Men are overrepresented in positions of political leadership around the world (IPU Parline Reference Parline2020). This overrepresentation is particularly stark in right-leaning political parties, while women come closer to (though rarely achieve) parity with men in left-leaning parties (O’Brien Reference O’Brien2018). This inequality in political representation threatens citizens’ support for democratic governance. Both trust in government and engagement with government are tied to the presence of descriptive representatives who share one’s traits, such as gender, in elected offices (Atkeson Reference Atkeson2003; Childs Reference Childs2004; Reingold and Harrell Reference Reingold and Harrell2010; Schwindt-Bayer Reference Schwindt-Bayer2010). Thus, the absence of equal descriptive representation diminishes government trust and citizen political engagement, contributing to the crisis of representative democracy. Furthermore, unequal political representation also compromises the representativeness of government outcomes. The traits of elected officials, including gender, shape the issues addressed by governments and the direction of policies produced by governments (Childs Reference Childs2004; Clayton, Josefsson, and Wang Reference Clayton, Josefsson and Wang2017; Holman Reference Holman2014; Schwindt-Bayer Reference Schwindt-Bayer2010; Swers Reference Swers2013). Consequently, the lack of equal descriptive representation for men and women in governments across the world yields policy outcomes from governments that do not reflect the will of all of their citizens, contributing to the crisis of representative democracy.

Why do men run for and hold so many more political offices than women across the world? Why is this gender gap particularly stark among right-leaning political parties? In this chapter, I will outline how the cultures of the right- and left- leaning political parties in the United States, exemplified by the quotation at the beginning of the chapter, shape each stage of the candidate emergence and electoral process. These cultures produce substantial gender inequality in political representation in the United States generally, and increase women’s representation within the left-leaning Democratic party while leaving women’s representation in the right-leaning Republican party at a dismal standstill. While women’s representation in the United States is particularly low in a global context, the patterns in descriptive representation seen in the United States – both men’s disproportionate presence in political offices and men’s particular overrepresentation in right-leaning parties – are mirrored in many nations across the world. Explaining these patterns is thus necessary in order to address a longstanding challenge to representative democracy both in the United States and globally.

The Importance of Descriptive Representation

The absence of equal descriptive representation for women – the inequality between men’s and women’s presence in political offices – has important consequences for the public’s attitudes toward and engagement with government. As Mansbridge (Reference Mansbridge1999) notes, descriptive representation can create “a social meaning of ‘ability to rule’ for members of a group in historical contexts where that ability has been seriously questioned” and can increase perceptions of government legitimacy (628). Indeed, there is evidence that women’s presence in office positively affects trust in government and political engagement among women around the world (Atkeson Reference Atkeson2003; Childs Reference Childs2004; Reingold and Harrell Reference Reingold and Harrell2010; Schwindt-Bayer Reference Schwindt-Bayer2010). While voters largely “don’t know and don’t care” about low working-class representation in government (Chapter 10), voters – and especially women – do want more women in elected office ( Campbell, Childs, and Lovenduski Reference Campbell, Childs and Lovenduski2010; Sanbonmatsu Reference Sanbonmatsu2003) and have organized around this goal (Kreitzer and Osborn Reference Kreitzer and Osborn2019). Inasmuch as trust in democracy, the belief that the government rules legitimately, and the political engagement of democratic citizens are necessary to the success of democracy, the continued absence of women in government long after women became eligible to fully participate in the polity threatens democratic stability.

Women in public office also affect the substantive policymaking process. In the United States, women and men in local through federal offices raise different policy issues (e.g., women discuss domestic violence, education, and welfare more) and make different choices about how government funds are spent (e.g., women mayors spend more on social welfare programs than men) (Carroll Reference Carroll2001; Holman Reference Holman2014; Swers Reference Swers2013). In fact, the substantive effects of women in office on policy discussions and policymaking have been documented in a wide variety of contexts from Europe to Latin America to Africa (Childs Reference Childs2004; Clayton, Josefsson, and Wang Reference Clayton, Josefsson and Wang2017; Espírito-Santo, Freire, and Serra-Silva Reference Espírito-Santo, Freire and Serra-Silva2018; Lloren Reference Lloren, Rosset and Wüest2015; Schwindt-Bayer Reference Schwindt-Bayer2010). If some issues affecting half of the citizenry are neglected by governments due to the absence of women from governing bodies, this demonstrates a failure of representative democracy and lays the groundwork for significant dissatisfaction with democratic government.

Much research on the substantive representation provided by women officials has focused on the ways women legislators pull policy in a leftist, feminist direction. Certainly, it is the case that more left or liberal parties tend to have more women as elected officials (Caul Reference Caul2001; Lovenduski and Norris Reference Lovenduski and Norris1993). Yet, even within right-leaning parties, women differ from men in their parties in policy positions and the substantive representation they offer to women constituents (Celis and Childs Reference Celis and Childs2011; Espírito-Santo, Freire, and Serra-Silva Reference Espírito-Santo, Freire and Serra-Silva2018; Lloren Reference Lloren, Rosset and Wüest2015; Swers Reference Swers2013; Webb and Childs Reference Webb and Childs2012). Furthermore, the benefits of descriptive representation on women’s political engagement are particularly strong when citizens and the women descriptively representing them in office share a party affiliation (Reingold and Harrell Reference Reingold and Harrell2010).

