has also published in Political Communication,
Journal of Urban Affairs, Sex Roles, Politics and Gender, and several edited volumes.
Jean Reith Schroedel is professor in the School of Politics and Economics at
Claremont Graduate University. She has written numerous articles and several
books. Her book, Is the Fetus a Person? A Comparison of Policies Across the Fifty
States, was awarded the American Political Science Association’s Victoria Schuck
Prize in 2001. In 2009 Schroedel coedited two books on the impact of evangeli-
cal Christianity on democracy in America for the Russell Sage Foundation. Over
the past several years, she has been collaborating on projects exploring the use of
charismatic rhetoric by presidential candidates and just had an article published in
Presidential Studies Quarterly that examines the partisan differences in presidential
candidates’ use of such rhetoric.
Stephen J. Stambough is professor of political science and chair of the Division
of the Politics, Administration, and Justice at California State University, Fullerton.
He is coeditor, with David Sanford McCuan, of Initiative Centered Politics
(Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2005), a book about direct democracy. He
has also published numerous articles related to congressional, presidential, and
gubernatorial elections, most recently with a focus on gender politics. He is also the
founding director of the Cal State DC Internship program.
Michele L. Swers is associate professor in the Department of Government at
Georgetown University. She is the author of Women in the Club: Gender and Policy
Making in the Senate (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013) and The Difference
Women Make: The Policy Impact of Women in Congress (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2002). She is coauthor of Women and Politics: Paths to Power and
Political Influence, 2nd edition (with Julie Dolan and Melissa Deckman, Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2010). Her research on gender differences in leg-
islative behavior has also been published in journals including Legislative Studies
Quarterly, Journal of Women, Politics, & Policy, Politics & Gender, and PS: Political
Science as well as several edited volumes.
Katherine Tate is professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine.
She teaches in the fields of American government, African American politics, public
opinion, and race, ethnicity, and urban politics. She is the author and coauthor of sev-
eral books, including Concordance: Black Lawmaking in the U.S. Congress from Carter
to Obama (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013).
Laura van Assendelft is professor of political science at Mary Baldwin College.
She teaches courses on U.S. politics, public policy, and women and politics. Her
research interests include women and politics at the state and local level, focusing
on the influence of gender on political ambition and leadership style.
Moana Vercoe is adjunct lecturer at Loyola Marymount University. In addition
to working with a number of community-based nonprofit organizations addressing
health and educational disparities, her research focuses on the roles of gender, race,
and history in perpetuating the cycle of violence.
Janelle Wong is professor of American studies and director of the Asian American
studies program at the University of Maryland. She is author of Democracy’s
Promise: Immigrants and American Civic Institutions (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 2006) and coauthor of two books on Asian American politics. The
most recent is Asian American Political Participation: Emerging Constituents and Their
Political Identities (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011), based on the first
nationally representative survey of Asian Americans’ political attitudes and behavior.
This groundbreaking study of Asian Americans was conducted in eight different lan-
guages with six different Asian national origin groups.
Introduction
SUE THOM A S
There cannot be true democracy unless women are given the oppor-
tunity to take responsibility for their own lives. There cannot be true
democracy unless all citizens are able to participate fully in the lives of
their country.
—Hillary Rodham Clinton, July 11, 1997
In the first and second editions of Women and Elective Office: Past, Present, and
Future we analyzed the progress women had made in storming statehouses and the
national legislature and the impact they made once there. Since the publication of
earlier editions, the numbers and diversity of women candidates and office holders
have grown and, as the chapters to follow attest, women have made a considerable
difference in political debates and policymaking. And several historically significant
barriers have been shattered. In 2008, Hillary Rodham Clinton ran for the presi-
dency and gained more than 18 million votes in her quest for the Democratic nomi-
nation, a record that far surpasses any woman in U.S. history. In that year, Sarah
Palin became the second female vice presidential candidate on a major party ticket.
And Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) became the first woman Speaker of the U.S. House of
Representatives in 2007 and served until 2011 when she resumed her previous post
as House minority leader.
Moreover, as a result of the 2012 election cycle, a number of additional barriers
have fallen. In an election season that featured a “war on women” with attacks on
reproductive choice, controversy over the meaning of rape, unsuccessful efforts to
extend paycheck parity and to reauthorize legislation to prevent violence against
women, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin became the first open lesbian in the U.S.
