Women’s Underrepresentation - Specialized Research AI at MIT

Women’s Underrepresentation
in the U.S. Congress

Kira Sanbonmatsu

Women’s elective office-holding stands at an all-time high in the United States. Yet
women are far from parity. This underrepresentation is surprising given that more
women than men vote. Gender–as a feature of both society and politics–has al-
ways worked alongside race to determine which groups possess the formal and in-
formal resources and opportunities critical for winning elective office. But how gen-
der connects to office-holding is not fixed; instead, women’s access to office has been
shaped by changes in law, policy, and social roles, as well as the activities and strat-
egies of social movement actors, political parties, and organizations. In the contem-
porary period, data from the Center for American Women and Politics reveal that
while women are a growing share of Democratic officeholders, they are a declining
share of Republican officeholders. Thus, in an era of heightened partisan polariza-
tion, women’s situation as candidates increasingly depends on party.

E lective officeholders in the United States have always been majority male.

This gender imbalance in politics may seem unremarkable and unworthy
of investigation precisely because it appears to be a permanent feature of
the political system. But a closer inspection reveals that the underrepresentation
of women is, in fact, quite puzzling.

American women vote at a higher rate than men and have for four decades.1
Women’s majority status as voters should dispel the idea that women are some-
how less political than men. If one looks subnationally, variation in the level of
women’s office-holding becomes apparent. Indeed, women in 2019 held a ma-
jority of seats in the Nevada Legislature, the first time that women constituted a
state legislative majority in U.S. history. At moments, in some places, women have
outnumbered men as members of city councils and as statewide officials. Several
states have been represented by two women U.S. senators simultaneously. And a
woman–Nancy Pelosi–presides over the U.S. House of Representatives as speak-
er, which represents a return to the position she held from 2007 to 2011; she is
third in line to the presidency.

Still, American women are far from parity with respect to elective office-
holding. The ideals of American democracy may not require that representa-

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tives precisely mirror the public demographically, but the quality of the repre-
sentational relationship has been intimately connected to women’s descriptive
representation–or the lack thereof.2 While scholars may assume that social and
economic equality will give rise to political equality, the reverse may be true:
women’s political equality may be needed in order to achieve equality in other
domains.3

The challenges American women face in politics are partly structural. The
United States has typically lagged behind other nations with respect to wom-
en’s representation because of its single-member congressional districts. In 2019,
women constituted 23.7 percent of Congress compared with a global average of 24
percent.4 The United States lacks a statute or constitutional provision for a gender
quota for candidates or officeholders. Quotas are increasingly popular around the
globe with half of all countries using quotas in elections for parliament. Without
a proportional representation system or gender quotas, the United States stands
apart from most industrialized democracies.5

The two-party system and absence of term limits advantage incumbent mem-
bers of the U.S. Congress, incumbents who have, historically, been dispropor-
tionately men.6 As a result, women have been most likely to enter Congress af-
ter winning open-seat contests. These electoral rules mean that most election
cycles bring few opportunities for new candidates. Women congressional candi-
dates are partisans; they run on the party label and must secure the party’s nomi-
nation in order to compete in the general election. But they do so without the ben-
efit of a party quota or other mechanism for creating a more gender-balanced in-
stitution. American politics and government also differ from other democracies
in the extent of their social provision; a more generous U.S. welfare state might
create greater public interest in maternal traits and therefore in women political
leaders.7

With this backdrop of structural challenges in mind, I examine scholarly ac-
counts of how social and political factors shape women’s presence in the U.S.
Congress. I consider how women’s opportunities for political participation and
influence in the United States have been contingent on race and ethnicity. Schol-
ars of women’s election to office have become more attentive to inequalities
among women and especially the intersection of gender and racial categories, and
intersectional theorists, including Kimberlé Crenshaw, have identified the inad-
equacy of thinking about gender or race alone.8 Accounts of minority or female
office-holding that fail to adopt an intersectional lens are likely to be partial or
incorrect.

The relationship between gender and congressional office-holding is not
fixed; instead, we observe change over time in the presence of women and varia-
tion across the two major parties. In other words, while male dominance of con-
gressional elections has deep roots, it is neither natural nor inevitable.

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149 (1) Winter 2020Kira Sanbonmatsu

R unning for office–and especially congressional office–has been a pre-

dominantly male enterprise for most of American history. Since the found-
ing, gender and race together have shaped legal access to citizenship, vot-
ing rights, and elective office.9 The Civil War and subsequent federal amendments
ended slavery and conferred citizenship on former slaves, but the right to vote and
hold office was only extended to Black men. Their office-holding experiences were
also short-lived: the Jim Crow system, violence, and new legal restrictions would
end Black men’s election to Congress from the South. While the first White wom-
an, Jeannette Rankin, entered Congress in 1917–prior to the extension of suffrage
to women by constitutional amendment in 1920–it would take another half-cen-
tury with the election of Patsy Takemoto Mink in 1965 for the first woman of col-
or to be seated in Congress. Racial discrimination and voter suppression limited
the ability of people of color to vote, meaning that not all women had access to the
franchise after 1920. And race and ethnicity continue to shape the ability of people
of color–women as well as men–to compete for elective office.10

For the early part of the twentieth century, it was rare for women to reach Con-
gress, except as the widow of a sitting member who died in office.11 The exclu-
sion of women from the vote forestalled their opportunities for candidacy and
office-holding, even after suffrage.12