It is therefore important to understand the extent of women’s political underrepresentation and the reasons why it exists within both right- and left- leaning parties. Doing so can help us determine how to increase the numbers of women in elective offices and thereby improve the symbolic and substantive representation provided to women around the world. In this chapter, I will evaluate two cases of women’s representation in the United States – explaining women’s fairly substantial (though still unequal) presence among Democratic candidates and officeholders and women’s very limited representation as candidates and officeholders in the Republican party. While women’s representation in the United States is particularly low relative to other democracies, the patterns evident in the United States – both that men are generally politically overrepresented and that there are distinctions in women’s representation between left-leaning and right-leaning parties – are reflected internationally (O’Brien Reference O’Brien2018). Thus, this chapter holds lessons for those interested in improving the quality of democratic representation in the United States and globally.

Men Are Overrepresented in Political Offices

Men are represented in political offices in proportions greater than their representation in the population worldwide. This political overrepresentation is present in governing bodies from the local to national level and in almost every nation in the world. Additionally, the degree of men’s political overrepresentation and women’s political underrepresentation often varies by political party within any given nation.

For example, in the United States, the case on which this chapter will focus, while white women gained the franchise a century ago, and suffrage rights were enforced for women across racial groups more than fifty years ago, women’s full membership in the polity – demonstrated by their presence among policy makers – is still out of reach. Today, women hold fewer elected positions than men across levels of office, and there is a clear and growing gap between the left-leaning Democratic and right-leaning Republican parties in men’s and women’s representation. At the federal level, in 2018, women composed 38% of Democrats who won House seats and 50% of Democrats who won Senate seats, while women were only 7% of Republican House winners and 27% of Republican Senate winners (Dittmar Reference Dittmar2019). The size of the party gap in women’s representation has increased over time. A decade earlier, in 2008, women won approximately the same proportion of each parties’ Senate seats, leading to a US Senate in which women held 24% of Democratic seats and 10% of Republican seats and a US House in which women composed 22% of Democratic and 10% of Republican seats. While men have consistently been overrepresented among elected officials in both parties throughout America’s history, the current gender gap in representation is substantially larger in the Republican party and the gap between the parties in women’s representation is growing.

O’Brien’s (Reference O’Brien2018) study of gender and representation in more than seventy parties across twelve nations from a variety of regions worldwide reveals a similar gap between right-leaning and left-leaning parties in women’s descriptive representation. In 2013, women composed an average of 23–24% of parliamentary seats held by right-leaning Christian democratic and conservative parties and a much higher average of 37% of parliamentary seats held by left-leaning social democratic parties. Furthermore, the gap in women’s representation in right- and left-leaning parties across the twelve nations in O’Brien’s study was small in earlier decades but has increased over time. In 1985, women composed almost identical proportions (13% or 14%) of Christian democratic, conservative, and social democratic legislators. Yet by 2013, the gap in the average percentage of women legislators in right- and left-leaning parties had expanded to thirteen points, mirroring the increasing gap between parties in women’s representation seen in the United States. The nations included in O’Brien’s study encompass a wide variety of election types (party list proportional representation, plurality voting for individual candidates, mixed systems with both single member districts, and party lists with proportional representation), systems with two dominant parties as well as multi-party systems, systems with varying amounts of public funding for parties, and nations that granted the franchise to women both earlier and later than the United States. Thus, the patterns she identifies – of men’s political overrepresentation and of distinctions in this overrepresentation between left- and right-leaning parties – are not unique to the United States nor any specific party system or election format.

Men’s political overrepresentation and party variations in it begin at the candidacy stage. In the United States, where candidate-centered elections place the onus of running very heavily on individual prospective candidates, women composed 33% of Democrats and only 14% of Republicans who filed to run for the US Congress in the 2018 elections (Dittmar Reference Dittmar2019). Data I gathered on individual US county election filings indicates a similar pattern was present in 2018 at the local level. Women composed 32% of Democratic candidates and only 13% of Republican candidates for county legislative office in my sample.Footnote ¹ Comparative evidence similarly suggests that even in party list elections, women are more likely to be placed higher on their party list – in “safe” spots – by left-wing than right-wing parties, particularly in nations with higher levels of gender equity (Luhiste Reference Luhiste2015).

In sum, gender inequality and a party gap in men’s and women’s representation is present at each stage in the electoral process from candidacy to election. Consequently, a broad ranging examination is necessary to understand gender inequality in political representation and explain what leads some parties to field candidates and elect officials who more closely reflect the population’s gender distribution than other parties. In this chapter, I will evaluate how both early influences on the candidate emergence process – such as the supply of candidates for each party, political role models, the development of political ambition, and recruitment activities by political parties – and later factors shaping campaign success – such as donor and voter behavior – influence men’s and women’s political representation in the United States by party. The findings I outline help to explain gender inequality in political representation and to highlight the characteristics and practices that can increase women’s representation at each step in the candidacy and election process, and in doing so, improve the functioning of the democratic system.

