Candidate Recruitment

This paper examines the factors that account for the rapid rise in the number of women legislators in New Jersey, focusing primarily on the time period from 2004 through 2011. Central to the analysis is the question of what it would take to bring about enduring change in a political system characterized by a strong, male-dominated party system like that found in New Jersey.

Analysis of results from an unprecedented nationwide survey of state legislators conducted in 2008 by the Center for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.

Do men and women take similar or different paths to public office? This paper examines the occupational and educational backgrounds, family situations, and prior political experiences of women state legislators and their male counterparts. 

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.

Poised to Run presents the initial findings of a 2008 CAWP study that asked women and men in state legislatures about their routes to elective office.

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. 

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. 

The 2008 Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) Recruitment Studies are studies of United States state legislators' and mayors' pathways to office that were conducted by the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. Data about state legislators and mayors of big cities were gathered through survey instruments that consisted primarily of questions concerning the decision to seek office, previous political experience, and personal background. The studies, which were conducted by mail, web, and phone, were designed to replicate a 1981 CAWP study about gender and pathways to

The “social eligibility pool” stands as one of the most common, and most powerful, explanations for women's underrepresentation in elective office. In this article, Sanbonmatsu revisits the eligibility pool account of women's representation and argues that it has significant shortcomings as a causal explanation. She proposes that scholars direct their attention to how changes occur in beliefs about the types of backgrounds that are thought to be desirable in politicians—the “informal qualifications” for public office. She suggests that scholars work to identify the conditions under which women can take a “women's path” to the legislature from