Research

“Entering the Mayor’s Office: Women’s Decisions to Run for Municipal Office”
Susan J. Carroll and Kira Sanbonmatsu
Paper presented at the 2010 Midwest Political Science Association annual meeting.
This paper investigates the routes that women take to the mayor’s office in big cities (with populations of 30,000 and above) using the 2008 CAWP Mayoral Recruitment Study. Although it is often assumed that women fare well in local politics, Carroll and Sanbonmatsu find that women’s mayoral officeholding in large cities has not increased over time. The authors investigate the backgrounds of women mayors and their decisions to seek municipal office for the first time.

The Impact of Women in Public Office: An Overview (1991, 32 pages)
This report highlights and summarizes selected findings from CAWP's study of women state legislators and from the eleven CAWP-sponsored studies of women officeholders' impact conducted by individual scholars. It provides information useful to a broad audience interested in women in politics; it should be of particular interest to women running for public office and those who are concerned about bringing more women into public office.

Gender and Policymaking: Studies of Women in Office (1991, 133 pages)
This report is a collection of eleven essays written by scholars who received grants from CAWP to investigate the impact of elected and appointed women officeholders at the local, state, and national levels. It includes three essays focusing on municipal officeholders.

Women's Routes to Elective Office: A Comparison with Men's (1983, 225 pages plus fact sheets)
Based on data collected through surveys of women and men elected to state legislatures, county governing boards, and municipal offices, this report examines the factors which influence women's entry into elective offices. A major section focuses on black women's routes to elective office.

Women in Municipal Management: Choice, Challenge and Change (1980, 210 pages)
This report about research conducted under a grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development identifies and documents the routes of opportunity, credentialing requirements, necessary skills, barriers, and support systems related to the recruitment, hiring, and promotion of women as municipal managers. It also examines the relationship between elected women and women administrators serving in the same communities.

Women in Public Office, First and Second Editions, and Profile of Women Holding Office I and Profile of Women Holding Office II (1976: 37 pages; 1978: 71 pages)
CAWP produced the first-ever directories of U.S. elected women, who were surveyed in 1975 and 1977. The directories included names, addresses and background data. Each directory included a statistical essay, also published as stand-alone documents, examining the numbers, personal characteristics, political backgrounds, issue orientations, and ambitions of women in federal, state, county, and local government as reported in the surveys. Inclusion of a comparative sample of male officials and of women former office-holders highlight the 1978 report. The directories are not reproduced here, but reference copies are available at CAWP.

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Fact sheets about women in local office available here.