The Culture of the Democratic and Republican Parties

While many different institutions, attitudes, and behaviors affect men’s and women’s representation across political parties, party culture serves as a foundation for each of these forces. Several scholars have called attention to the distinct cultures of the two main political parties in the United States, outlining aspects of the parties’ cultures that make the Democratic party more likely than the Republican party to produce and support women candidates. In her foundational research on the two parties’ cultures, Jo Freeman (Reference Freeman1986) identified the Republican party as hierarchical – a party in which the leadership determines the direction of the party and instructs the groups composing the party regarding how they can best promote the party and demonstrate their loyalty to it. In such a party, a focus on the interests of individual identity groups in the party (e.g., women) is seen as inconsistent with the party’s interests and ideology and is to be avoided (Freeman Reference Freeman1986; Grossmann and Hopkins Reference Grossmann and Hopkins2016). In contrast, Freeman argues that the Democratic party is pluralistic. In it, “power flows upward” from “multiple power centers” which are able to direct the party to address the needs of individual sub-groups (Freeman Reference Freeman1986, 328–29). In the Democratic party, “representation is delegatory, in which accurate reflection of the parts is necessary to the welfare of the whole” (Freeman Reference Freeman1986, 337). In a party characterized by this culture, individual demographic groups (e.g., women) can more freely make claims on the party and expect something in return for their support.

Other scholars of party culture have emphasized the distinct orientations toward “family values” and traditional gender roles in the two parties. In my work with Cooperman (Reference Cooperman, Crowder-Meyer, Shames and Och2018), we theorize that each party is composed of a coalition of intense policy demanders (Bawn et al. Reference Bawn, Cohen, Karol, Masket, Noel and Zaller2012) who have built distinct party cultures over time. Religious social conservative groups have grown to form a prominent part of the Republican party coalition, establishing support for traditional gender roles as a key tenet of the party’s culture (Crowder-Meyer and Cooperman Reference Crowder-Meyer and Cooperman2018; Elder and Greene Reference Elder and Greene2012; Sanbonmatsu Reference Sanbonmatsu2002; Wolbrecht Reference Wolbrecht2000), making the party a hostile environment for feminists (Rymph Reference Rymph2006) and ensuring that even women in the party promote their activism through a traditional family values lens (Wineinger Reference Wineinger, Och and Shames2018). This is consistent with Grossman and Hopkins’ (Reference Grossmann and Hopkins2016) proposal that in contrast to the “group interest Democrats,” the Republican party is primarily ideological – cohered around a shared value of conservatism, including not only economic and national security conservatism, but also “cultural conservatism encompass[ing] Judeo-Christian religiosity, the defense of Western traditions, and opposition to social change” (82). In contrast, the Democratic party’s culture has been established by a party coalition including activist groups advocating for civil rights, women’s rights, and the rights of other marginalized groups in society (Bawn et al. Reference Bawn, Cohen, Karol, Masket, Noel and Zaller2012; Elder and Greene Reference Elder and Greene2012; Freeman Reference Freeman, Fainsod Katzenstein and Mueller1987; Sanbonmatsu Reference Sanbonmatsu2002; Wolbrecht Reference Wolbrecht2000). Consequently, Democrats are more aware of and responsive to women’s representation policy demanders within their party (Crowder-Meyer and Cooperman Reference Crowder-Meyer and Cooperman2018).Footnote ²

These distinct cultures influence women’s representation at each stage of the electoral process. The supply of women with political ambition will be lower in a party that upholds traditional gender roles. In such a party, women will have been encouraged to focus on private over public roles and will know that many voters and elites in their party support this stance. In contrast, women should be more likely to develop political ambition when affiliating with a party whose culture promotes greater representation for women in non-traditional roles. The demand for women candidates – from candidate recruiters, donors, and voters – will also differ substantially by party due to the Democratic and Republican party cultures. While Democratic recruiters may specifically seek out women candidates in order to satisfy respected women’s representation policy demanders in their party, women’s gender will be at best a neutral characteristic for Republican recruiters committed to an individualistic ideology. Further, Republican women’s gender may actually diminish the demand for their candidacies as Republican elites seek to adhere to the traditional gender role culture promoted by prominent intense policy demanders in their party. Democratic and Republican campaign donors and voters will follow a similar logic, creating a gap in the demand for women candidates from each party’s supporters. In all, as I will detail in the remainder of this chapter, the cultures of the right-leaning Republican party and the left-leaning Democratic party influence women’s political ambition, recruitment, campaign funding, and voter support in ways that have produced a substantial gender gap in women’s representation among Democratic and Republican candidates and elected officials in the United States. Furthermore, as I will outline in the conclusion, a comparison of leftist and rightist parties outside the United States suggests both that leftist parties globally generally have a feminist gender ideology while rightist parties on average have a much more traditional gender ideology (e.g., Campbell and Erzeel Reference Campbell and Erzeel2018) and that these patterns in party cultures are shaping women’s representation in leftist and rightist parties globally (e.g., O’Brien Reference O’Brien2018).

The Supply of Women Candidates

To understand women’s representation in politics by party, we might first consider the supply of women available to run as candidates in each party. Presently, women compose 56% of Americans who identify as Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents and 47% of those who identify as Republicans or Republican leaners (Schaffner, Ansolabehere, and Luks Reference Schaffner, Ansolabehere and Luks2019). Thus, there is a gender gap in the supply of those affiliating with the two main parties in the United States. However, the party gap in women’s representation among candidates outlined above is much larger. Explaining the difference requires thinking about who typically seeks elected office.