Senate; the New Hampshire congressional delegation became the first all-female
delegation in history (the state also has a female governor, a female Speaker of the
House, and a female chief justice of the state Supreme Court); Mazie Hirono of
Hawaii became the first Asian American woman elected to the U.S. Senate; and
Oregonian Tina Kotek became the first openly lesbian House Speaker in state-
house history. The changes were so impressive that some called 2012 the second
“year of the woman.” As the first in 1992, it featured opportunities afforded by the
once-a-decade redistricting of legislative seats and a political environment in which
women issues were front and center.
Thus, the story told by this and earlier editions of Women and Elective Office
is, in many ways, a story of triumph. The contributing authors chronicle remark-
able achievements made even more noteworthy by the struggles to secure them.
On the other hand, it has been and, in some ways, still is a story of enduring
and evolving challenges to securing full and equal access to and participation in
U.S. politics. This introduction provides an overview of forty years of research
on women candidates and office holders at the local, state, and national levels,
including their historical and current presence, political contributions, and
future challenges.
labor in the public and private spheres, women and men tend to have some different
life experiences and points of reference. These can translate into a distinctive way of
seeing existing political issues and can lead to different agendas and priorities. It is
important then, that women are included among our political decision-makers so
that the concerns with which they are generally more familiar make their way onto
policy agendas.
Finally, it is important for women to be included among our public officials
for symbolic reasons. If children grow up seeing women and men in the political
sphere, each sex will be more likely to choose from the full array of options as they
decide how to shape adult lives. U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire tells
a story about her young daughter, Kate, who told Ayotte that she should not run for
president. When Ayotte asked her the reason, Kate replied that she wanted to be the
first woman president. The likelihood of this kind of ambition among girls increases
in a world in which women routinely run for president of the United States.
History
Women have opened so many doors marked ‘Impossible’ that I don’t
know where we’ll stop.
Amelia Earhart
Although women were not granted national suffrage until 1920, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, a leading figure in the early women’s rights movement, ran for Congress in
1866 and lost. Fifty years later, Jeanette Rankin of Montana became the first woman
to win a congressional seat. She served in the House of Representatives twice, from
1917 to 1919 and again from 1941 to 1942, and was also the only representative to
vote against U.S. entry into both World Wars. In 1922, Rebecca Latimer Felton of
Georgia became the first woman U.S. senator. She was appointed to the position
and served for only one day. Ten years later, in 1932, Hattie W. Caraway of Arkansas
became the first woman elected to the Senate to a seat to which she was originally
appointed. As an indicator of the pace of societal and political change, it wasn’t until
1978 that a woman was elected to the Senate without having previously filled an
unexpired term. Nancy Landon Kassebaum, a Republican from Kansas, earned that
honor. Nine years later, in 1987, Barbara Mikulski of Maryland became the first
Democrat to do so (Foerstel and Foerstel 1996).
Several congressional “firsts” occurred fairly recently. For example, in 1968,
Shirley Chisholm of New York was the first African American woman elected to the
U.S. House of Representatives. She was followed by Floridian Ileana Ros-Lehtinen,
who, in 1991, became the first Hispanic woman elected to the House, and Nydia
Velasquez of New York, who, in 1992, became the first Puerto Rican woman. It was
also in 1992 that Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois became the first African American
woman elected to the U.S. Senate (CAWP 2013a). Among the new women of the
113th Congress are two who represent additional firsts: Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii
is the first American Samoan, the first Hindu member of Congress, and, along
with new member Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, the first woman combat veteran.
Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona is the first openly bisexual member.
Congressional leadership positions were slow to come for women. In 1995,
Nancy Landon Kassebaum served as the first female to chair a major U.S. Senate
Committee: Labor and Human Resources. In 2007, three women of color became
chairs of committees in the U.S. House: Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio (the House
Committee on Ethics); Juanita Millender-McDonald of California (Committee
on House Administration); and Nydia Velasquez of New York (Committee on
Small Business) (CAWP 2013b). In the 113th Congress, Maryland Senator
Barbara Mikulski, the longest serving woman in congressional history, became
the first woman to chair the influential Senate Appropriations Committee, and
Washington Senator Patty Murray served as the first female chair of the Senate
Budget Committee.
