GENDER AND ELECTIONS
Edited by
Susan J. Carroll
Rutgers University
Richard L. Fox
Union College
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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First published 2006
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Gender and elections : shaping the future of American politics / edited by
Susan J. Carroll, Richard Logan Fox.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-521-84492-5 (hardback)
ISBN-10: 0-521-84492-4 (hardback)
ISBN-13: 978-0-521-60670-7 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 0-521-60670-5 (pbk.)
1. Women in politics – United States. 2. Elections – United States. 3. Voting – United
States. 4. Women political candidates – United States. 5. Sex role – Political aspects –
United States. I. Carroll, Susan J., 1950– II. Fox, Richard Logan. III. Title.
HQ1236.5.U6G444 2006
324.973′0931 – dc22 2005026255
ISBN-13 978-0-521-84492-5 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-84492-4 hardback
ISBN-13 978-0-521-60670-7 paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-60670-5 paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for
the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or
third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication
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| List of Figures, Text Boxes, and Photo | page vii | ||
| List of Tables | ix | ||
| Acknowledgments | xi | ||
| List of Contributors | xiii | ||
| Introduction: Gender and Electoral Politics into the Twenty-First Century | 1 | ||
| Susan J. Carroll and Richard L. Fox | |||
| 1 | Presidential Elections: Gendered Space and the Case of 2004 | 12 | |
| Georgia Duerst-Lahti | |||
| 2 | Voter Participation and Turnout: It’s a New Game | 43 | |
| Susan A. MacManus | |||
| 3 | Voting Choices: Meet You at the Gender Gap | 74 | |
| Susan J. Carroll | |||
| 4 | Congressional Elections: Where Are We on the Road to Gender Parity? | 97 | |
| Richard L. Fox | |||
| 5 | African American Women and Electoral Politics: Journeying from the Shadows to the Spotlight | 117 | |
| Wendy G. Smooth | |||
| 6 | Political Parties and Women’s Organizations: Bringing Women into the Electoral Arena | 143 | |
| Barbara Burrell | |||
| 7 | Advertising, Web Sites, and Media Coverage: Gender and Communication Along the Campaign Trail | 169 | |
| Dianne Bystrom | |||
| 8 | State Elections: Where Do Women Run? Where Do Women Win? | 189 | |
| Kira Sanbonmatsu | |||
| Index | 215 | ||
| Figures | |||
| 2.1 | Women Have Registered to Vote at Higher Rates Than Men in Recent Elections | 51 | |
| 2.2 | Women Have Voted at Higher Rates Than Men in Recent Elections | 53 | |
| 4.1 | Historic Gender Disparities in Congressional Representation | 100 | |
| 5.1 | The Number of African American Women Elected Officials Has Increased in Recent Elections While the Number of African American Men Has Leveled Off | 121 | |
| 6.1 | EMILY’s List Contributions Increased Dramatically from 1986 to 2004 | 159 | |
| 8.1 | The Proportion of Women Elected to State Legislatures Increased through the Late 1990s but Has Stagnated Since | 192 | |
| 8.2 | Democratic Women Legislators Outnumber Republican Women Legislators | 194 | |
| 8.3 | A Larger Share of Democratic Legislators Than Republican Legislators Are Women | 195 | |
| 8.4 | The Proportion of Women Elected to Statewide Office Increased through the Mid-1990s but Has Stagnated Since | 206 | |
| Text Boxes | |||
| 1.1 | A Gender Primer: Basic Concepts for Gender Analysis | 14 | |
| 1.2 | Finding Ms. Right for a Run in 2008: Not the Same as Mr. Right | 16 | |
| 1.3 | Women Have Been Candidates for President and Vice President Since 1872 | 35 | |
| 2.1 | The History of the Women’s Vote | 47 | |
| 6.1 | A Savvy Contribution by an Ambitious Woman House Candidate | 163 | |
| Photo | |||
| 2.1 | Direct Mail Ads Showing Appeals to Women Voters | 55 | |
| 1.1 | Presidential Candidates in 2004 Were Named in Newspaper Articles Soon after the 2000 Election | 20 | |
| 1.2 | Dominance Words Were Used Twice as Often as Expertise Words in Articles about Presidential Candidates in 2000 | 31 | |
| 1.3 | Dominance Words Were Four Times More Common Than Expertise Words in Articles about Presidential Candidates in 2004 | 31 | |
| 1.4 | “Tough” Appeared More Often in Presidential Election Coverage Than Any Other Masculinity Word | 32 | |
| 3.1 | A Gender Gap in Voting Has Been Evident in Every Presidential Election Since 1980 | 80 | |
| 3.2 | A Gender Gap in Voting Was Evident in the Races of All Women Who Won Election to Offices of U.S. Senator and Governor in 2004 | 84 | |
| 3.3 | A Gender Gap in Voting Was Evident across a Wide Range of Demographic Groups in the 2004 Presidential Election | 86 | |