When someone – a party leader, elected official, or interest group member – is seeking individuals who they might recruit to run for office, or when a potential candidate is considering whether they should run, electability is a primary consideration (Maisel and Stone Reference Maisel and Stone2014; Sanbonmatsu Reference Sanbonmatsu2006). One way to measure electability is to consider what kinds of candidates have typically been successful in winning elected positions in the past. While the field of candidates who win elections – particularly for lower-level positions – is diverse (Carroll and Sanbonmatsu Reference Carroll and Sanbonmatsu2013), the most visible examples of successful politicians generally fit a stereotype. They are middle-aged, hold a college or graduate degree, work in fairly prestigious occupations, and are strongly affiliated with a political party. Perhaps, then, the disparity in women’s representation between the parties is due to differences in how many women hold these characteristics in the two parties.

In research with a colleague, I investigated this question, estimating the supply of middle-aged American women in each political party who are highly educated, strong partisans, working in prestigious professions (Crowder-Meyer and Lauderdale Reference Crowder-Meyer and Lauderdale2014). We found that there is a substantial gap between the parties in the supply of women with these characteristics. In 2010, women composed about half of Democrats but only about a quarter of Republicans with traditional candidate traits (Crowder-Meyer and Lauderdale Reference Crowder-Meyer and Lauderdale2014).

The party gap that emerged over time in the supply of women follows logically from the two party cultures described in this chapter. As the Republican party culture promotes traditional gender roles while the Democratic party culture supports providing assistance to women who expand gender roles by working outside the home (Crowder-Meyer and Cooperman Reference Crowder-Meyer and Cooperman2018), it is not surprising that fewer women Republicans than women Democrats have pursued higher levels of education and prestigious professional careers that could form the foundation of a political candidacy. Thus, one explanation for the party gap in women’s candidacies is the unequal supply of women in each party’s pool of those with “traditional” candidate characteristics, stemming from the different cultures of the two parties.

Yet, it is also clear that women compose a higher proportion of the supply of Americans with typical candidate characteristics than they do the actual candidates who run under either party’s banner. While women neared parity with men in the Democratic party’s candidate supply in 2010, women still hold fewer than half of Democratic seats in elected offices; women’s representation among Republican elected officials does not yet match even the quarter of the Republican party’s supply pool that was composed of women in 2010. Furthermore, not all candidates who run for office hold the traditional candidate characteristics that we see among high-level officeholders (Carroll and Sanbonmatsu Reference Carroll and Sanbonmatsu2013; Crowder-Meyer Reference Crowder-Meyer2020). Thus, understanding the gap between the parties in the supply of women with these typical characteristics is only one step in understanding women’s overall political underrepresentation. Further understanding requires also considering how political ambition develops, the role models available to women in each party, the behavior of candidate recruiters and campaign supporters, and voter decision-making.

The Development of Political Ambition among Men and Women

To move from the pool of potential candidates into holding office, an individual must develop the ambition to become a candidate. Research on political ambition has highlighted that even among those professionals equally qualified to seek office, men are more likely than women to develop political ambition (Lawless and Fox Reference Lawless and Fox2010). To test whether this pattern holds among a more broadly defined sample of potential candidates, and to explore reasons why, I surveyed a sample of Americans representative of the broader American population about their political experiences and ambition.

This survey reveals that the factors that drive ambition for men and women are almost entirely distinct and that the factors that lead ordinary men to become politically ambitious are much more common in the population than those that lead ordinary women to become ambitious (Crowder-Meyer Reference Crowder-Meyer, Gadarian and Trounstine2020). For example, marriage, education, and political participation positively affect men’s ambition but not women’s. Because many Americans are married, about a third have at least a college degree, and about 19% of my sample politically participate in at least half of the activities I asked them about, these patterns are the foundation for men to have higher political ambition than women (Crowder-Meyer Reference Crowder-Meyer2020).

However, there are also some factors that increase women’s ambition more than men’s. Specifically, American women’s political ambition is almost entirely driven by the encouragement and support they receive from other people. When women are encouraged to run for office by a family member, friend, or coworker their political ambition skyrockets, while men’s changes minimally. And when women are encouraged to run by a political figure – like a party leader or officeholder – their political ambition increases significantly, while men’s does not change at all in response to such encouragement (Crowder-Meyer Reference Crowder-Meyer2020). These results support Carroll and Sanbonmatsu’s argument that women’s candidacies are particularly likely to be “relationally embedded,” with women “giv[ing] more weight in the decision-making process to the opinions of others and the effects of their decision upon others” and help explain why more women than men state legislators first ran only after someone else suggested it (Carroll and Sanbonmatsu Reference Carroll and Sanbonmatsu2013, 61).

While encouragement can dramatically increase the supply of politically ambitious women, unlike some of the factors that enhance men’s ambition, being encouraged to run for office is a very uncommon experience for Americans – and even less common for women than men (Crowder-Meyer Reference Crowder-Meyer2020). Furthermore, new examination of the data from this survey of the American public demonstrates that encouragement of men’s and women’s candidacies differs by party identification. I find that Democratic men report slightly higher rates of encouragement than Democratic women (a difference of less than 1 percentage point in recruitment from political sources and 4 points in recruitment from personal sources), but much larger gender differences among Republicans. Republican men are encouraged to run more than Republican women by political sources (2-point difference) and especially by personal sources (17-point difference). These differences are consistent with the distinct cultures within each party that lead Democrats to seek women’s representation and Republicans to encourage women to uphold traditional gender roles (Crowder-Meyer and Cooperman Reference Crowder-Meyer and Cooperman2018). Because encouragement is so important to (especially women’s) political ambition development – these differences by party likely also contribute to women’s greater representation among Democratic than Republican candidates in the United States.