Women have confronted not only formal legal barriers such as being prohibit-
ed from voting and holding office, but also other barriers related to men’s greater
access to and accumulation of informal social, educational, and economic creden-
tials. Gender roles in society, the sexual division of labor, and racial and ethnic in-
equalities have combined to advantage White men in politics. The “social eligibil-
ity pool” of those individuals believed to hold the informal qualifications for of-
fice has largely been male.13

Meanwhile, racially polarized voting, stereotypes, and gatekeeper skepticism
have reduced opportunities for candidates of color. Statewide electorates, which
are almost always majority White, have been more difficult settings for women
of color compared with the context of majority-minority legislative districts.14
The first Black woman to reach the Senate, Carol Moseley Braun, did so in 1993.
It would not be until 2013 that the second woman of color would be elected to
the Senate, when Mazie Hirono became the first Asian American woman to serve.
And Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada would become the first Latina to enter the
Senate in 2017, marking the first time more than one woman of color served in the
Senate simultaneously.15 Prejudice and stereotypes based on race, gender, and/or
their intersection mean that White women, Black women, Asian American wom-
en, Latinas, and Native American women are likely to have different experiences
on the campaign trail.16

Political institutions from political party organizations to political campaigns,
as well as actors such as voters and donors, may be biased against women or with-

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesWomen’s Underrepresentation in the U.S. Congress

hold support as a result of societal expectations about women’s roles and their
abilities.17 The language around campaigns and elections reinforces cultural ex-
pectations that politics is a masculine space. Public opinion polls from the twen-
tieth century document widespread sexism, issue stereotypes, trait stereotypes,
and general skepticism about the appropriateness of women wielding political
power. As recently as the 1960s, a party leader advised that one would only run a
woman candidate in a hopeless race, as a “sacrificial lamb” for the party. Wom-
en candidates may be perceived to be violating their social role and their expected
qualities as caregivers and passive dependents.18

From an early age, girls and boys internalize society’s expectations, including
the assumption that men, more than women, are qualified for politics and elec-
tions. Political ambition consistently reveals a gender gap with respect to citizens’
aspirations.19 Even today, with the presence of women in Congress at an all-time
high, the experience of successfully reaching Congress as women creates a sense
of commonality and solidarity within the institution.20

Women’s disproportionate responsibilities in the home have also fundamental-
ly shaped their political careers, altering opportunities for political involvement and
the timing of women’s candidacies.21 After all, politics arguably represents a third
shift for women who shoulder paid work and the second shift of household labor.22
Women’s decision-making about candidacy is also more “relationally embedded”
than men’s, meaning that women are more likely to take into account the per-
spectives of others, including family members, in deciding to become a candidate.23
Social norms, roles, and stereotypes have been subject to contestation and
transformation, however. The second wave of the women’s movement that
emerged in the 1960s indirectly aided women candidates by fundamentally alter-
ing women’s educational and economic opportunities and facilitating liberaliza-
tion in attitudes toward women. As a result, what had been the common route to
Congress–the “widow’s path,” in which women would briefly take the seats va-
cated by the death of their husbands–was gradually surpassed over the course of
the twentieth century by more traditional strategic entry patterns typical of male
candidates.24 While a candidate’s motherhood status may dampen voter support,
parental status can advantage candidates in some circumstances today.25

Socioeconomic stratification intertwined with race means that women of col-
or candidates, and potential candidates, lack equal access to resources.26 Wom-
en of color serving in state legislatures report having to overcome more efforts
to discourage their candidacies than their White women colleagues. In a nation-
al study of elected officials, sizable proportions of women of color in the Gender
and Multi-Cultural Leadership National Survey reported experiencing race-based
discrimination that affected their party support and fundraising; they also experi-
enced unequal treatment in assessments of their qualifications.27 Women of color
have made significant strides in winning election to the U.S. House of Representa-

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149 (1) Winter 2020Kira Sanbonmatsu

tives, particularly from majority-minority districts. Women of color constitute 42
percent of all women members and 8.8 percent of all members of the U.S. House
in 2019, according to the Center for American Women and Politics; but their pres-
ence in the U.S. Senate remains unusual.

Because women fare about as well as men in general election contests, as well
as in primary contests, scholars contend that the main problem is the scarcity of
women candidates.28 However, some research has questioned the notion of a lev-
el playing field because women appear to be more strategic than men about when
to enter a race and may need to be more qualified in order to obtain the same vote
share. Women also face more competition than men when they run for Congress.29
Because the supply of candidates interacts with the demand for candidates, we
would not expect candidates to emerge in unfavorable contexts.30 Some voters
are more supportive of women candidates than others, leading to the existence of
what political scientists Barbara Palmer and Dennis Simon have called “women-
friendly districts.” Interestingly, however, they find that while White women are
more likely than White men to be elected to Congress through these districts,
Black women and Black men are elected from similar types of districts.31

I ronically, often overlooked within the U.S. politics literature about women’s

election to office is politics itself, with more scholarly attention paid to social
dynamics than to political dynamics.32 But political actors including parties
and interest groups shape candidate recruitment, campaigns, and ultimately elec-
tion results, with gendered and raced implications. Because American candidates
do not run on a party list, they are assumed to be self-starters, leading most wom-
en and politics scholars to neglect the role of parties in the United States as both
recruiters and gatekeepers. Scholarly interest in the partisan imbalance in wom-
en’s office-holding, in which Democratic women outnumber Republican women,
is rising, however.33

Whereas most research on elections in the United States typically understands
gender to be primarily or exclusively a social category, the political realm itself is a
source of information about women in society. And the realm of politics, includ-
ing the institution of Congress, has not always been welcoming to women.34

