Research

Research by CAWP Scholars

CAWP scholars are among the nation's leading experts in the study of women's political participation and representation in the United States. Their latest research and announcements:

• Security Moms and Presidential Politics: Women Voters in the 2004 Election
• Representation by Gender and Parties
• Do Gender Stereotypes Transcend Party?
• Gender Stereotypes and Attitudes Toward Gender Balance in Government
• She's the Candidate! A Woman for President
• CAWP Series in Gender and American Politics

More research and scholarship can be found on our Research Topics page.

 

“Security Moms and Presidential Politics: Women Voters in the 2004 Election”
Book chapter by Susan J. Carroll in Voting the Gender Gap, Ed. Lois Duke Whitaker
University of Illinois Press, 2008, 232 pages
This book concentrates on the gender gap in voting--the difference in the proportion of women and men voting for the same candidate. Evident in every presidential election since 1980, this polling phenomenon reached a high of 11 percentage points in the 1996 election. Contributors discuss the history, complexity, and ways of analyzing the gender gap in voting; the gender gap in relation to partisanship; motherhood, ethnicity, and the impact of parental status on the gender gap; and the gender gap in races involving female candidates. The book is available from Amazon.

“Representation by Gender and Parties”
Book chapter by Kira Sanbonmatsu in Political Women and American Democracy, Eds. Christina Wolbrecht, Karen Beckwith, and Lisa Baldez
Cambridge University Press, 2008, 272 pages
This book provides scholarly research by leading experts in the field of women and politics research. Sanbonmatsu's chapter is a review essay of scholarship on gender and political parties. She argues that future research should integrate theories about descriptive representation with theories about party representation. The book is available from Amazon.

“Do Gender Stereotypes Transcend Party?”
Kira Sanbonmatsu and Kathleen Dolan
forthcoming in Political Research Quarterly
Voters hold stereotypes about candidate gender and candidate party. Yet, little is known about the intersection of gender and party stereotypes. This paper investigates whether gender stereotypes transcend party, considering whether gender stereotypes affect women politicians differently by party and examining the effect of partisan identification on gender stereotypes. Sanbonmatsu and Dolan find that the public perceives gender differences within both political parties. Thus, the presence of the party cue does not preclude a role for candidate gender. However, the authors also find that the implications of gender stereotypes are somewhat different for Democratic and Republican women. Available from Political Research Quarterly.

“Gender Stereotypes and Attitudes Toward Gender Balance in Government”
Kathleen Dolan and Kira Sanbonmatsu
forthcoming in American Politics Research
The desire to elect more women to public office is likely to affect a range of political behaviors and may explain the relatively low levels of women’s descriptive representation overall. Yet, little is known about the public’s view of the ideal gender composition of government. Dolan and Sanbonmatsu find that the public expresses a preference for higher levels of women’s representation than the country has experienced. Women are more likely than men to express a view, though men and women do not differ in their preferences on the ideal percentage of male officeholders. Dolan and Sanbonmatsu examine the role of gender stereotypes and the experience of being represented by women officeholders in shaping support for women’s representation. Available from American Politics Research.

She's the Candidate! A Woman for President
Ruth B. Mandel
Book chapter in Women and Leadership: The State of Play and Strategies for Change, Eds. Barbara Kellerman and Deborah L. Rhode
Jossey-Bass J-B Warren Bennis Series, 2007, 528 pages
Women and Leadership brings together in one comprehensive volume preeminent scholars from a range of disciplines to address the challenges involving women and leadership. The experts explore when and how women exercise power and what stands in their way, including current thinking on the perils of stereotypes, the importance of leadership style, gender differences in the decision to seek leadership roles, lessons from women leaders, “opt out” patterns and the need for flexible career paths, global inequalities and initiatives, and strategies that get women to the top. The book is available from Amazon - order through this link and a portion of the proceeds goes to CAWP.

CAWP Series in Gender and American Politics
The CAWP Series in Gender and American Politics is published by the University of Michigan Press in association with the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers University. Series editors are Susan J. Carroll (Rutgers University) and Kira Sanbonmatsu (Rutgers University).
The Series publishes innovative work on gender and politics. We invite manuscripts that push the boundaries of current thinking about the intersection of gender and politics; that demonstrate the centrality of gender to our understanding of American democracy; that are attentive to linkages among theory, empirical analysis, and political practice; and that study under-represented groups and under-researched topics within the field of women and politics. We encourage work that recognizes how other categories of analysis, including race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality, help to constitute and inform gender politics. The series is open to a variety of methodological approaches, and favors projects that employ multiple or innovative methods.