The Effects of Women Political Elites

Researchers have found that women political role models have a positive effect on the political engagement of girls and women in the populace across a variety of national contexts (Atkeson Reference Atkeson2003; Barnes and Burchard Reference Barnes and Burchard2013; Campbell and Wolbrecht Reference Campbell and Wolbrecht2006; Reingold and Harrell Reference Reingold and Harrell2010; Wolbrecht and Campbell Reference Wolbrecht and Campbell2007; Schwindt-Bayer Reference Schwindt-Bayer2010; though see Wolbrecht and Campbell Reference Wolbrecht and Campbell2017). The presence of women candidates and officials also positively influences the emergence of women candidates at the state and local levels in the United States (Crowder-Meyer and Smith Reference Crowder-Meyer and Smith2015; Ladam, Harden, and Windett Reference Ladam, Harden and Windett2018) and in other contexts (Breux, Couture, and Koop Reference Breux, Couture and Koop2019; Gilardi Reference Gilardi2015). The powerful effect of women elites makes sense given the relative absence of women in public life. While men grow up seeing posters of important political officials who share their gender, are likely to be represented in their national legislature by men, and receive frequent reminders of their similarities with most of those who hold political power, women have far fewer political role models available who share their gender. Consequently, men may choose to proceed with a political career on the basis of the ample evidence that men are welcome and accepted in politics and government and the “social meaning” this creates regarding men’s ability to rule (Mansbridge Reference Mansbridge1999), while women’s assessment that a political career is open to them may require specific encouragement from those around them or clear examples of women in power to counteract the messages sent by the broader absence of women in prominent political positions.

My 2018 Local Candidate Study (LCS) reveals evidence of the continued importance of women political role models to the emergence of women candidates. In this study, I surveyed candidates for several county-level elected offices in counties across the United States, asking them about the individuals who inspired their candidacies.Footnote ³ Specifically, I asked, “Among people you know personally, who was most influential in your decision to seek public office for the first time?” and, if applicable, to also name “someone [they didn’t] know (e.g., a famous politician or role model) [who] influenced [their] decision to seek office for the first time.” Distinctions between men and women candidates in the importance of women role models to their candidacies are clear in responses to both questions.

Women are much more likely than men to indicate they were most influenced to become candidates by a woman. When candidates identified a political contact (e.g., a party leader or elected official) as the most influential person driving their candidacy in the 2018 LCS, almost half of women (43% of Democrats and 53% of Republicans) but far fewer men (15% of Democrats and 18% of Republicans) named a woman contact. This pattern is consistent with previous research showing that women party leaders are more likely than men to recruit women candidates (Sanbonmatsu Reference Sanbonmatsu2006). For example, my study of county party recruitment activities revealed that only when parties were led by women did a party’s efforts to identify and recruit candidates increase women’s presence among recruited candidates (Crowder-Meyer Reference Crowder-Meyer2013).

Women candidates are also more likely than men to be inspired to run by prominent political women. When I asked respondents to the 2018 LCS to identify someone they did not personally know who was a key role model influencing their first run for political office, 39% of Democratic women and 47% of Republican women named a female role model, while only 14% of Democratic men and 9% of Republican men did so.Footnote ⁴ This too suggests that the presence of women political figures – whether in local communities or on a more prominent stage – plays a sizable role in inspiring women’s candidacies.

Yet, women’s presence both among candidate recruiters and as visible political role models is unequal between the two major parties in the United States and many other nations (O’Brien Reference O’Brien2018). For example, in 2008, 77% of Republican and 68% of Democratic county party leaders were men (Crowder-Meyer Reference Crowder-Meyer2013). Analyzing data from a follow up survey of this population in 2013 reveals growth in this party gap, with men composing 74% of Republican and 61% of Democratic county party leader positions.Footnote ⁵ This has consequences for women candidates’ emergence, as Republican women are even less likely than Democratic women to encounter a woman party leader who could serve as an influential source of encouragement to run.

Additionally, there are many more Democratic than Republican women in elected offices – leading to a gap in prominent women role models between the parties. Almost 70% of women state legislators are Democrats and over 80% of women in the US Congress are Democrats (CAWP 2019) and Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, continues to be the only woman ever nominated for president by a major party in the United States. Additionally, due to the two parties’ cultures, while Democratic women may promote their gender when running – highlighting their position as role models – Republican candidates have incentives to not to, as exemplified by comments from Republican Diane Harkey as she campaigned for Congress in 2018: “I want all voters, I like men too. I don’t think it helps to talk about gender” (Zernike Reference Zernike2018).

In sum, new analysis of my 2018 LCS reveals that women in both parties very often become candidates due to encouragement by women or inspiration from prominent women political figures, and the extant literature demonstrates that women role models increase women’s political engagement more broadly. Thus, the party gap in women’s presence as party leaders and prominent political role models discussed here helps explain the substantial differences between the parties in women’s emergence and success as candidates. Who leads political parties and who holds prominent political offices in the left-leaning Democratic party and the right-leaning Republican party are both a consequence of the parties’ distinct cultures and a factor that will perpetuate the parties’ cultures in the future, maintaining or expanding the party gap in women’s representation.

