Research and Scholarship

Based on data collected through surveys of women and men elected to state legislatures, county governing boards, and municipal offices, this report examines the factors which influence women's entry into elective offices. A major section focuses on black women's routes to elective office.

The report outlines steps which may be taken to expand women's participation in politics, focusing on those findings which are relevant and useful for women interested in seeking public office and for people who conduct programs to increase women's numbers in public life.

A report from CAWP's second conference for women state legislators, held in June 1982 on Cape Cod under a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. A central focus of the conference was women's legislative caucuses and other ways for women to work together.

This report identifies organizations of women public officials across the country and examines their goals and agendas, describing the founding of these organizations, their structures, their relationships with parent organizations, their reasons for forming, and their programs.

This report about research conducted under a grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development identifies and documents the routes of opportunity, credentialing requirements, necessary skills, barriers, and support systems related to the recruitment, hiring, and promotion of women as municipal managers. It also examines the relationship between elected women and women administrators serving in the same communities.

A report from CAWP's 1980 conference in Washington, D.C., attended by seventy-five leaders representing over forty organizations of women in politics and government. This conference was conducted under a grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

CAWP produced the first-ever directories of U.S. elected women, who were surveyed in 1975 and 1977. The directories included names, addresses and background data. Each directory included a statistical essay, also published as stand-alone documents, examining the numbers, personal characteristics, political backgrounds, issue orientations, and ambitions of women in federal, state, county, and local government as reported in the surveys. 

This instructional handbook from 1978 describes the process of lobbying within a state legislative framework, listing resources from that time necessary to plan and carry out an effective lobbying campaign and explaining the legal requirements surrounding advocacy when the handbook was written.