Some of the obstacles facing women in politics are rooted in law and policy.
In the modern period, the policy victories of the civil rights movement, includ-
ing the Voting Rights Act and subsequent interpretations of the Act, have been vi-
tal to office-holding by women of color, eliminating formal and informal restric-
tions on voting and establishing the ability of minority communities to elect can-
didates of their choice. Given the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice,
majority-minority districts have typically done so. The creation of majority-
minority legislative districts helps to explain the rise of women of color in elective
office, including Congress.35

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesWomen’s Underrepresentation in the U.S. Congress

Because immigration from Asia and Latin America rose as a result, the elim-
ination of race-based distinctions in immigration policy in the 1960s also paved
the way, indirectly, for more women of color to gain office.36 According to data
from the 2010 U.S. Census, Blacks make up 13.6 percent, Latinos 16 percent, Asians
5.6 percent, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders 0.4 percent, and American In-
dian and Alaska Natives 1.7 percent of the population.37 Of these groups, Black
women have been the most successful in securing elective office.

Informal recruitment and selection processes can also be a barrier to minori-
ty women’s candidacies. Without informal support, and financial support, it has
been challenging for women of color to make inroads outside of majority-minority
districts. Indeed, Ayanna Pressley, who in 2018 became the first woman of color
to win a seat in Congress from Massachusetts, ran for her first elective office–city
council–over the protestations of political leaders who advised her that she was
better suited for an advocacy role.

It is worth noting, however, that intersectional theorists have injected dyna-
mism into theories about how structural inequalities affect women of color, ques-
tioning the assumption that race and gender always combine to create a situation
of double disadvantage.38 They note the potential for women of color to build
broad coalitions because of their location at the intersection of race and gender
categories.

Although electoral politics was not the main focus of second-wave feminist ac-
tivity in the 1960s and 1970s, some activists did take up formal politics and the
cause of women candidates.39 Beginning in the 1970s and continuing to the pres-
ent day, women’s political action committees (PACs), groups, and donors have
been essential to recruiting, training, and funding women candidates. As political
scientist Barbara Burrell has documented, women congressional candidates have
achieved considerable fundraising success, even surpassing the campaign contri-
butions of their male counterparts in some cases.40 As political scientist Susan J.
Carroll and I have argued, the presence of support and recruitment mechanisms
drives women’s representation, and not just the absence of impediments.

The overrepresentation of men in elective office can fuel the assumption that
men are better political leaders and dampen interest in women candidates. But
the fact of women’s underrepresentation can create political momentum for
women’s candidacies. In 1992, for example, in the so-called Year of the Woman
election, public awareness of women’s underrepresentation in Congress, includ-
ing their status as only 2 percent of the Senate, led a record number of women to
run in the wake of the Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas sexual harassment hear-
ings. And women disregarded the conventional wisdom that women must run as
men to be successful.41 Public attention to the extent of women’s underrepresen-
tation intersected with a large number of open seats as well as heightened aware-
ness of the problem of sexual harassment.42

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149 (1) Winter 2020Kira Sanbonmatsu

Donald J. Trump’s unexpected defeat of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presiden-
tial election and the subsequent Women’s March in 2017 led to the unprecedented
number of women candidates in the 2018 midterm election. As anti-Trump sen-
timent mounted and the #MeToo movement took shape over the course of 2017,
more women declared their candidacies, many of whom were first-time candi-
dates. Similar to the 1992 election, public awareness of women’s underrepresen-
tation in politics and heightened attention to policy issues that disproportionate-
ly impact women as a group interacted with a large number of open congressional
seats. As a result, women entered primaries in record-breaking numbers for Con-
gress, governor, and state legislature and went on to break records as major party
nominees.43 In the end, 2019 saw 127 women serving in Congress and 2,127 women
in state legislatures, establishing two new U.S. records.44

But in both 1992 and 2018, the uptick in candidates and officeholders was dis-
proportionately Democratic. In fact, although a stunning 476 women entered pri-
maries for the 435 seats of the House, surpassing the previous record of 298, the
raw number of women running for the chamber was not a historic high for Re-
publican women. Despite a record number of women entering the House in 2019,
the number of Republican women declined. Republican women also declined as
a percentage of all Republican members of the House. Nonincumbent Democrat-
ic women were more likely to emerge victorious from their primaries than Dem-
ocratic men, suggesting that Democratic women were advantaged in the 2018
elections.45

Left parties have traditionally been more supportive of women’s equality and
women candidates.46 Thus, the disproportionate presence of women within the
Democratic Party–as voters, activists, candidates, and officeholders–is consis-
tent with this crossnational trend. It also reflects the Democratic and Republican
Parties’ relationships with organized feminism and civil rights issues.47

Since 1980, women have been more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate
in presidential elections. Gaps are also evident in congressional and gubernatori-
al elections and in voters’ partisan attachments.48 Political party continues to be
the most important predictor of congressional vote choice, although stereotypes
about candidates are shaped by both party and gender.49 And the greater repre-
sentation of women among Democratic officeholders is evident to the public and
appears to affect the magnitude of the gender gap in partisan identification.50

The two major parties are quite distinct with respect to the infrastructure
available to women potential candidates. This can be seen clearly with respect
to the partisan gap in Congress historically and particularly in the contemporary
era. The 1992 election was essentially the “year of the Democratic woman,” as the
relatively young PAC EMILY’s List (Early Money Is Like Yeast), founded in 1985,
bundled contributions from a women’s donor network to finance women’s cam-
paigns. EMILY’s List only supports pro-choice Democratic women candidates,

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesWomen’s Underrepresentation in the U.S. Congress

and their strategy has been to provide women candidates with early money, put-
ting their weight behind candidates in competitive primaries. The role of EMILY’s
List in helping elect Democratic women to Congress cannot be overstated.

