Candidates and Campaigns

This chapter examines the ways that various gender stereotypes influenced the strategies employed by the 2008 campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, the media’s coverage of their campaigns, and public reactions to the candidates.  It begins with a brief historical review of women’s efforts to run for president and vice president, focusing largely on major party candidates.  It then provides short overviews of the backgrounds and accomplishments of both Clinton and Palin before turning its attention to several major gender stereotypes and the ways these stereotypes affected their campaigns.

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. 

Reflecting on the 2008 presidential election, Carroll examines the role that gender stereotypes seem to have played in key decisions made by the Clinton campaign, as well as the power and sexism that the media exhibited in their coverage of the Democratic race. 

The author introduces the idea of a backlash against women's representation, proposes several preliminary hypotheses about a backlash, and discusses ways of testing them.

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

Women and Leadership brings together in one comprehensive volume preeminent scholars from a range of disciplines to address the challenges involving women and leadership. The experts explore when and how women exercise power and what stands in their way, including current thinking on the perils of stereotypes, the importance of leadership style, gender differences in the decision to seek leadership roles, lessons from women leaders, “opt out” patterns and the need for flexible career paths, global inequalities and initiatives, and strategies that get women to the top. Order the book.

In an analysis of state legislative election results, the author finds few gender differences in candidates' vote share and success rates—two widely used measures of the status of women candidates. Yet many party leaders report that one gender has an electoral advantage. These party leader perceptions are related to the objective measures of women's electoral success to some extent. However, most analyses reveal a gap between elite perceptions and objective measures of women's status as candidates. This disjuncture suggests that scholars may have overestimated the extent of party leader and voter support for women. 

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.