Gender and Election to the State Legislatures: Then and Now

Abstract: Much has changed for women in American society and politics over the past several decades. The social, economic, and political roles of women and men have been transformed. Today, a record number of women hold elective office. Yet, we do not know if the factors that shape candidacy for women and men have remained the same over this time period. We compare the background characteristics and experiences of women and men state legislators in 2008 with state legislators in 1981 using studies conducted by the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP). The investigation of the paths that women and men take to office is a pressing research agenda in light of the plateau in women's state legislative officeholding that has occurred in recent years. Paper prepared for delivery at the Ninth Annual State Politics and Policy conference, May 22-23, 2009, Chapel Hill, NC. We thank Kelly Dittmar and Janna Ferguson for research assistance. 2 Gender and Election to the State Legislatures: Then and Now Much has changed for women in American society and politics over the past several decades. The social, economic, and political roles of women and men have been transformed in dramatic ways. In 1981, the first woman was nominated to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. In contrast, a record number of women hold elective office today. A total of 90 women serve in Congress, making up 16.7% of members. The gender gap in voting behavior is now widely recognized as a feature of American politics. Women earn a majority of post-secondary degrees, and while women earned only about 30% of law degrees in 1980, today they earn nearly half (U.S. Census Bureau 2008). Women still bear more responsibility than men for care-giving within the family, but there is much more flexibility in gender roles than there was several decades ago. Such changes suggest that gender may have become less relevant to elective officeholding over time. There is debate among scholars about the extent to which gender affects candidacy and elections today. Several studies have demonstrated that women candidates fare as well as men with voters when they are running in similar circumstances (e.g., Recent scholarship has revisited these questions in order to understand the persistence of In order to understand whether and how gender is related to officeholding, we need to know if the factors that shape candidacy for women and men have remained the same over time. In this paper, we compare state legislators in 2008 with state legislators in 1981, using surveys conducted by the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) about the factors that affect state legislators' entry into office. Because the 2008 CAWP Recruitment Study largely replicates the 1981 CAWP study, together the two surveys provide a unique research opportunity to study changes in the relationship between gender and candidacy over the past quarter century. No other study contains such detailed information on the backgrounds and recruitment of state legislators. We expect to find that gender differences in the factors that affect women's and men's entry into public office have diminished since 1981. Gains in women's officeholding and changes in women's status in society suggest that gender should matter less to shaping the factors that affect entry into office in 2008 compared to 1981. Thus, we expect that women's and men's paths to the legislature have converged to some extent. However, the recent plateau in women's officeholding and the continued underrepresentation of women in elective office lead us to hypothesize that we will still observe gender differences in how women and men reach the legislature. The 1981 and 2008 CAWP Recruitment Studies Data for each CAWP study were gathered through a survey instrument sent to legislators in all fifty states consisting primarily of questions concerning the decision to seek office, 5 previous political experience, and personal background. 7 play a larger role in women's candidacies. At the same time, we find some evidence of convergence due to changes among men. We asked legislators to rate the importance of various factors in influencing the decision to run the first time for their current office. Response options were "very important," "somewhat important," "not important," or "not applicable." In both time periods, women were less likely than men to respond that "approval of my spouse or partner" was "very important," although overwhelming majorities of legislators of both genders said spousal support was "very important" to their decision When we turn to the importance of spousal support to officeholding, gender differences are more apparent and in the direction one might expect. Among legislators who were currently married (or living as married), women in both 1981 and 2008 were more likely than men to say that their spouse or partner was "very supportive" of their officeholding 8 supportive spouse in 2008 than in 1981, suggesting that family plays a greater role in men's career decisions today than in previous decades. [Insert In addition, women representatives were less likely than their male colleagues in both 1981 and 2008 to have young children [Insert Other Factors in the Decision to Seek Office Of course, family is not the only consideration that shapes the decision to seek elective office. [Insert In contrast to the pattern for occupational flexibility, women continued in 2008 to be more likely than men to rate "My concern about one or two particular public policy issues" as a "very important" factor in their decision to run for the legislatur