Episodes
Tuesday Dec 09, 2014
Gender and Ethnicity in Parliamentary Representation with Liza Mügge
Tuesday Dec 09, 2014
Tuesday Dec 09, 2014
How does race and gender intersect in a European context and play out in parliamentary representation? While under-representation of both women and ethnic minorities has received considerable attention, European research traditionally has treated women and ethnic minorities as internally homogeneous and conceptually separate groups. Inspired by research on political representation in the U.S., Liza Mügge investigates parliamentary inclusion and exclusion based on the interactions of gender and ethnicity in the Netherlands. By conducting interviews with ethnic minority members of parliaments and analyzing national policy agendas, Mügge examines how institutional and contextual factors, such as backlash against multiculturalism and feminism, affect political representation in the Netherlands. Speaker: Liza Mügge, WAPPP Fellow, 2014-2015; Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Amsterdam
Thursday Aug 21, 2014
Thursday Aug 21, 2014
Although women have made great in attaining positions of power in recent decades, there still remains barriers to women in not only continuing to attain these positions, but also in maintaining them. Women face different challenges than men in the quest for leadership roles and their ability to hold onto these positions. For women, power can still be hard to earn, difficult to signal to others (once power is attained), and, in certain circumstances, easy to lose. Gender stereotypes—our beliefs about what men and women are like—continue to shape our perceptions of women and can ultimately impede women’s progress in gaining, exercising, and maintaining power and leadership. My research on women and the precariousness of their power has examined women in top leadership roles (e.g., the United States Senate), experiments in the lab, and interviews with women who have managed to navigate the challenges of being in leadership positions. Speaker: Victoria Brescoll, WAPPP Fellow; Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior, Yale School of Management
Thursday Aug 21, 2014
More Women Can Run with Kira Sanbonmatsu
Thursday Aug 21, 2014
Thursday Aug 21, 2014
Sanbonmatsu discusses her new book (coauthored with Susan J. Carroll), titled “More Women Can Run: Gender and Pathways to the State Legislatures,” (Oxford University Press, 2013). Analyzing nationwide surveys of state legislators conducted by the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), the book advances a new approach for understanding women’s election to office, challenging assumptions of a single model of candidate emergence and the necessity for women to assimilate to men’s pathways to office. For example, Sanbonmatsu asserts that a model of candidate emergence based on relationships and networks better captures women’s decision-making than an ambition framework in which candidacy is self-initiated. More women can run if more efforts are made to recruit women of varying backgrounds. This research also examines party differences and the reasons that Democratic women are outpacing Republican women. Speaker: Kira Sanbonmatsu, Professor, Department of Political Science, Rutgers University
Thursday Aug 21, 2014
Thursday Aug 21, 2014
Research on women’s candidate emergence identifies a substantial gender gap in political ambition that is well established by the time women and men enter the professions from which political candidates ten to emerge. More specifically, women are one-third less likely than men—even when they are matched professionally, educationally, and politically—ever to have considered running for office. Yet no empirical research has examined thoroughly the origins of the gender gap in political ambition or the relationship between early socialization and interest in running for office. Based on a new national survey of 4,000 high school and college students, we identify the initial causes of the gender gap in political ambition, which is a prerequisite to closing it. Ultimately, our results speak to the gender dynamics of powerful socializing agents, and allow for an assessment of the likelihood that our political institutions will reach gender parity. Speaker: Jennifer Lawless, Associate Professor, Department of Government, American University
Thursday Aug 21, 2014
Thursday Aug 21, 2014
The first is based on a paper I will be presenting at the ECPR conference in early September titled “Exploring Viewer Reactions to Media Coverage of Female Politicians.” This paper explores voters’ responses to non-verbal cues provided by politicians and often included in media coverage. Past research on women and politics has found that in its coverage, the media has tended to focus disproportionately on the assertive behavior and emotional displays of female candidates, yet little work has explored the implications of this coverage on voters’ impressions of these political figures despite its potential to evoke or challenge stereotypes of women and/or politicians. This paper begins to unravel some of the impact that these non-verbal cues may have on voters’ evaluations of politicians and in particular female candidates. Speaker: Joanna Everitt, WAPPP Fellow, University of New Brunswick
Thursday Aug 21, 2014
Thursday Aug 21, 2014
We examine whether women’s electoral success induces greater female political participation in subsequent elections using the regression discontinuity afforded by close elections between women and men, and constituency level data on India’s state elections from 1980-2007, We find that electoral victory for a woman leads to a large and significant increase in the share of female candidates from major political parties in the subsequent election. However, most of this is due to the increased propensity of previous candidates to run again; we do not find an increased entry of new female candidates and no change in female or male voter turnout. We construct a stylized model of political candidacy to investigate the mechanisms driving the increased share of female candidates. Our preliminary results suggest that a reduction in voter bias against women is the main mechanism, rather than an increase in the supply of potential women candidates or a reduction in party bias against women. Speaker: Lakshmi Iyer, Associate Professor and Marvin Bower Fellow, Harvard Business School
Thursday Aug 21, 2014
The Silent Sex: Gender, Deliberation and Institutions with Tali Mendelberg
Thursday Aug 21, 2014
Thursday Aug 21, 2014
Many public settings involve discussions – committees, town meetings, conflict resolution groups, hearings, voluntary associations (clubs, residential associations, churches), etc. Do women exercise their voices to the same extent, and as influentially, as men do? Do women succeed as well as men at speaking, mentioning the topics of distinctive concern to their gender, articulating their own pre-discussion preferences, affecting the group decision, and gaining influence in the eyes of others? Our answer is no. We find a pervasive gender gap in women’s substantive and symbolic representation. But this gender gap shrinks and even closes entirely under the right institutional designs. Speaker: Tali Mendelberg, Professor, Department of Politics, Princeton University