The first women in state legislative politics broke into office earlier than their
counterparts on the federal level. In 1895, Clara Cressingham, Carrie Clyde Holly,
and Frances S. Klock won seats in the Colorado statehouse. Their victories came
one year after a Colorado constitutional amendment granted women the right to
vote. These women won their races, in part, because a record number of women
went to the polls: 78 percent of eligible women voted compared with 56 percent
of the eligible men.1 And, foreshadowing a pattern prevalent today, these three rep-
resentatives made a priority of legislation related to women, children, and families.
Together, they ushered legislation through the statehouse that gave mothers equal
rights to their children, raised the age of consent from sixteen to eighteen, and cre-
ated a home for delinquent girls (Cox 1994). In 1896, one year after women’s right
to vote and hold office was written into the Utah constitution, Martha Hughes
Cannon became the first woman elected to a state Senate seat in the United States
(CAWP 2013g).
Women of color won state legislative office a good deal later. In 1924, Native
American Cora Belle Reynolds Anderson was elected to the Michigan House of
Representatives. The first African American women state legislators were Minnie
Buckingham Harper, who was appointed to the West Virginia House of Delegates
in 1929, and Crystal Dreda Bird Fauset, who was elected to the Pennsylvania House
of Representatives in 1938. The first Latinas were elected to the New Mexico House
of Representatives in 1930—Fedelina Lucero Gallegos and Porfirria Hidalgo Saiz.
More than thirty years later, in 1962, Patsy Takemoto Mink won a seat in the Hawaii
Senate, which made her the first female Asian Pacific Islander to serve in a state
legislature. Mink later reprised her historically significant status in the U.S. House
of Representatives in 1965 (CAWP 2013g). And the first American Indian state leg-
islator, Dolly Smith Akers from Montana, served from 1933 to 1934 (Hirschfelder
and Molin 2012).
Court in 1922. Allen later served as the first female federal appellate judge when she
was appointed to the 6th Circuit in 1933. The first African American woman judge,
Jane Matilda Bolin, was appointed to the Domestic Relations Court in New York in
1939. In 1963, Lorna Lockwood of Arizona became the first woman to serve as a
chief justice of a state Supreme Court. And in another, more recent, set of firsts, the
judges on the Northern District of California (federal level) in 2012 were all female.
Among the six judges, five were women of color, one of whom was also the first out
lesbian on the court (Flatow 2012). In early 2013, the Washington Supreme Court
featured a female majority and a newly elected female chief justice, Sheryl Gordon
McCloud (Women’s e-news 1/19/13).
indicates that women are more reluctant to do so than their male counterparts. In
Chapter 2, Jennifer Lawless, Richard Fox, and Gail Baitinger report that, although
women’s interest in politics equals men’s, they are less likely to run for office. This
gender gap in ambition is attributed to the facts that women are much less likely to
think they are qualified to run for office,4 even with the same credentials, are less
confident and more risk averse than men, are more likely to perceive the electoral
environment as highly competitive and biased against female candidates (a finding
that has been aggravated by the media treatment of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin),
and are less likely to receive suggestions to run for office.5 Critically, these results
hold across age group (Lawless and Fox 2005) and across time periods. Buttressing
these findings, in Chapter 12 Laura van Assendelft reports that local-level women
are less likely than men to run for office, even in the face of lesser demands for fun-
draising than on the state or national levels, more frequent part-time positions, less
intrusive media, and absence of the need to relocate families to capital cities.
One example of national aggregate findings on the ambition gender gap comes
from New Hampshire, the state with the first all-female congressional delegation.
Although women are very well represented at higher levels of government in the
state, they are much more poorly represented at lower levels. In 2012, women
were 20 percent of city and town councils and boards of aldermen and selectmen.
Compared with two hundred by men, women headed thirty-four cities and towns.
Results of a survey to learn the reasons for this disparity showed that women cited
the leading and time-consuming role of raising children, aversion to perceived
negativity and gender bias in political campaigns, and doubts about their qualifi-
cations to run for public office as reasons that they declined to run.6 Said Sylvia
Larsen, a former city councilor, Senate president, and Democratic leader in the state
Senate: “Generally, women have to be asked to run. And the evidence shows that
unlike men, women are not as likely to wake up one morning and say, ‘I’m going to
run for office’. . . . The question is, who is asking women to run for local government?