The Demand for Republican and Democratic Women

Differences in women’s presence as political role models and candidate recruiters in the two parties are not the only reasons women are less often recruited or supported by Republicans than Democrats. Research also reveals a clear party gap in elites’ attitudes toward women candidates. As outlined in this chapter, members of each party’s coalition have produced a Republican party culture that generally opposes the expansion of rights to identity groups and aims to uphold traditional gender roles and a Democratic party culture that supports the expansion of rights to traditionally less powerful groups and responds favorably to women’s representation policy demanders by promoting the advancement of women in politics. These cultures shape behaviors among Democratic elites toward increasing the recruitment and financial and other support of women candidates and among Republican elites toward limiting these behaviors.

For example, a survey of campaign committee and women’s PAC donors revealed that Democrats were substantially more likely than Republicans to report that their political activity was motivated by a candidate’s sex or gender, that gender issues are important to their decision to support a candidate, that they frequently use groups organized around a specific population (e.g., race, gender) to find candidates to support, and that they used a gender-related group to convey a donation to a candidate on their behalf (Crowder-Meyer and Cooperman Reference Crowder-Meyer and Cooperman2018). This holds even when controlling for other distinctions between partisans such as their religious identification or their personal views regarding gender roles. In other words, among Democrats, women candidates’ gender is often a plus – an additional reason to encourage them to run for office or donate funds to their campaign. In contrast, among Republicans, women’s gender is often a minus. Even the Republican respondents to that survey who had donated to women’s PACs only rarely (14%) reported that some or a lot of their political activity in 2011–12 was motivated by candidate gender and most Republican donors reported they had not even heard of most conservative women’s representation policy demander groups (Crowder-Meyer and Cooperman Reference Crowder-Meyer and Cooperman2018). It follows that studies of campaign finance reports find that Democratic women often raise more funds in nomination campaigns than similar Democratic men while Republican women have no fundraising advantage (Kitchens and Swers Reference Kitchens and Swers2016; though see Anastasopoulos Reference Anastasopoulos2016). In fact, one study identifies the advantage in general election campaign funding that Republican men have over Republican women as a key reason why Republican women win US House general elections less often than similar Republican men (Bucchianeri Reference Bucchianeri2018).

Another study, which examines the recruitment activities of Republican and Democratic county party leaders, also identifies distinctions in the demand for women candidates from the two parties. This survey demonstrates first that Democratic party leaders more often than Republicans look for candidates in places where they are more likely to find women, such as among education and child-related organizations and sub-county officeholders (Crowder-Meyer Reference Crowder-Meyer2013), suggesting a greater demand for women candidates among Democrats than Republicans. Further, even after controlling for differences in recruitment locations, men Democratic party leaders are more likely than men Republican leaders to identify women among those their party is recruiting for an upcoming election (Crowder-Meyer Reference Crowder-Meyer2013).

Organizations other than parties are also active in recruiting and supporting candidates. Here too, distinctions in the demand for Democratic and Republican women candidates are clear. In a wide-ranging study of all identifiable women candidate groups (organizations engaged in recruitment, training, and support of women) in American states, Kreitzer and Osborn (Reference Kreitzer and Osborn2019) find that the majority of groups either focus on Democratic women candidates or support only candidates who are pro-abortion rights which, given party polarization on this issue, effectively limits them to only supporting Democratic candidates. Consequently, while organizations supporting Democratic/pro-abortion rights women candidates are present in almost every state, many states do not have specifically Republican/anti-abortion women candidate groups (Kreitzer and Osborn Reference Kreitzer and Osborn2019). And, even when organizations exist to promote Republican women’s candidacies, they may find themselves undercut by Republican party organizations aiming to uphold their party’s culture, as when one women seeking the Republican nomination for US House in 2018 earned endorsements from national women’s groups and congresswomen, but was opposed by local party organizations from which, she reported, “All the good ol’ boys begged [her] not to run” and then actively supported her male opponent (Zernike Reference Zernike2018).

Non-party organizations that financially support women candidates are also much stronger on the Democratic than Republican side. Conservative women’s PACs such as Susan B. Anthony List raise and spend tens of millions less each year than liberal women’s PACs like EMILY’s List (Cooperman and Crowder-Meyer Reference Cooperman, Crowder-Meyer, Shames and Och2018). Liberal women’s PACs are also more likely to spend money in earlier stages of the electoral process when fundraising is particularly consequential and are more likely to bundle contributions to increase funds going to endorsed candidates (Cooperman and Crowder-Meyer Reference Cooperman, Crowder-Meyer, Shames and Och2018). On the other hand, conservative women’s PACs are more likely than liberal women’s PACs to spend money opposing women candidates who do not share their policy goals (Cooperman and Crowder-Meyer Reference Cooperman, Crowder-Meyer, Shames and Och2018). While it may seem surprising that a conservative women’s PAC such as Susan B. Anthony List might spend more independent expenditure funds in 2014 opposing pro-choice Democratic women candidates than supporting Republican women candidates (Cooperman and Crowder-Meyer Reference Cooperman, Crowder-Meyer, Shames and Och2018), this kind of activity is entirely consistent with a Republican party culture that opposes the violation of traditional gender roles – roles pro-choice Democratic women candidates are violating both by running for office and supporting abortion rights (Crowder-Meyer and Cooperman Reference Crowder-Meyer and Cooperman2018).

Democratic Voters Prefer Women Candidates

While support from political elites and campaign donors can help candidates move toward electoral success, their eventual election to political office depends on also earning the support of voters. This is directly necessary in systems like the US where voters choose between candidate names on a ballot, and can also matter in party-list systems, both as parties choose in what order to list candidates and when voters are permitted to support specific candidates in open-list systems. Yet there is evidence that among voters, too, party culture shapes support for women candidates.