Recent studies of fundraising confirm the vast differences in the financial envi-
ronment faced by women of the two major parties. Democratic women congres-
sional candidates, but not Republican women candidates, are advantaged with re-
spect to their gender, party, and ideology. While female donor networks and orga-
nizations exist on the Republican side of the aisle, they are not as well known as
EMILY’s List and do not approach its level of influence.51

The financial cost of running for Congress is high and rising. All else equal, this
aspect of American politics places women, as well as men of color, at a disadvan-
tage because of the effects of gender and race on employment opportunities, per-
sonal income, and wealth. While women have outvoted men, men have dominat-
ed political giving by rate and amount of contributions. Women’s PACs and donor
networks have disrupted male dominance to some extent, and women’s giving
has increased in recent years, but the financing of politics continues to put wom-
en at a disadvantage. The existence of gendered patterns of giving exacerbates this
economic disadvantage.52

Candidate emergence and candidate recruitment patterns have also affect-
ed Democratic and Republican women differently. Moderates have been largely
eliminated from Congress as the two parties have become more polarized. This
change has disproportionately adversely affected Republican women in politics,
who traditionally come from the party’s moderate wing.53 Recruitment on the Re-
publican side favors conservative candidates, and conservative candidates are dis-
proportionately male.54 And with many more women serving in and holding lead-
ership positions in the Democratic Party, it is more likely that women candidates
will be recruited.55

For strategic reasons, Republican women in Congress have been overrepre-
sented as communicators of the party message compared with their presence in
the party.56 Despite the party efforts to showcase women in leadership roles, the
stubborn fact of Republican women’s underrepresentation–as well as their de-
clining presence in the party–remains. The dwindling presence of Republican
women is unfortunate given that women are more effective members of Congress
than their male colleagues, particularly when they are in the minority party.57

The misogyny of Trump (as a candidate and now president) also affects wom-
en differently according to partisanship.58 While the Republican Party has period-
ically sought to increase the racial and gender diversity of its candidates, that strat-
egy seems to be a nonstarter in an environment in which Trump, as party lead-
er, routinely disparages women and minorities, and particularly women of color.
Studies of “modern sexism”–a form of sexism that seems to have replaced old-
fashioned sexism–are on the rise in the Trump era. Trump’s misogyny as a can-

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149 (1) Winter 2020Kira Sanbonmatsu

didate and president creates an unwelcome environment for Republican women
candidates. In contrast, the energy of the women’s marches and #MeToo move-
ment and the strong anti-Trump sentiment on the left appear to have fueled the
explicitly gendered appeals made by the new women candidates who ran in 2018.
Experiences with pregnancy, motherhood, sexual assault, and sex discrimination
animated political advertising in 2018 in new ways.59

In 2019, the number of women of color serving in Congress–forty-seven–rep-
resents a historic high. The 2018 midterm saw numerous “firsts” with respect to
women’s office-holding in Congress, including the first Native American women,
Debra Haaland (D-NM) and Sharice Davids (D-KS); the first women of color elect-
ed from New England, Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and Jahana Hayes (D-CT); and the
first Latinas elected from Texas, Veronica Escobar (D) and Sylvia R. Garcia (D).
The youngest woman ever to enter Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a
Latina, defeated an incumbent from her own party and a member of House lead-
ership in 2018. The national Democratic tide and public interest in women can-
didates helped to propel these Democratic women to office. While these firsts for
women of color signal progress, the fact that they occurred only recently is a poor
reflection on the country’s record of inclusion.60 With explicit sexist and racist
messages emanating from the White House, it is perhaps not surprising that al-
most all women of color serving in elective office are Democrats.

T hroughout the past century, women in Congress have usually been the

staunchest advocates for policies important to women as a group. Women
in Congress seek to provide representation for all women including those
beyond their states and districts, albeit with different ideas of what it means to
represent women.61

Institutional and societal challenges as well as obstacles rooted in racial in-
equality have historically limited women’s access to Congress. Concern about
women’s underrepresentation and collective efforts to elect more women have
twice disrupted the status quo of congressional elections, most recently in 2018.
But the situation of women candidates varies greatly by political party, and the
party imbalance among women in Congress is widening.

Future research on women’s election to Congress would benefit from a more
sustained intersectional approach, even if that approach can be, as political scien-
tist Wendy Smooth has noted, a bit messier than single-category approaches.62 As
scholars grapple with the best empirical methods to accomplish intersectional re-
search, they must also strive to incorporate additional categories. One area that
scholars have neglected within the American women and politics field is the elec-
tion of sexual minorities. Several openly gay women serve in Congress in 2019, in-
cluding two women senators: Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-
AZ). While some scholars have examined the challenges that sexuality poses for

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesWomen’s Underrepresentation in the U.S. Congress

women candidates, much more research is needed to identify how LGBTQ iden-
tity and politics affect the level of women’s representation.63 Women are a large
and differentiated group, and political equality for women as a whole must take
into account sources of inequality beyond gender alone.

