In America, women are the clear majority of the electorate and
the clear minority of elected officials overall. In 1997, women
held only 21% of the seats at the state legislative level. This
study finds that a significant and overlooked culprit acting to
limit women's state legislative candidacies is the political party
elite. Surveys of county party chairs and potential women
legislative candidates were used to investigate the interaction
between party leaders and women candidates and to assess its
importance in the women's candidacy equation. The vast majority of
potential women candidates did, in fact, respond that their parties
discriminated against women candidates.
Why would party leaders harbor bias against women? Party leader
survey responses are consistent with the notion that most leaders
are subject to the outgroup effect, which in essence means they
prefer candidates in their own image. Since most party leaders are
men, this encourages them to value male candidates and doubt the
merits of female candidates. The findings suggest that this bias
against women is most likely to occur where chairs have greater
decision-making power and where chairs are leading the parties in
less competititve districts. The existence of outgroup-motivated
bias from party chairs is estimated to reduce the number of women
state legislative nominees by one-third. Scholars interested in
women in politics, political parties and recruitment, legislative
elections, social psychology, and political psychology will find
this book useful.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!