In any election, there are many factors shaping a voter’s choice between candidates. It can be especially difficult to measure Republican support for women candidates because so few women seek office as Republicans for reasons already discussed. Hence, researchers have used experiments to investigate how party and ideological identification affect support for women candidates. These experiments suggest that the Democratic party culture which supports expanding women’s presence in positions of power and the Republican party culture which supports maintaining traditional gender roles extends to ordinary voters in each party. For example, one recent study that uses a list experiment to avoid social desirability bias in responses finds that virtually no Democrats report hostility toward a woman president while many Republicans do, and this difference holds even when controlling for differences between partisans in age, gender, education, and other traits (Burden, Ono, and Yamada Reference Burden, Ono and Yamada2017). In a study I conducted with Shana Kushner Gadarian and Jessica Trounstine, we asked survey respondents to vote in a series of fictional elections between candidates whose names signaled their gender and race/ethnicity. We found that Democrats preferred women to men candidates in both low and high information elections, and Republicans preferred men to women candidates, though this difference was only statistically significant in the lower information election condition (Crowder-Meyer, Gadarian, and Trounstine Reference Crowder-Meyer, Gadarian and Trounstine2020). Indeed, a recent meta-analysis of survey experiments concludes that on average across many studies, women candidates are slightly disadvantaged among Republican respondents and are advantaged among Democratic (and Independent) respondents (Schwarz and Coppock Reference Schwarz and Coppock2019).

Democratic voters’ likelihood of favoring women over men candidates can be seen in a real-world election as well. In the 2016 Democratic presidential primary election, all Democratic voters in New York were offered ballots with an equal number of Democratic men and women candidates to choose from when voting for presidential nominating convention delegate positions. My colleagues and I evaluated how Democratic voters made their choices and found clear evidence that Democratic voters prefer women candidates to men even in this real-life election (Crowder-Meyer, Gadarian, and Trounstine Reference Crowder-Meyer, Gadarian and Trounstine2020). The gender bonus in Democratic voters’ support for women was largest on ballots where other information about the candidates was less clear, suggesting that when Democrats know little else about candidates in an election, they are predisposed to favor women – a behavior consistent with a Democratic party culture that advocates for the promotion of candidates from identity groups generally and the support of women candidates specifically.

Together, this research demonstrates that women’s greater representation as Democratic than Republican elected officials derives from differences between the parties not just in the supply of women candidates, nor in the demand for and support of women candidates by party elites and donors, but also in how voters from each party determine which candidates to support. Because partisanship is such a strong predictor of vote choice, Democratic voters’ preference for women and Republican voters’ preference for men will have less effect in partisan general elections where candidates from each party compete against each other directly (Badas and Stauffer Reference Badas and Stauffer2019). However, the effects of voters’ gender preferences are likely to constrain the choices that general election voters are offered, by hindering Republican women’s ability to win Republican primary elections and promoting Democratic women’s success in their party primaries in the United States, and potentially by affecting the decisions of elites constructing party lists in other electoral systems.

Republican and Democratic voters’ preferences for men and women candidates respectively are also likely to affect who wins local elections in the United States, which are often non-partisan and thus where gender cues will be most powerful (Badas and Stauffer Reference Badas and Stauffer2019; Crowder-Meyer, Gadarian, and Trounstine Reference Crowder-Meyer, Gadarian and Trounstine2020). As Democratic voters vote disproportionately for women candidates, this should help build a much more substantial pipeline of experienced women officials in Democratic-leaning localities, while women will remain absent from the local officeholder pipeline in localities that lean Republican and thus disproportionately support men candidates. This pattern could contribute to differences in the supply of experienced Democratic and Republican women candidates available to seek higher offices.

Conclusion

Ensuring policy makers are representative of their constituents is essential to the quality and stability of democratic governance. When citizens see representatives in government who share their descriptive traits, this increases their trust in government and political engagement and increases the likelihood that the laws produced by policy makers are responsive to the concerns of a broad set of citizens (Atkeson Reference Atkeson2003; Childs Reference Childs2004; Clayton, Josefsson, and Wang Reference Clayton, Josefsson and Wang2017; Holman Reference Holman2014; Reingold and Harrell Reference Reingold and Harrell2010; Schwindt-Bayer Reference Schwindt-Bayer2010).

Yet an examination of gender representation in politics worldwide highlights a failure to achieve equality in political representation for men and women. While women have held the right to participate in politics through voting for a century or more in many nations, today women hold only 25 percent of national parliamentary seats worldwide and hold a share of legislative seats lower than their share of the population in 187 of 191 nations (IPU Parline Reference Parline2020). While men’s disproportionate hold on political offices extends across diverse party systems and electoral structures (O’Brien Reference O’Brien2018), women’s representation is particularly poor in right-leaning parties both in the United States (Dittmar Reference Dittmar2019) and globally (O’Brien Reference O’Brien2018).

