Candidate Recruitment
Women’s Pathways to America’s State Legislatures
by Kira Sanbonmatsu
Scholars Strategy Network Key Findings
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.
Can More Women Run? Reevaluating Women’s Election to the State Legislatures
by Susan J. Carroll and Kira Sanbonmatsu
Paper presented at the 2010 American Political Science Association annual meeting
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.
Life's A Party: Do Political Parties Help or Hinder Women?
by Kira Sanbonmatsu
Harvard International Review, 2010
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.
Entering the Mayor’s Office: Women’s Decisions to Run for Municipal Office
by Susan J. Carroll and Kira Sanbonmatsu
Paper presented at the 2010 Midwest Political Science Association annual meeting
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: Women's Pathways to the State Legislatures
by Kira Sanbonmatsu, Susan J. Carroll, and Debbie Walsh
Center for American Women and Politics, Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 2009, 31 pages
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.
Gender and Election to the State Legislatures: Then and Now
by Susan J. Carroll and Kira Sanbonmatsu
Paper presented at the Ninth Annual State Politics and Policy Conference, 2009
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.
Gender and the Decision to Run for the State Legislature
by Susan J. Carroll and Kira Sanbonmatsu
Paper presented at the 2009 Midwest Political Science Association annual meeting
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.
CAWP Recruitment Studies Datasets
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 elective office. All women serving in the legislatures of the 50 states were surveyed, along with a random sample of men state legislators; men were randomly selected and sampled in proportion to the number of women serving in each chamber and state. All women mayors of cities with a population of 30,000 and above serving in 2008 were surveyed, along with a random sample of men mayors. Demographic variables include age, education, race, and marital status.
Gender Pools and Puzzles: Charting a 'Women's Path' to the Legislature
by Kira Sanbonmatsu
Politics & Gender 2006, Volume 2 (September)
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 female-dominated occupations.
Where Women Run: Gender and Party in the American States
by Kira Sanbonmatsu
University of Michigan Press, 2006, 264 pages
Drawing on surveys and case studies of party leaders and legislators in six states, the author analyzes the links between parties and representation, exposing the mechanism by which parties’ informal recruitment practices shape who runs – or doesn’t run – for political office in the United States.