Welcome

Welcome to footnotes, CAWP’s latest effort to bring you new, interesting, and timely information about women and politics. Since 1971, the Center for American Women and Politics has been the leading source of scholarly research and current data about American women’s political participation. We’ve learned a lot in the last 40 years and look forward to asking and answering more questions essential to increasing women’s political power in the decades to come. footnotes will give us the space and opportunity to do just that, and we’ll do it with your help. What will we write about? As the keepers of current data on women candidates, women voters, and women officeholders, CAWP has an abundance of information that can be easily missed on our website or, even more, in the footnotes of our research reports and fact sheets. This site will highlight interesting pieces and analyses of our existing data, as well as new data collected to answer questions that arise out of recent headlines, the political climate, or the latest scholarship. In addition to original data and analyses, footnotes will feature responses by CAWP scholars and staff to news and events related to women and politics. Finally, we hope that this blog will provide a forum to highlight academic research on gender and politics for scholars, practitioners, and advocates alike. How can you help? This blog will give us the opportunity to share more information with you, so we hope you will subscribe to our RSS feed and/or be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook. But footnotes is not just a forum for CAWP staff and scholars. We’d like to hear your comments, your ideas, and your questions about women’s political participation. Let’s start a dialogue here that helps to identify and address the reasons for women’s political underrepresentation and promotes the advancement of women’s influence and leadership in public life.