And apparently it’s not happening very often” (Leubsdorf 2012).7
have to calibrate their presentations on the campaign trail to recognize and maximize
or counteract these stereotypes. In times and places in which salient issues coincide
with women’s perceived strengths, female candidates can be advantaged. But when
issues related to war, foreign policy, terrorism, or economic decline are uppermost in
the minds of the voters, women candidates may be disadvantaged (Herrnson, Lay,
and Stokes 2003; Kahn 1994, 1996; Lawless 2004).10
Several of the authors in Women and Elective Office illuminate the electoral effects
of stereotypes on female incumbents and challengers and the efforts they make
to address them. Rebekah Herrick and Jeanette Morehouse Mendez explore the
interactions among stereotypes, party, and candidate sex in open-seat congressio-
nal races in Chapter 6. Comparing women-only races with mixed races, they find
that when women run against each other Democrats are advantaged.11 In Chapter 8,
Kim Fridkin and Patrick Kenney demonstrate that U.S. senators use unmediated
relationships with citizens, such as their official websites, to counter such stereo-
types. To do so, females emphasize experience, decisiveness, and clear positions on
public policy matters. Moana Vercoe, Randall Gonzalez, and Jean Reith Schroedel
(Chapter 5) and Regina Lawrence and Melody Rose (Chapter 4) analyze the impli-
cations of the fact that gender stereotyping matters more in races for the presidency
of the United States than any other office. The former set of authors explores the
forty-year evolution of Clinton’s rhetorical efforts to counter negative stereotypes
of female politicians, and the latter set analyzes the gender strategies she used to
counteract negative stereotypes of women commanders.
Moving beyond analysis of women as a group, in Chapter 7 Ronnee Schreiber illu-
minates how female candidates for Congress in 2010 negotiated stereotypes about
women and how those responses interacted with party. She finds that Democratic
women were more likely to have embraced gendered identities, especially mother-
hood, compared with Republican women. Schreiber concludes by noting the extent
to which masculine norms permeate our political world and how salient they are
for women who seek elective office. Another consideration in how women candi-
dates present themselves on the campaign trail in relationship to stereotypes derives
from the intersection of gender and sexual orientation. As Donald Haider-Markel
and Chelsie Moore Bright discuss in Chapter 15, lesbians running for elective office
report that opponents and outside groups sometimes use sexual orientation in a
negative manner to undercut their candidacies. Depending on context, however,
because lesbian candidates tend to run in districts that are more liberal they can
parlay negative attacks into increased campaign funds and volunteer workers.
first when encouraging and supporting candidates. The result: In places with the
strongest, most powerful parties, women are less likely to run (Sanbonmatsu 2006).
Moreover, the two parties are not equal in encouraging women’s candidacies: the
Democratic Party has been more supportive than the Republican Party, and this has
translated into more female Democratic than female Republican candidacies (Elder
2012; Ondercin and Welch 2009; Sanbonmatsu 2002).
Compared with earlier decades, obtaining adequate funds to run quality cam-
paigns is no longer a barrier to women’s candidacies. As a group, women are as or
more successful than men as campaign fundraisers at every stage of the process from
early money through general elections (Adams and Schreiber 2011; Burrell 1998;
Darcy, Welch, and Clark 1994; Duerst-Lahti 1998; Duke 1996; Seltzer, Newman,
and Voorhees 1997). Yet this is not necessarily because traditional funders are
eager to support women, although some certainly are. Rather, women candidates
rely heavily on newer, alternative fundraising sources created to overcome histori-
cal obstacles. For example, EMILY’s List (which stands for “early money is like
yeast—it makes the dough rise”), created in 1985, was the first of these innovative
political action committees (PACs). Its niche is Democratic pro-choice female can-
didates. In part, because EMILY’s List has been the most successful, it has served as
a model for others. WISH List (Women in the House and Senate) supports female
Republican candidates; Maggie’s List (named after Margaret Chase Smith of Maine,
the first woman elected to both houses of Congress) supports fiscally conservative
Republican women at the federal level; and LPAC is a bipartisan PAC that supports
candidates who champion issues affecting lesbians and their families. These alter-
nate sources of funds help level the playing field for women who run for elective
office. But it is important to note that one reason women who are interested in and
qualified to run for office perceive disparate fundraising barriers is because women
still have a harder time than men raising money from traditional sources and raising
large sums. Hence, they often still have to work longer and harder for their campaign
war chests.12
Although differences are diminishing, media treatment of women is not yet with-
out bias—as highlighted by the reasons given by the Lawless and Fox respondents
for avoiding candidacies. The bulk of extant research suggests that female candidates,
especially those running for high-level offices, receive less coverage by major news
organizations than men, and when they are covered it is often in a negative fashion
(Fridkin, Carle, and Woodall 2013; Fridkin and Woodall 2005). Further, minority
congresswomen often receive less frequent and more negative media coverage than
their counterparts (Gershon 2012). In Chapter 9, Valerie O’Regan and Stephen
Stambough illustrate how disparate media treatment of women puts females at a
distinct disadvantage compared with men when they pursue governorships.