For our book A Seat at the Table, Kelly Dittmar, Susan Carroll, and I interviewed
more than three-fourths of the women serving in the 114th Congress (2015–
2017); they explained that the presence of women in the institution is a “big
thing.”64 House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (CA) explained the significance,
for American women, of seeing “that someone who may have shared their expe-
rience–whether it is to be a working Mom or whatever it happens to be–[has] a
voice at the table.”65 And women in Congress should reflect the diversity of Amer-
ican women. As Representative Joyce Beatty (D-OH) noted, “[Having more wom-
en of color in Congress] makes a difference when little African American girls can
dream that they, too, can serve in Congress.”66 And Representative Kristi Noem
(R-SD) explained that “Most of the voters in this country are women. So they de-
serve to be represented and have people there that think like they do.”67

about the author

Kira Sanbonmatsu is Professor of Political Science and Senior Scholar at the Cen-
ter for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers
University. Her publications include A Seat at the Table: Congresswomen’s Perspectives
on Why Their Presence Matters (with Kelly Dittmar and Susan J. Carroll, 2018), More
Women Can Run: Gender and Pathways to the State Legislatures (with Susan J. Carroll,
2013), and Where Women Run: Gender and Party in the American States (2006).

endnotes

1 Center for American Women and Politics, “Gender Differences in Voter Turnout” (New
Brunswick, N.J.: Center for American Women and Politics, Rutgers University, 2019);
Center for American Women and Politics, “State Fact Sheets” (New Brunswick, N.J.:
Center for American Women and Politics, Rutgers University, various years), https://
cawp.rutgers.edu/state-by-state; and Center for American Women and Politics,
“Women in Elective Office 2019” (New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for American Women
and Politics, Rutgers University, 2019).

2 Joyce Gelb and Marian Lief Palley, Women and Public Policies: Reassessing Gender Politics
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996); Jane Mansbridge, “Should Blacks
Represent Blacks and Women Represent Women? A Contingent ‘Yes,’” Journal of Pol-
itics 61 (3) (1999): 628–657; Cindy Simon Rosenthal, ed., Women Transforming Congress
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002); and Susan J. Carroll, The Impact of
Women in Public Office (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001).

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149 (1) Winter 2020Kira Sanbonmatsu

3 Susan J. Carroll and Kira Sanbonmatsu, More Women Can Run: Gender and Pathways to the

State Legislatures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

4 International Parliamentary Union, “Women in National Parliaments,” http://archive
.ipu.org/wmn-e/world.htm; Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, “Gen-
der Quotas Database,” https://www.idea.int/data-tools/data/gender-quotas/quotas;
and Center for American Women and Politics, “Women in Elective Office 2019.”

5 Mona Lena Krook, Quotas for Women in Politics: Gender and Candidate Selection Reform
Worldwide (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); and Pamela Marie Paxton and
Melanie M. Hughes, Women, Politics, and Power: A Global Perspective, 2nd ed. (Thousand
Oaks, Calif.: SAGE Publications, 2014).

6 Susan J. Carroll, Women as Candidates in American Politics (Bloomington: Indiana Univer-
sity Press, 1994); R. Darcy, Susan Welch, and Janet Clark, Women, Elections and Rep-
resentation (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994); Barbara C. Burrell, Gender
in Campaigns for the U.S. House of Representatives (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 2014); and Richard L. Fox, “Congressional Elections: Women’s Candidacies and
the Road to Gender Parity,” in Gender and Elections: Shaping the Future of American Pol-
itics, ed. Susan J. Carroll and Richard Logan Fox (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2018).

7 Eileen L. McDonagh, The Motherless State: Women’s Political Leadership and American

Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

8 Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Femi-
nist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,”
University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989 (1) (1989): 139–167; Patricia Hill Collins, Black
Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York:
Routledge, 2000); Tasha S. Philpot and Hanes Walton, “One of Our Own: Black Fe-
male Candidates and the Voters Who Support Them,” American Journal of Political Sci-
ence 51 (1) (2007): 49–62; Melanie Hughes, “The Intersection of Gender and Minori-
ty Status in National Legislatures: The Minority Women Legislative Index,” Legislative
Studies Quarterly 38 (4) (2013): 489–516; Ange-Marie Hancock, “Intersectional Repre-
sentation or Representing Intersectionality? Reshaping Empirical Analysis of Intersec-
tionality,” in Representation: The Case of Women, ed. Michelle C. Taylor-Robinson and
Maria M. Escobar-Lemmon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Mala Htun,
“Political Inclusion and Representation of Afrodescendant Women in Latin Ameri-
ca,” in Representation: The Case of Women, ed. Taylor-Robinson and Escobar-Lemmon;
Nadia E. Brown and Sarah Allen Gershon, Distinct Identities: Minority Women in U.S. Pol-
itics (New York: Routledge, 2016); and Jane Junn and Nadia Brown, “What Revolu-
tion? Incorporating Intersectionality in Women and Politics,” in Political Women and
American Democracy, ed. Christina Wolbrecht, Karen Beckwith, and Lisa Baldez (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

9 Ian Haney-López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York
University Press, 2006); Gretchen Ritter, The Constitution as Social Design: Gender and
Civic Membership in the American Constitutional Order (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univer-
sity Press, 2006); and Mary Hawkesworth, Embodied Power: Demystifying Disembodied
Politics (New York: Routledge, 2016).

