Research

CAWP research focusing on women as candidates and the impact of gender on elections includes:

• Poised to Run: Women's Pathways to the State Legislatures
• Life's a Party: Do Political Parties Help or Hinder Women?
• “Can More Women Run? Reevaluating Women’s Election to the State
    Legislatures”
• "Gender and Election to the State Legislatures: Then and Now"
• “Gender and the Decision to Run for the State Legislature”
• “Entering the Mayor’s Office: Women’s Decisions to Run for Municipal Office”

Poised to Run: Women's Pathways to the State Legislatures
Kira Sanbonmatsu, Susan J. Carroll, Debbie Walsh
Center for American Women and Politics, Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 2009, 31 pages
 
Poised to Run: Women's Pathways to the State Legislatures presents the initial findings of a 2008 CAWP study that asked women and men in state legislatures about their routes to elective office. The research shows that:

• women need to be recruited
• political parties matter
• organizations help women run
• more women can run
• resources are important.

This research was made possible by the generous support of a Leadership Matching Grant from the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, Project Grants from the Susie Tompkins Buell Foundation and Wendy Mackenzie and other generous donors.
 

"Life's A Party: Do Political Parties Help or Hinder Women?"
Kira Sanbonmatsu, Harvard International Review, 2010.
Sanbonmatsu evaluates the role of political parties in electing women to office, drawing on important findings from the recent Center for American Women and Politics report, Poised to Run. She argues that the history of U.S. parties indicates that women’s organizations and movements, women leaders, and women voters are the keys to making political parties a help rather than a hindrance to women’s representation.

“Can More Women Run? Reevaluating Women’s Election to the State Legislatures”
Susan J. Carroll and Kira Sanbonmatsu
Paper presented at the 2010 American Political Science Association annual meetings. Do men and women take similar or different paths to public office? Using the 1981 and 2008 CAWP Recruitment Studies and semi-structured, in-depth interviews conducted in 2009 with 22 women legislators from 15 states, this paper examines the occupational and educational backgrounds, family situations, and prior political experiences of women state legislators and their male counterparts. Carroll and Sanbonmatsu assess the utility of three different possible explanations for changes and continuities observed in the pathways women legislators have followed into office over time. Their analysis leads to the conclusion that more women (of varying occupational backgrounds, education levels, ages, and previous experience) could run for elective office.

"Gender and Election to the State Legislatures: Then and Now"
Susan J. Carroll and Kira Sanbonmatsu
Paper presented at the Ninth Annual State Politics and Policy conference, 2009.
Much has changed for women in American society and politics over the past several decades. Yet, we do not know if the factors that shape candidacy for women and men have remained the same over this time period. Carroll and Sanbonmatsu compare the background characteristics and experiences of women and men state legislators over time using data from the 2008 and 1981 CAWP Recruitment Studies.

“Gender and the Decision to Run for the State Legislature”
Susan J. Carroll and Kira Sanbonmatsu
Paper presented at the 2009 Midwest Political Science Association annual meeting.
This paper revisits the debate about the recruitment of women to public office using data from the 2008 CAWP Recruitment Study. Carroll and Sanbonmatsu find important gender differences in the initial decision to seek state legislative office. They find that women are more likely than men to seek office because they were encouraged to run and that family and organizational support play a larger role in women’s candidacy decisions than in men’s.


“Entering the Mayor’s Office: Women’s Decisions to Run for Municipal Office”
Susan J. Carroll and Kira Sanbonmatsu
Paper presented at the 2010 Midwest Political Science Association annual meeting.
This paper investigates the routes that women take to the mayor’s office in big cities (with populations of 30,000 and above) using the 2008 CAWP Mayoral Recruitment Study. Although it is often assumed that women fare well in local politics, Carroll and Sanbonmatsu find that women’s mayoral officeholding in large cities has not increased over time. The authors investigate the backgrounds of women mayors and their decisions to seek municipal office for the first time.