Across levels and types of offices, media emphasis is also often placed on low
probabilities of success rather than on issues or candidate appeals. Further, the press
are more likely to cover the policy priorities of men and more likely to highlight
the personality traits emphasized by men (Fridkin and Woodall 2005). Finally, the
media have tended to concentrate more on women’s family responsibilities than
on men’s similar responsibilities. A recent example is media silence on the family
responsibilities of 2012 Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, who has
three young children. This contrasts starkly with the extensive attention to the fam-
ily responsibilities of the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin,
who has five children.
Although some studies suggest that, at least in some places, in particular types of
media, and at some times,13 treatment of female candidates is becoming more equi-
table,14 most of the literature concludes that different and extra efforts are required
by women candidates in to win office (Fowler and Lawless 2009; Meeks 2012).
Women Officeholders
Even with the congressional and state legislative gains that resulted from victories in
the 2012 election cycle, women have been and still are vastly underrepresented in
elective office compared to their proportion of the U.S. population. In 2013, women
hold ninety-eight seats in the U.S. Congress (18.3 percent), the largest number (by
eight) ever serving at one time: Twenty are in the Senate and seventy-eight in the
House of Representatives. And women of color hold twenty-nine seats and make up
29.6 percent of women and 4.5 percent of all members of Congress (CAWP 2013f).16
In 2013, 24.0 percent, of state legislators in the United States are women. They
hold 20.3 percent of state Senate seats and 25.3 percent of state House seats. At 340
in number across the nation, women of color are 20.5 percent of women legislators
or 4.9 percent of total state legislators (CAWP 2013c).17
Five women governors serve as of 2013: Jan Brewer of Arizona; Mary Fallin of
Oklahoma; Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire; Susana Martinez of New Mexico;
and Nikki Haley of South Carolina. Women hold twelve statewide elective execu-
tive offices across the nation, such as lieutenant governor, attorney general, secre-
tary of state, and treasurer (CAWP 2013e, 2013g).
As of 2012, women were 17.4 percent of mayors in cities with populations over
30,000. Of the hundred largest cities in the United States, women of color hold two
mayoral positions: Jean Quan in Oakland, California; and Stephanie Rawlings-Blake
in Baltimore, Maryland (CAWP 2013d). Women also comprise approximately
28 percent of city councils and 40 percent of school boards (National League of
Cities 2012).
At the judicial level, women are 22 percent of all federal judgeships and 26 per-
cent of all state-level judgeships. This compares with the 48 percent of law school
graduates and 45 percent of law firm associates who are female (Center for Women
in Government & Civil Society 2010).
The comparative perspective shows that out of 190 nations worldwide, there are
seven women presidents and ten women prime ministers; additionally, 20.3 percent
of parliamentarians are female. The U.S. rates poorly compared with many other
nations in that we have never had a woman president, and women’s percentage of
the federal Congress is below the world average (IPU 2012, 2013).
Uniformity of Representation
In addition to being underrepresented in elective office generally, women are
unequally represented across the nation. They tend to have the greatest presence
in northeastern states (and the fewest in southern states), states with high edu-
cational levels and high proportions of women in the labor force, and states with
part-time legislatures and less expensive races (Hogan 2001; Norrander and Wilcox
2005; Ondercin and Welch 2005; Sanbonmatsu 2002; see also Chapters 9 and 16