Throwing Your Hat Out of the Ring: Negative Recruitment and the Gender Imbalance in State Legislative Candidacy

Abstract

Candidate dropouts are a crucial and understudied population; they represent a significant source for increasing women's candidacies and addressing the gender imbalance in office. Survey evidence demonstrates that women are discouraged from running in districts in which their party is strong, while men are discouraged from running in districts in which their party is weak. Are women more likely to drop out of an election race than are men? If so, why? Using election records and an original survey, this article examines the experiences of all declared candidates for the state legislature in Florida in 2000 and 2002. The sample includes candidates who won office, who lost their races, or who dropped out along the way. Evidence here shows that women are no more likely to drop out of a state legislative race than are men. Among dropouts, however, women are disproportionately likely to drop out from districts in which their party is strong. The results offer support for the contention that political elites continue to value men's political leadership more than women's, and that increasing the number of female officeholders may require efforts to support declared women candidates in the earliest stages of their candidacies. W omen hold a minority of seats in every state legislature in the United States. That is true today and has been true every day since the first legislature was organized in 1619 in what would become the United States. While many ethnic, religious, and social groups are underrepresented in political office, few can match the disproportionate level or the persis-A previous version of this research was presented as a paper at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. My thanks to Kira Sanbonmatsu for helpful comments on this study. 1. Other entities, such as the media (Niven 2005) and campaign contributors (Theilmann and Wilhite 1989) have come under scrutiny, but they are generally not seen as the most significant impediments to women's representation.

Ballot Access Rules and the Entry of Women Candidates in State Legislative Primaries

“…Typically they need a lot more encouragement to run for office, reporting the need to feel "twice" as good as their male counterparts . They face some implicit bias from party elitesand may face negative recruitment (Sanbonmatsu, 2006b, Niven, 2006. They deal with difficulties in getting the media to take their campaigns seriously, which leads to trouble raising funds early (Farrar-Myers,2003).…”

Gender and Political Recruitment

“…These include gender disparities in perceptions of qualifications and electoral viability in which women -despite sharing similar qualifications and experiences to their male counterparts -are less likely to perceive themselves as 'qualified' to run and hold office. Prospective female candidates were also significantly less likely than male candidates to be encouraged to run for office by party or political actors (see also Niven, 2006;Sanbonmatsu, 2006).…”

Women and Legislative Representation

“…This tentativeness is likely exacerbated by a lack of encouragement by political elites, particularly party leadership. Research at the state level demonstrates that elites provide more encouragement to prospective male candidates and actively discourage prospective female candidates from running in favorable districts (Niven 2006). This bias at the state level translates into disproportionality at the national level.…”