10 Katherine Tate, Black Faces in the Mirror: African Americans and Their Representatives in the
U.S. Congress (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003); Ronald Schmidt Sr.,
Yvette M. Alex-Assensoh, Andrew L. Aoki, and Rodney E. Hero, Newcomers, Outsiders,

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and Insiders: Immigrants and American Racial Politics in the Early Twenty-First Century
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010); Jason Paul Casellas, Latino Represen-
tation in State Houses and Congress (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); and
Carol Hardy-Fanta, Pei-te Lien, Dianne Pinderhughes, and Christine Marie Sierra, Con-
tested Transformation: Race, Gender, and Political Leadership in 21st Century America (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

11 Irwin N. Gertzog, Congressional Women: Their Recruitment, Integration, and Behavior

(Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1995).

12 Kristi Andersen, After Suffrage: Women in Partisan and Electoral Politics before the New Deal

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

13 Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s
to the 1990s (New York: Routledge, 1994); Linda Witt, Karen M. Paget, and Glenna
Matthews, Running as a Woman: Gender and Power in American Politics (New York: Free
Press, 1994); Alejandra Teresita Gimenez, Christopher F. Karpowitz, Quin J. Monson,
and Jessica Robinson Preece, “Selection Effects and Self-Presentation: How the Dou-
ble Bind Strangles Women’s Representation,” paper presented at the Midwest Political
Science Association annual conference, Chicago, Illinois, April 6–9, 2017; Dawn Lan-
gan Teele, Joshua Kalla, and Frances Rosenbluth, “The Ties That Double Bind: Social
Roles and Women’s Underrepresentation in Politics,” American Political Science Review
112 (3) (2018): 525–541; and Darcy et al., Women, Elections and Representation.

14 Kira Sanbonmatsu, “Why Not a Woman of Color? The Candidacies of U.S. Women of
Color for Statewide Executive Office,” Oxford Handbooks Online, September 2015,
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935307.013.43.

15 Two additional women of color were elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016–Tammy Duck-
worth (IL) and Kamala Harris (CA)–bringing the total number of women of color sen-
ators to serve simultaneously to four.

16 Collins, Black Feminist Thought; and Brown and Gershon, Distinct Identities.
17 For an annotated bibliography of women and electoral politics research, see Kelly
Dittmar, Kira Sanbonmatsu, and Kathleen Rogers, “Gender and Electoral Politics in the
United States,” in Oxford Bibliographies in Political Science (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2019), https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199756223-0137. See also Ruth B. Man-
del, In the Running: The New Woman Candidate (New Haven, Conn.: Ticknor & Fields,
1981); Leonie Huddy and Nayda Terkildsen, “Gender Stereotypes and the Perception
of Male and Female Candidates,” American Journal of Political Science 37 (1) (1993): 119–
147; Jo Freeman, A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics (Lanham, Md.:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2000); and Kelly Dittmar, Navigating Gendered Terrain: Stereo-
types and Strategy in Political Campaigns (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2015).
18 Barbara Burrell, A Woman’s Place Is in the House: Campaigning for Congress in the Feminist
Era (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994); Alice Hendrickson Eagly and
Linda Lorene Carli, Through the Labyrinth: The Truth about How Women Become Leaders
(Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2007); Georgia Duerst-Lahti, “Presidential
Election: Gendered Space and the Case of 2016,” in Gender and Elections, ed. Carroll and
Fox; and Monica C. Schneider and Angela L. Bos, “Measuring Stereotypes of Female
Politicians,” Political Psychology 35 (2) (2014): 245–266.

19 Laurel Elder, “Why Women Don’t Run,” Women & Politics 26 (2) (2004): 27–56; Rich-
ard L. Fox and Jennifer L. Lawless, “If Only They’d Ask: Gender, Recruitment, and

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149 (1) Winter 2020Kira Sanbonmatsu

Political Ambition,” Journal of Politics 72 (2) (2010): 310–326; Kristin Kanthak and Jon-
athan Woon, “Women Don’t Run? Election Aversion and Candidate Entry,” American
Journal of Political Science 59 (3) (2015): 595–612; and Richard L. Fox and Jennifer Law-
less, “Uncovering the Origins of the Gender Gap in Political Ambition,” American Polit-
ical Science Review 108 (3) (2014): 499–519.

20 Kelly Dittmar, Kira Sanbonmatsu, and Susan J. Carroll, A Seat at the Table: Congress-
women’s Perspectives on Why Their Presence Matters (New York: Oxford University Press,
2018).

21 Torben Iversen and Frances Rosenbluth, Women, Work, and Politics: The Political Economy
of Gender Inequality (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2010); and Carroll and
Sanbonmatsu, More Women Can Run.

22 Ulrik Kjaer, “Patterns of Inter-Level Gender Gaps in Women’s Descriptive Representa-

tion,” Lex Localis 17 (1) (2019): 53–70.

23 Iversen and Rosenbluth, Women, Work, and Politics; and Carroll and Sanbonmatsu, More

Women Can Run.

24 Gertzog, Congressional Women.
25 Brittany L. Stalsburg, “Voting for Mom: The Political Consequences of Being a Parent for
Male and Female Candidates,” Politics & Gender 6 (3) (2010): 373–404; and Jill Greenlee,
Grace Deason, and Carrie Langner, “The Impact of Motherhood and Maternal Mes-
sages on Political Candidacies,” in The Political Psychology of Women in U.S. Politics, ed.
Angela L. Bos and Monica Schneider (New York: Routledge, 2017).

26 She Should Run, “Vote with Your Purse: Lesson Learned–Women, Money, and Politics
in the 2010 Election Cycle” (Washington, D.C.: She Should Run, 2012); and Dittmar et
al., A Seat at the Table.

