CAWP in the News

Sanbonmatsu evaluates the role of political parties in electing women to office. 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.

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. The authors investigate the backgrounds of women mayors and their decisions to seek municipal office for the first time.

This edited volume contains chapters by leading experts in the field of American elections and political behavior. Sanbonmatsu's chapter reviews research on gender differences in mass behavior and candidacy. She argues that future scholarship should focus on understanding the conditions under which gender structures political behavior and elections. In addition to calling for research on when gender as a social category is cued in politics, she argues that elections can create gender as a category: political behavior and elections themselves can shape beliefs about gender, instructing society about what men and women are like.