| 4.1 | Over Time More Democratic Women Than Republican Women Have Emerged as House Candidates and Winners | 99 | |
| 4.2 | Women and Men House Candidates Fared Similarly with Voters in 2004 | 103 | |
| 4.3 | Women and Men House Candidates Fared Similarly in Raising Money in 2004 | 104 | |
| 4.4 | Sharp Regional Differences Exist in the Proportion of U.S. Representatives Who Are Women | 106 | |
| 4.5 | Almost Half of the States Have No Women Serving in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2005 | 107 | |
| 4.6 | In 2004, a Greater Proportion of Open Seats Were Contested by Women Candidates Than Ever Before | 110 | |
| 4.7 | Among Potential Candidates, Women are Less Interested Than Men in Seeking Elective Office | 112 | |
| 4.8 | Among Potential Candidates, Women are Less Interested Than Men in Running for the House or Senate | 113 | |
| 5.1 | Eight African American Women Were Mayors of Cities with Populations Over 50,000 in 2005 | 131 | |
| 5.2 | The Proportion of African American Women among State Legislators Varies across the States | 132 | |
| 5.3 | Thirteen African American Women Served in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2005 | 134 | |
| 6.1 | Important Dates in the History of Parties, Women’s Organizations, and Women’s Candidacies for Public Office | 148 | |
| 6.2 | Description of Four Major Women’s PACs | 158 | |
| 6.3 | The Congressional Campaign Committees Contributed Significant Sums of Money to Women Running for the U.S. House in 2004 | 162 | |
| 8.1 | More Democratic Women Than Republican Women Sought Election to the State Legislatures in 2004 | 197 | |
| 8.2 | The Presence of Women Legislators Varies Considerably by State | 199 | |
| 8.3 | Twenty-Two Women Sought Election to Major Statewide Executive Offices in 2004 | 209 |
This volume had its origins in a series of three roundtable panels at professional meetings in 2002 and 2003 focusing on how women fared in the 2002 elections. Most of the contributors to this book were participants on those roundtables. As we gathered together at these professional meetings, we began to talk among ourselves about a major frustration we faced in teaching courses on women and politics, campaigns and elections, and American politics. We all had difficulty finding suitable, up-to-date materials on women candidates, the gender gap, and other facets of women’s involvement in elections, and certainly, none of us had been able to find a text focused specifically on gender and elections that we could use. We felt the literature was in great need of a recurring and reliable source that would first be published immediately following a presidential election and then updated every four years so that it remained current.
At some point in our discussions, we all looked at each other and collectively asked, “As the academic experts in this field, aren’t we the ones to take on this project? Why don’t we produce a volume suitable for classroom use that would also be a resource for scholars, journalists, and practitioners?” In that moment Gender and Elections was born. We are enormously grateful to Barbara Burrell for organizing the first of our roundtable panels and thus identifying and pulling together the initial core of contributors to this volume.
This book would not have been possible without the assistance of the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers University. Debbie Walsh, Director of CAWP, has embraced and encouraged this project and been supportive in numerous ways, including inviting Richard Fox to spend a semester at CAWP as a visiting scholar. Gilda Morales, who is in charge of information services at CAWP, proved to be an invaluable source of knowledge about women and politics, and several contributors relied upon her expertise as well as the data she has compiled over the years for CAWP. We also would like to thank Linda Phillips and Danielle Heggs, who offered technical and logistical support at various points.
While everyone at CAWP was helpful, we want to single out Kathy Kleeman, a senior program associate at CAWP, for assistance above and beyond what we ever could have expected. Kathy spent numerous hours making this volume much better than it otherwise would have been. She brought a third set of critical eyes to the reading of every chapter, and as an extremely skilled writer, she helped to make all of our chapters more readable, accessible, and polished. We are especially indebted to her.
Finally, we also would like to thank Cambridge University Press and our editor, Ed Parsons, in particular, for unwavering enthusiasm and patience. We have both thoroughly enjoyed working with Ed.