27 Hardy-Fanta et al., Contested Transformation.
28 Burrell, Gender in Campaigns for the U.S. House of Representatives.
29 Sarah Fulton, “Running Backwards and in High Heels: The Gendered Quality Gap and
Incumbent Electoral Success,” Political Research Quarterly 65 (2) (2012): 303–314; Bar-
bara Palmer and Dennis Michael Simon, Women and Congressional Elections: A Centu-
ry of Change (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012); Kathryn Pearson and
Eric McGhee, “What It Takes to Win: Questioning ‘Gender Neutral’ Outcomes in
U.S. House Elections,” Politics & Gender 9 (4) (2013): 439–462; and Heather Onder-
cin, “Why Women Win When They Run: The Strategic Calculations of Female Candi-
dates” (2017).

30 Pippa Norris and Joni Lovenduski, Political Recruitment: Gender, Race, and Class in the

British Parliament (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

31 Palmer and Simon, Women and Congressional Elections.
32 Kira Sanbonmatsu, Where Women Run: Gender and Party in the American States (Ann Ar-
bor: University of Michigan Press, 2006); and Carroll and Sanbonmatsu, More Women
Can Run.

33 Laurel Elder, “Whither Republican Women: The Growing Partisan Gap among Wom-
en in Congress,” The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics 6 (1)
(2008); and Malliga Och and Shauna Lani Shames, eds., The Right Women: Republican
Party Activists, Candidates, and Legislators (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, 2018).

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34 Karen Foerstel and Herbert N. Foerstel, Climbing the Hill: Gender Conflict in Congress

(Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996).

35 Bernard Grofman, Race and Redistricting in the 1990s (New York: Agathon Press, 1998);
Bernard Grofman and Chandler Davidson, Controversies in Minority Voting: The Vot-
ing Rights Act in Perspective (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1992); Bernard
Grofman, Lisa Handley, and Richard G. Niemi, Minority Representation and the Quest
for Voting Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and Carol Hardy-
Fanta, Pei-te Lien, Dianne Pinderhughes, and Christine Sierra, “Gender, Race, and De-
scriptive Representation in the United States: Findings from the Gender and Multi-
cultural Leadership Project,” Journal of Women Politics & Policy 28 (3–4) (2006): 7–41.
36 Bill Ong Hing, Making and Remaking Asian America through Immigration Policy, 1850–1990
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993); and Hardy-Fanta et al., Contested
Transformation.

37 Karen R. Humes, Nicholas A. Jones, and Roberto R. Ramirez, “Overview of Race and His-
panic Origin: 2010,” in Book Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin: 2010 (Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau, 2011).

38 Deborah K. King, “Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness: The Context of a Black
Feminist Ideology,” Signs 14 (1) (1988): 42–72; Katherine Tate, “African American Fe-
male Senatorial Candidates: Twin Assets of Double Liabilities?” in African American
Power and Politics, ed. Hanes Walton Jr. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997);
Wendy Smooth, “Intersectionality in Electoral Politics: A Mess Worth Making,” Politics
& Gender 2 (3) (2006): 400–414; Christina Bejarano, The Latina Advantage: Gender, Race,
and Political Success (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013); and Rita Kaur Dhamoon,
“Considerations on Mainstreaming Intersectionality,” Political Research Quarterly 64
(1) (2011): 230–243.

39 Jo Freeman, The Politics of Women’s Liberation: A Case Study of an Emerging Social Movement
and Its Relation to the Policy Process (New York: McKay, 1975); and Jo Freeman, “Whom
You Know versus Whom You Represent: Feminist Influence in the Democratic and
Republican Parties,” in The Women’s Movements of the United States and Western Europe:
Consciousness, Political Opportunity, and Public Policy, ed. Mary Fainsod Katzenstein and
Carol McClurg Mueller (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987).

40 Burrell, A Woman’s Place Is in the House; and Burrell, Gender in Campaigns for the U.S. House

of Representatives.

41 Carroll, Women as Candidates in American Politics; Witt et al., Running as a Woman; and
Georgia Duerst-Lahti and Dayna Verstegen, “Making Something of Absence: The
‘Year of the Woman’ and Women’s Political Representation,” in Gender Power, Leader-
ship, and Governance, ed. Georgia Duerst-Lahti and Rita Mae Kelly (Ann Arbor: Univer-
sity of Michigan Press, 1995).

42 Public support for electing more women is related to knowledge about the level of wom-
en’s underrepresentation in Congress. See Kira Sanbonmatsu, “Gender-Related Politi-
cal Knowledge and the Descriptive Representation of Women,” Political Behavior 25 (4)
(2003): 367–388.

43 Kelly Dittmar, Unfinished Business: Women Running in 2018 and Beyond (New Brunswick,

N.J.: Center for American Women and Politics, 2019).

44 Center for American Women and Politics, “Women in Elective Office 2019.”

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45 Center for American Women and Politics, “2018 Summary of Women Candidates,”
https://cawp.rutgers.edu/potential-candidate-summary-2018; Kelly Dittmar, “By the
Numbers: Women Congressional Candidates in 2018,” Center for American Women
and Politics, September 12, 2018, https://cawp.rutgers.edu/congressional-candidates
-summary-2018; and Phillip Bump, “Nearly 6 in 10 Non-Incumbent Democrats Who
Won House Elections Were Women,” The Washington Post, December 4, 2018.

