Research and Scholarship

CAWP research and research by CAWP scholars that addresses emerging questions about American women's political participation. 

  • ​Gender Stereotypes and Attitudes Toward Gender Balance in Government

    by Kathleen Dolan and Kira Sanbonmatsu
    American Politics Research, August 2008

    The desire to elect more women to public office is likely to affect a range of political behaviors and may explain the relatively low levels of women's descriptive representation overall. Yet, little is known about the public's view of the ideal gender composition of government. The authors find that the public expresses a preference for higher levels of women's representation than the country has experienced. Women are more likely than men to express a view, though men and women do not differ in their preferences on the ideal percentage of male officeholders. The article examines the role of gender stereotypes and the experience of being

    Article
    Research
    CAWP Scholar
    Candidates and Campaigns
    Women Voters and the Gender Gap
    Congress
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  • “Committee Assignments: Discrimination or Choice?”

    by Susan J. Carroll
    Book chapter in Legislative Women: Getting Elected, Getting Ahead, edited by Beth Reingold, 2008

    Book Chapter
    Research
    CAWP Scholar
    State Legislature
    Congress
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  • "Representation by Gender and Parties"

    by Kira Sanbonmatsu
    Book chapter in Political Women and American Democracy, Eds. Christina Wolbrecht, Karen Beckwith, and Lisa Baldez 
    Cambridge University Press, 2008

    Sanbonmatsu's chapter is a review essay of scholarship on gender and political parties. She argues that future research should integrate theories about descriptive representation with theories about party representation. 

    Book Chapter
    CAWP Scholar
    Political Parties
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  • Security Moms and Presidential Politics: Women Voters in the 2004 Election

    Book chapter by Susan J. Carroll in Voting the Gender Gap
    Ed. Lois Duke Whitaker 
    University of Illinois Press, 2008, 232 pages

    This book concentrates on the gender gap in voting--the difference in the proportion of women and men voting for the same candidate. Evident in every presidential election since 1980, this polling phenomenon reached a high of 11 percentage points in the 1996 election. Contributors discuss the history, complexity, and ways of analyzing the gender gap in voting; the gender gap in relation to partisanship; motherhood, ethnicity, and the impact of parental status on the gender gap; and the gender gap in races involving female candidates. 

    Book Chapter
    Research
    CAWP Scholar
    Women Voters and the Gender Gap
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  • Commentary on Emmy E. Werner's 1968 Article, "Women in the State Legislatures"

    by Susan J. Carroll
    Political Research Quarterly (March 2008)

    This commentary examines the contributions of Emmy W. Werner's classic 1968 article to the study of women and politics and to knowledge about women in state legislatures, placing the article in the context of its time and highlighting its continuing relevance.
     

    Article
    Research
    CAWP Scholar
    State Legislature
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