There is so much conventional wisdom about women in politics that it is often hard to wade through what’s true and what’s simply taken as truth but is actually a baseless, outdated stereotype. Part of the problem, at least at the national level, is that there just isn’t enough information to go on because only a handful of women have run for president – 13 women to be exact, dating back to 1872. The entire GOP field will probably be about that size come 2016, but I digress.
Much of theorizing around women in politics — whether they are judged more harshly on their appearance, have problems at the polls or struggle to convince voters of their authority – gets at why women have lagged behind men as officeholders, a gap that at the congressional level could take until 2121 to close.
Jennifer Lawless, director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University, has looked at the data and found that at least one bit of conventional wisdom about how family dynamics affect political ambition isn’t quite right.
There is so much conventional wisdom about women in politics that it is often hard to wade through what’s true and what’s simply taken as truth but is actually a baseless, outdated stereotype. Part of the problem, at least at the national level, is that there just isn’t enough information to go on because only a handful of women have run for president – 13 women to be exact, dating back to 1872. The entire GOP field will probably be about that size come 2016, but I digress.
Much of theorizing around women in politics — whether they are judged more harshly on their appearance, have problems at the polls or struggle to convince voters of their authority – gets at why women have lagged behind men as officeholders, a gap that at the congressional level could take until 2121 to close.
Jennifer Lawless, director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University, has looked at the data and found that at least one bit of conventional wisdom about how family dynamics affect political ambition isn’t quite right.