Doctoral Dissertation Research: Understanding the Barriers to Political Representation of Women

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

This study examines how women become candidates in new democracies. While the number of women in elected positions has been slowly increasing over time in many countries, there is limited understanding of the unique challenges that often make it more difficult for women to become candidates when compared to men. To explain why women may be less likely to be selected as candidates, this study focuses on the role played by party gatekeepers in party-controlled candidate nominations. Drawing on insights from interviews with party officials and candidates, the PI examines how barriers in candidate selection are magnified for women through the informal selection criteria used by the party gatekeepers who assess and rank candidates. Although both male and female candidates are subjected to informal selection criteria at local and national levels, only women must visibly demonstrate that they satisfy the financial and mobilizing expectations of party gatekeepers. These gendered expectations entail greater costs for women seeking party nominations because they must demonstrate their wealth and their connections during the candidate selection process in ways that are not demanded from men. This study provides new insights into the organizational impediments to women's inclusion in politics. It shows how biases can arise and be replicated within a party's candidate selection process. This study contributes to new knowledge in the study of women in politics in developing countries where democratic institutions remain weak. First, while existing scholarship of women office-seekers tends to focus on aggregate measures of legislative representation or their success as party candidates in elections, the project focuses on the understudied first-order questions: How do women become candidates? Do they face obstacles that are different from men? This study includes a survey that employs a novel design to assess how party members' candidate preferences are influenced by political experience, ambivalent sexism, and financial or mobilizational expectations. Experimentally, the survey employs two different designs to assess the project's hypotheses. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.