It Takes a State: A Policy Feedback Model of Women's Political Representation

McDonagh, Eileen

doi:10.1017/s1537592709992672

Cited by 21 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 103 publications

(73 reference statements)

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“…In the words of Mansbridge (, 649), “low percentages of … women representatives … create the meaning that … women cannot rule, or are not suitable for rule.” Similarly, Alexander (, 437) considers that “for underrepresented groups, increases in their descriptive representation symbolize a more open political arena. This improves the group's political participation as well as beliefs about the group's role in politics.” Similar views have been expressed by many other authors (e.g., Dovi , 730; Kittilson , 643; McDonagh , 94; McDonagh , 70; Pande and Ford , 16) and were found to have empirical support in many studies using survey data in a number of countries, including the United States (Atkeson ; Campbell and Wolbrecht ; Hansen ; Koch ; Reingold and Harrell ; Verba, Burns, and Schlozman ; Wolbrecht and Campbell ), New Zealand (Banducci, Donovan, and Karp ), Latin America (Desposato and Norrander ), and sub‐Saharan Africa (Barnes and Burchard ), as well as in broader samples (Karp and Banducci ). Lawless () is one of the few exceptions, finding that women represented by women are not more likely to participate in politics.…”

Section: The Spillovers Of Women's Representationsupporting

confidence: 82%

The Temporary Importance of Role Models for Women's Political Representation

Gilardi

2015

American J Political Sci

139

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I n the last several decades, the political representation of women has improved sharply, thanks in part to the introduction of legislative quotas in many countries. At the same time, worldwide, only one in five members of parliament are female, on average, and even Nordic countries, with about 42% women in parliament, have yet to reach full gender equality in this area. There are many reasons for the underrepresentation of women in politics. Following an influential model of political recruitment (Norris 1997), women's representation is determined by the interaction between the supply of aspirants and the demands of gatekeepers, which are themselves shaped by the rules and procedures deriving from the legal, electoral, and party systems. Although both demand-and supplyside factors play an important role (Krook and SchwindtBayer 2013, 556; Paxton, Kunovich, and Hughes 2007, 266), one of the main reasons for the enduring gender gap in politics is that women are less likely to run for office than men (Lawless and Fox 2010). This is due in part to women's reluctance to stand as candidates, but also to the political and institutional context, which contributes to pulling women into or pushing women out of electoral Fabrizio Gilardi is Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Zurich, Affolternstrasse 56, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland (gilardi@ipz.uzh.ch).I thank Maya Ackermann, Tom Koritschan, Sophie Nägeli, Thomas Schäubli, Nathalie Schreiber, and especially Olivier Baumann (who coordinated data collection and conducted most of the interviews) for excellent research assistance. I am grateful to Peter Moser for advice on persuading the municipalities to give us access to their archives and to Andrea Gisler for providing valuable information on the Frauenzentrale Zürich. politics (Paxton, Kunovich, and Hughes 2007, 268-71; Wängnerud 2009, 55).This article focuses on a specific aspect of the supply side of women's representation. It argues that the availability of role models could help to redress the gender gap by shaping the motivation of women to run for office. Many authors understand women's representation as a virtuous circle: As more women are elected to office, their political role becomes more accepted, such that more women will develop political ambitions and more female candidates will find support among voters (Wängnerud 2009, 54). Consistent with this view, the literature has shown that women's political attitudes and behavior are shaped by the gender of their representatives (Fox and Lawless 2004;Lawless and Fox 2010). This article elaborates on the idea that the political representation of women can be enhanced by the availability of role models, defined as successful female politicians with whom women can identify. Specifically, I argue that, on average, more women run for office if more women are elected to office in nearby jurisdictions in the previous election. The example of women who are successfully elected changes

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Section: The Spillovers Of Women's Representationsupporting

confidence: 82%

The Temporary Importance of Role Models for Women's Political Representation

Gilardi

2015

American J Political Sci

139

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“…See also Dovi 2002Phillips 1995;Pitken 1967. 11 Nations with quotas tend to see a greater proportion of women in politics than nations without them (e.g., Dahlerup 2012;Krook 2009;McDonagh 2010). 9 E.g., McCarty, Poole, andRosenthal 2006. 10 Not only do the overwhelming majority of incumbents seek reelection, but their reelection rates are also very high (see Jacobson 2012).…”

Section: Supplementary Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Non-Gendered Lens? Media, Voters, and Female Candidates in Contemporary Congressional Elections

Hayes¹,

Lawless²

2015

Perspect. polit.

101

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Much research in the study of U.S. politics has argued that female candidates for elected office are treated differently-and often worse-than male candidates in the press and by the public. Although these patterns do not doom women to electoral failure, they raise a formidable series of obstacles that often complicate women's path to elective office, slowing the move toward gender parity in representation. Broad changes to the American political landscape, as well as methodological limitations of previous work, however, suggest the need for an updated assessment. We rely on a detailed content analysis of local newspaper coverage from nearly 350 U.S. House districts and nationally representative survey data from the 2010 midterms to provide a comprehensive evaluation of whether women experience a more hostile campaign environment than do men. We find that candidate sex does not affect journalists' coverage of, or voters' attitudes toward, the women and men running for office in their districts. Rather, reporters' portrayals and citizens' assessments of candidates stem primarily from partisanship, ideology, and incumbency, not the sex of the candidate. Although our results differ from much of the existing literature, we regard them as a valuable point of departure for answering pressing questions about gender and representation in contemporary politics, both in an American and comparative context.

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“…78 Svallfors 1997Korpi 1980;EspingAndersen 1990;Castles and Mitchell 1993;Luttmer and Singhall 2011, 157. 79 Mettler 2005Campbell 2003;McDonagh 2009McDonagh , 2010Pasternik and Zelizer 2003;Crowley, Watson, and Waller 2008. 80 Brooks and Manza 2007.…”

Section: Monarchies: More Useful Than You Thinkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…79Mettler 2005, 2010; Campbell 2003; McDonagh 2009, 2010; Pasternik and Zelizer 2003; Crowley, Watson, and Waller 2008.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ripples from the First Wave: The Monarchical Origins of the Welfare State

McDonagh¹

2015

Perspect. polit.

Self Cite

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Before the welfare state, people were protected from disabilities resulting from illness, old age, and other infirmities by care work provided within the family. When the state assumes responsibility for care-work tasks, in effect it assumes parental roles, thereby becoming a form of familial government in which the public provision of goods and services is analogous to care work provided in the family. My research pushes back the origins of the state's obligation to care for people to a preindustrial form of government, hereditary monarchies-what Max Weber termed patrimonialism. It explicates how monarchs were cast as the parents of the people, thereby constituting kingship as a care work regime that assigned to political rulers parental responsibility for the welfare of the people. Using historical and quantitative analysis, I establish that retaining the legitimacy of monarchies as the first form of familial government in the course of Western European democratizing makes it more credible to the public and to political elites to accept the welfare state as the second form of familial government. That, in turn, promotes a more robust public sector supportive of social provision. The results reformulate conceptions of the contemporary welfare state and its developmental legacies.

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It Takes a State: A Policy Feedback Model of Women's Political Representation

Cited by 21 publications

References 103 publications

The Temporary Importance of Role Models for Women's Political Representation

The Temporary Importance of Role Models for Women's Political Representation

A Non-Gendered Lens? Media, Voters, and Female Candidates in Contemporary Congressional Elections

Ripples from the First Wave: The Monarchical Origins of the Welfare State

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