This chapter helps to explain this gender inequality in political representation by examining the ways that party cultures shape women’s representation. If a society’s or organization’s culture is powerfully influenced by those focused on maintaining traditional gender roles, this affects each step in the candidacy and electoral process to hinder women’s representation. In contrast, a culture built to be responsive to the appeals of subgroups and to promote the expansion of rights to marginalized groups can bring about greater equality in political representation by affecting candidate emergence, support, and electoral success. This chapter has outlined how this process works to diminish men’s political overrepresentation in the United States in the left-leaning Democratic party and maintain men’s political dominance in the right-leaning Republican party over time by affecting both the supply of men and women candidates and the demand for them among political elites and voters.

Leftist parties around the world generally have a more liberal or feminist gender ideology shaping their culture while rightist parties have a more traditional gender role culture (Campbell and Erzeel Reference Campbell and Erzeel2018) and there is some evidence these cultures are affecting women’s representation outside the United States as well. For example, as I have described in the United States, the left-leaning Democratic party has responded to groups demanding increased women’s representation with greater recruitment and support of women candidates both by the party and affiliated organizations. In contrast, the right-leaning Republican party remains much less likely to support women candidates due to their gender despite calls from some Republicans to improve women’s representation. Cross-national studies of party adoption of gender quotas similarly find that right-leaning conservative and nationalist parties are least likely to adopt national election gender quotas aimed at increasing women’s representation while left-leaning parties more frequently institute these measures (Caul Reference Caul2001; O’Brien Reference O’Brien2018). Additionally, as discussed in this chapter, women more often lead Democratic than Republican local party organizations and hold many more prominent political offices as Democrats than Republicans in the United States, providing more role models and recruiters for left- than right-leaning women candidates. Looking globally, we similarly see that right-leaning conservative parties have been led by women less often over the past several decades than most other types of parties (though some right-leaning parties, such as Christian Democrats, are more similar to some left-leaning parties on this measure) (O’Brien Reference O’Brien2018).

Evidence from both the United States and other nations further indicates that the party cultures shaping women’s representation are strong. As this chapter outlines, while there are organizations aimed at supporting women candidates on both the left and the right in the United States, among the rightist Republican party, even donors to these women’s PAC organizations are only rarely motivated to political action by candidate gender. In contrast, among the leftist Democratic party, women candidates’ gender motivates support even outside of the groups specifically focused on increasing women’s representation. Similarly, a cross-national examination reveals that structures ostensibly aimed at improving women’s representation – voluntary gender quota policies – do not actually yield more women members of parliament (MPs) among rightist Christian Democratic parties that have instituted them while they do produce more women MPs for leftist parties (O’Brien Reference O’Brien2018). Furthermore, while women do lead rightist parties – in some cases at similar rates as they lead leftist parties – right-leaning parties have similar numbers of female MPs whether they are led by men or women while left-leaning parties led by women have substantially more women MPs than those led by men. And, “female leaders from right parties do not appoint more women to their cabinets than their male counterparts and are actually outperformed by male left party leaders on this front” (O’Brien Reference O’Brien2018, 40). Thus, even factors that one might expect to improve women’s representation – such as women’s PACs, gender quotas, or women in party leadership – often fail to do so when they are embedded in right-leaning parties and constrained to function within their conservative ideologies and party cultures.

This provides a strong explanation for men’s continued substantial overrepresentation in politics around the world, and particularly so within right-leaning parties. Nevertheless, there are reasons to expect some movement toward greater gender balance in representation in the future. First, as this chapter has demonstrated, in left-leaning parties – such as the Democratic party in the United States – a party culture that is less hierarchical and supportive of the expansion of roles, rights, and responsibilities to diverse groups can shape each stage of the candidacy and election process to continue to increase women’s political representation in coming years. Second, even right-leaning parties may experience pressure to increase women’s representation – particularly motivated by concerns about losing elections. In the 2018 elections in the United States, Democrats won a large proportion of congressional seats, in part due to the victories of a record-setting number of women candidates, while the Republican party’s number of women in Congress dropped. Following this, some within the Republican party pivoted their efforts, for example, through PACs aimed at supporting Republican women early in the electoral process (Adler Reference Adler2019). The 2020 elections exemplify some consequences of this shift, as more Republican women ran for US House and Senate seats in 2020 than ever before (Dittmar Reference Dittmar2021). Similarly, recent studies of parties both in and outside the United States suggest that electoral losses are an important factor spurring the development of programs to promote women’s representation (Taflaga and Beauregard Reference Taflaga and Beauregard2020) and that those aiming to gain right-leaning party support for improving women’s political representation most often frame their concerns about women’s underrepresentation as a problem related to winning elections (Wineinger and Nugent Reference Wineinger and Nugent2020). Thus, in contexts where right-leaning parties consistently lose elections, they may increase their demand for and support of women candidates.

In sum, while the benefits of achieving gender equality in representation are clear – both symbolically for the functioning of democracy and substantively for the equal representation of all citizens’ preferences in policymaking – the cultures of political parties can serve as powerful boosters or constraints on making progress toward this goal. Party culture shapes every aspect of the electoral process, including the supply of candidates, the development of political ambition, the recruitment activities of political elites and their support for candidates, and the ways voters make decisions on Election Day. The powerful and wide-reaching effects of the party cultures discussed in this chapter suggest that while further progress for women’s representation in left-leaning parties is likely, achievement of gender equality in representation overall will be constrained by the negative effects on women’s representation of right-leaning party cultures. Only with significant change in rightist party cultures, perhaps provoked by frequent electoral losses or a significant shift among the public in favor of progressive, feminist gender ideology, can we expect to see the positive effects for democracy of gender equity in political representation.