Barbara Burrell is an associate professor in the political science department at Northern Illinois University and the associate director of the university’s Public Opinion Laboratory. She is the author of A Woman’s Place Is in the House: Campaigning for Congress in the Feminist Era (University of Michigan Press, 1994) and Public Opinion, the First Ladyship and Hillary Rodham Clinton (Routledge, 2001). Burrell also has published numerous articles on how gender interacts with the electoral process.
Dianne Bystrom is the director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University. A frequent commentator about political and women’s issues for state and national media, she is a co-author, co-editor and contributor to ten books – including Gender and Candidate Communication (Taylor & Francis, 2004), The Millennium Election (Bowman & Littlefield, 2003), Anticipating Madam President (Lynne Rienner, 2003), Women Transforming Congress (University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), and The Electronic Election (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1998) – and has written several journal articles. Her current research focuses on the styles and strategies used by female and male political candidates in their television advertising and their news coverage by the media.
Susan J. Carroll is a professor of political science and women’s and gender studies at Rutgers University and senior scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) of the Eagleton Institute of Politics. She is the author of Women as Candidates in American Politics (Indiana University Press, Second Edition, 1994) and editor of The Impact of Women in Public Office (Indiana University Press, 2001) and Women and American Politics: New Questions, New Directions (Oxford University Press, 2003). Carroll has published numerous journal articles and book chapters focusing on women candidates, voters, elected officials, and political appointees.
Georgia Duerst-Lahti is a professor of political science and department chair at Beloit College, where she has served in a number of administrative posts. Her research has focused on gender in U.S. political institutions and the ideologies that shape its dynamics, were first developed in her book with Rita Mae Kelly, Gender Power, Leadership, and Governance (University of Michigan Press, 1995). These ideas have been extended in chapters, such as her essay in Women Transforming Congress (University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), and articles, particularly one in the journal Sex Roles. Her current research project explores gender in the 2004 presidential election, focusing upon the way masculinity manifests itself and its consequences for women and the presidency.
Richard L. Fox is an associate professor of political science at Union College in Schenectady, NY. He is the author of Gender Dynamics in Congressional Elections (Sage, 1997) and co-author of Tabloid Justice: The Criminal Justice System in the Age of Media Frenzy (Lynne Rienner, 2001). More recently he has co-authored, with Jennifer Lawless, It Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don’t Run for Office (Cambridge University Press, 2005). His articles have appeared in the Journal of Politics, American Journal of Political Science, Political Psychology, PS, Women & Politics, Political Research Quarterly, and Public Administration Review. His research focuses on the manner in which gender affects voting behavior, state executive elections, congressional elections, and political ambition.
Susan A. MacManus is the distinguished university professor of public administration and political science in the department of government and international affairs at the University of South Florida. She is the author of Young v. Old: Generational Combat in the 21st Century (Westview Press, 1996) and Targeting Senior Voters: Campaign Outreach to Elders and Others with Special Needs (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000); editor of Reapportionment and Representation in Florida: A Historical Collection (Intrabay Innovation Institute, University of South Florida, 1991) and Mapping Florida’s Political Landscape: The Changing Art & Politics of Reapportionment & Redistricting (Florida Institute of Government, 2002); co-editor, with Kevin Hill and Dario Moreno, of Florida’s Politics: Ten Media Markets, One Powerful State (Florida Institute of Government, 2004); and co-author, with Thomas R. Dye, of Politics in States and Communities (Prentice-Hall, Eleventh Edition, 2003). Her research on women candidates, officeholders, activists, and voters has been published in Social Science Quarterly, Public Administration Review, Journal of Politics, Women & Politics, Urban Affairs Quarterly, National Civic Review, and The Municipal Year Book, among others.
Kira Sanbonmatsu is an associate professor of political science at The Ohio State University. She is the author of Where Women Run: Gender and Party in the American States (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming) and Democrats, Republicans, and the Politics of Women’s Place (University of Michigan Press, 2002). Sanbonmatsu has also published articles concerning political parties and candidate recruitment as well as research on voters’ gender stereotypes in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science and the Journal of Politics.
Wendy G. Smooth is an assistant professor of public policy in the department of women’s studies at The Ohio State University and a faculty affiliate with the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Before joining the faculty at Ohio State, she served as an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her research focuses on the impact of gender and race in state legislatures. Smooth is the recipient of the 2001 Best Dissertation in Women and Politics Award presented by the Women and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. Currently, she is working on a manuscript entitled Perceptions of Power and Influence: The Impact of Race and Gender on Legislative Influence.