46 Joni Lovenduski and Pippa Norris, Gender and Party Politics (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE
Publications, 1993); Miki Caul Kittilson, Challenging Parties, Changing Parliaments:
Women and Elected Office in Contemporary Western Europe (Columbus: Ohio State Uni-
versity Press, 2006); and Diana Z. O’Brien, “‘Righting’ Conventional Wisdom: Wom-
en and Right Parties in Established Democracies,” Politics & Gender 14 (1) (2018): 27–55.
47 Edward G. Carmines and James A. Stimson, Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation
of American Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989); Freeman, A
Room at a Time; and Christina Wolbrecht, The Politics of Women’s Rights: Parties, Posi-
tions, and Change (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000).

48 Leonie Huddy, Erin Cassese, and Mary-Kate Lizotte, “Sources of Political Unity and Dis-
unity among Women: Placing the Gender Gap in Perspective,” in Voting the Gender
Gap, ed. Lois Duke Whitaker (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008); and Susan J.
Carroll, “Voting Choices: The Significance of Women Voters and the Gender Gap,” in
Gender and Elections, ed. Carroll and Fox.

49 Kira Sanbonmatsu and Kathleen Dolan, “Do Gender Stereotypes Transcend Party?”
Political Research Quarterly 62 (3) (2009): 485–494; and Kathleen A. Dolan, When Does
Gender Matter? Women Candidates and Gender Stereotypes in American Elections (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

50 Heather Ondercin, “Who’s Responsible for the Gender Gap: The Dynamics of Men’s
and Women’s Macropartisanship, 1950–2012,” Political Research Quarterly 70 (4)
(2017): 749–761.

51 Danielle Thomsen and Michele L. Swers, “Which Women Can Run? Gender, Partisan-
ship, and Candidate Donor Networks,” Political Research Quarterly 70 (2) (2017): 449–
463; and Melody Crowder-Meyer and Rosalyn Cooperman, “Can’t Buy Them Love:
How Party Culture among Donors Contributes to the Party Gap in Women’s Represen-
tation,” Journal of Politics 80 (4) (2018): 1211–1224.

52 Nancy Burns, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Sidney Verba, The Private Roots of Public Ac-
tion: Gender, Equality, and Political Participation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Universi-
ty Press, 2001); Kristin Kanthak and George A. Krause, The Diversity Paradox: Political
Parties, Legislatures, and the Organizational Foundations of Representation in America (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2012); and Michael Barber, Daniel M. Butler, and Jessi-
ca Preece, “Gender Inequalities in Campaign Finance,” Quarterly Journal of Political Sci-
ence 11 (2) (2016): 219–248.

53 Susan J. Carroll, “Have Women State Legislators in the United States Become More Con-
servative? A Comparison of State Legislators in 2001 and 1988,” Atlantis: A Women’s
Studies Journal 27 (2) (2003): 128–139.

54 Danielle Thomsen, “Why So Few (Republican) Women? Explaining the Partisan Im-
balance of Women in the U.S. Congress,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 40 (2) (2015):
295–323.

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesWomen’s Underrepresentation in the U.S. Congress

55 Sanbonmatsu, Where Women Run.
56 Catherine Wineinger, “Gendering the GOP: Rhetoric, Representation, and Republican

Congresswomen as Party Messengers” (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 2019).

57 Craig Volden, Alan E. Wiseman, and Dana E. Wittmer, “When Are Women More Effec-
tive Lawmakers Than Men?” American Journal of Political Science 57 (2) (2013): 326–341.
58 Kelly Dittmar, Finding Gender in Election 2016: Lessons from Presidential Gender Watch
(Cambridge, Mass.: Barbara Lee Family Foundation and Center for American Women
and Politics, 2017); Och and Shames, The Right Women; and Erin C. Cassese and Mirya
R. Holman, “Playing the Woman Card: Ambivalent Sexism in the 2016 U.S. Presiden-
tial Race,” Political Psychology 40 (1) (2019): 55–74.

59 Kelly Dittmar, “Running as Women or Men? Candidates’ Use of Gender in 2018,” Gender
Watch 2018, May 31, 2018, https://www.genderwatch2018.org/running-women-men.
60 Center for American Women and Politics, “Results: Women Candidates in the 2018
Elections,” press release (New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for American Women and Pol-
itics, Rutgers University, 2018).

61 Susan J. Carroll, “Representing Women: Congresswomen’s Perceptions of Their Repre-
sentational Roles,” in Women Transforming Congress, ed. Rosenthal; Debra L. Dodson,
The Impact of Women in Congress (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Michele L.
Swers, Women in the Club: Gender and Policy Making in the Senate (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2013); and Sara Angevine, “Representing All Women: An Analysis of
Congress, Foreign Policy, and the Boundaries of Women’s Surrogate Representation,”
Political Research Quarterly 70 (1) (2017): 98–110.
62 Smooth, “Intersectionality in Electoral Politics.”
63 Ewa A. Golebiowska, “Group Stereotypes and Political Evaluation,” American Politics Re-
search 29 (6) (2001): 535–565; Alesha Doan and Donald P. Haider-Markel, “The Role
of Intersectional Stereotypes on Evaluations of Political Candidates,” Politics & Gender
6 (1) (2010): 63–91; and Donald P. Haider-Markel and Chelsie Lynn Moore, “Lesbian
Candidates and Officeholders,” in Women and Elective Office: Past, Present, and Future,
ed. Sue Wilcox and Clyde Thomas (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

64 Dittmar et al., A Seat at the Table, 212.
65 Ibid., 176.
66 Ibid., 192–193.
67 Ibid., 47.

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149 (1) Winter 2020Kira Sanbonmatsu
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