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In 2004 and again in 2008, Jennifer Lawless (Director, Women & Politics Institute, American University) and Robert Fox published reports that examine why women don't run for elected position. The first was called Why Don't Women Run For Office?, and Why Are Women Still Not Running For Office? was the follow up. Both reports eventually were published as books.
While seen as mostly accurate in nailing a number of issues related to the paucity of women in elected office, especially the suggestion that women may be victims of an ambition gap, there also was some criticism of that perspective being placed above systemic sexism.
I personally don't buy the ambition gap per se, or even the assertion in an article from just a few weeks ago, Stagnating Gains For Women in Politics, that "The central obstacle to getting more women in elected office is the fact that they are less likely to even want to run for office." [bold emphasis is mine]
Instead, as Lawless' work is cited as finding in, Glass Starting Gate: Voters Will Elect Them, But Women Still Have to Run, it's not that women don't want to run. Rather:
Lawless and Fox conclude from their research that a more important factor than sexism in the paucity of women holding elective office is that women receive less encouragement to run from friends, family, colleagues and those already involved in politics. “The lack of recruitment appears to be a particularly powerful explanation for why women are less likely than men to consider running for office,” they write in the study. “Women are just as likely as men to respond favorably to the suggestion of a candidacy, but they are less likely than men to receive it.”
Accordlingly, in 2009 the White House Project's Benchmarking Women's Leadership report took this truth one step further and made its top recommendation: "Support Training Programs:"
Programs designed to train women to run for office can be highly effective, and research shows that funding and women’s support organizations are the most critical factors in persuading women to run for office....Training programs encourage women to take that leap due to the inspiration, information, and tools that they provide, as well as networks of support which are garnered through their involvement.
Of course, part of encouraging you to realize that you can lead a more political life -- whether it's helping someone else run for office or running for office yourself -- is to help you see that there is no excuse you can't get over.
The biggest buggaboo out there right now -- I often think it's being manipulated specifically to scare off women -- is the media bias, sexism and stereotyping, all rolled-up into one multi-layered systemic problem.
Prime examples: the fantastic collage of clips showing treatment of Hillary Clinton, called Sexism Sells - But We're Not Buying It, courtesy of the Women's Media Center (you absolutely must watch that video again just to remember how wretched many in the media were) and Jennifer Pozner's great post at NPR that highlighted the same kind of ridiculousness levied by the media at Sarah Palin.
Then, there's the sexist treatment we can get from our own constituents. I lost count of how many residents suggested that maybe I should run for school board first because, you know, I have kids. No offense to anyone who serves on a school board; this is just an illustration of how, when older residents in particular were faced with a youngish mom accompanied by her school-aged kids, they just -- out of their tradition -- assumed that because I have kids that would only qualify me to be interested in kid things, like education, as opposed to city government things like... I'm not even sure what. (This kind of treatment doesn't necessarily stop once you are elected either, and knowledge of that kind of treatment, once in the arena, also can keep women from running, but it shouldn't.)
How do you beat that? By knowing - and I mean, knowing - that:
- none of that has to do with the issues that most concern most voters,
- none of that has to do with your integrity,
- none of that has to do with your abilities and
- all of
