Making Progress: The Latest on Women and Running for Office

Making Progress: The Latest on Women and Running for Office

ANNIE S LIST

THE ANNIE S LIST AGENDA

FELLOWS INTRO Ashley Thomas Ari HollandBaldwin

QUESTIONS 1. What is the current state of women s political representation in the country and in Texas? 2. How do women make the decision to run? 3. Do women face more barriers on the campaign trail? In doing our research, these were 3 main questions we hoped to address 1. 2. 3. Current standing of women s political representation nationwide and specifically in Texas The factors women consider when running for office And finally, whether or not women face barriers preventing them from campaigning and winning elections

What is the current state of women s political representation in the country and in Texas? We will be taking you through women s political representation nationwide and in Texas to show you where we are and how we got there

SNAPSHOT Women in Elected Office in 2017 Congress: 19.1% 36.2% Women of Color Statewide elected office: 24% 9.3% Women of Color State legislatures: 24.9% 23.9% Women of Color Mayors: 20% Rutgers: CAWP; CAWP The Center for American Women in Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers looks at the number of women in government offices in the federal, state, local level every year. This gives you an idea of how many women are in office at every level of government. Congress: Of the 19.1% women in Congress, there are 36.2% women of color Statewide elective office includes positions such as governor, lt. gov, state treasurer, etc. There are around 312 potential seats in elective office compared to the 535 potential offices in Congress. This is a smaller group of people which could explain the dramatic difference in women of color in office. Mayors: In 100 of the largest cities in the US, 20 mayors are women. Of the 20, 7 are women of color. There is around 20% representation in these three political bodies; and we will continue to do a deeper dive into Congress, state legislatures, and Texas specifically to show you how we got to this level of representation and what it means for women.

Pew Research Center We start off with 1973 because that s the year Barbara Jordan was elected 1973: Barbara Jordan (first black congresswoman elected to the House from Texas) 1993: 1992 was the Year of the Woman (47 women elected to the House, 4 elected to the Senate) 2017: Secretary Clinton was first woman to receive the presidential nomination from a major political party. (84 in the House, 21 women in the Senate) We are seeing progress in representation over time; however according to the Institute for Women s Policy Research, women will not achieve parity of representation until 2117. This is 100 years from now. What does this tell us? 1. Growth is too slow 2. Broken links in the political pipeline almost parity in school boards https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/02/us/02timelinelisty.html?_r=0 No Southern state has ever elected a woman of color to the US Senate (IWPR, 2016)

1992 Year of Women http://statusofwomendata.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/02/swsexecsummaryfinal. pdf if we continue this growth will reach parity by 2117 (takes us 100 yrs)

WOMEN IN STATE LEGISLATURES Carroll Women in State Government: Still Too Few The Council of State Governments study found that around 1999 we start to see leveling off and stagnation of women representation in state legislatures. These developments indicate that increases in representation over time are not inevitable and that there needs to be a push to get more women to run for office It also could indicate that links in political pipeline are broken and if women are not getting experience in state legislative positions then it may prevent them from running for higher office. We are also seeing stagnation in our state, Texas, as well.

WOMEN IN TEXAS CAWP what does this mean for Texas women? despite being 50% of the population: women are only 8% of the Texas Delegation to US House of Representatives only 1 of the 9 statewide elective officeholders is a woman women make up 20% of the State Legislature state legislature ranked 34th in the country we re below the national average for state legislatures (24.8%) additionally, only 35.9% of the legislature is made up of people of color, even though they make up 57% of the state s population Who Leads Us estimates that white men have 6.3x the political representation of the general population here in TX

WOMEN IN TEXAS We are stagnating in terms of representation here in Texas, and across various levels of government We re supposed to be a democracy that represents the people if we want the Texas government, and the federal government to reflect the people that live here, we need to be electing more women, and to do that, we need more women to run

How do women make the decision to run? as i mentioned before, women are not running for office at the same rate as men for example, Political Parity found that from 19802012, women were only 13% of Congressional candidates so if men are 87% of candidates, it makes sense that they make up so much of Congress or even state legislatures in looking at mayoral candidates in the 100 largest cities in the country Of 576 candidates, only 19.3% were women 42% of the cities had no female mayoral candidates at all Last year, only 22.8% of candidates for the TX State Legislature were women 333 candidates filed, but only 76 were women with that in mind, Ashley and I decided to look into How women make the decision to run to better understand why women aren t running at the same rate as men

AMBITION One widely cited reason for the lack of women s representation in elected office is because fewer women run for office. To explain this, many studies focus on a lack of political ambition among women this idea of political ambition is often centered around a person having longstanding goals of holding elected office Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox surveyed more than 3500 men and women in 2011, and found that men and women surveyed reported significantly different levels of political ambition The more recent research that we ve been reviewing this summer (namely Sanbonmatsu and Carroll) says that this idea of political ambition is centered around the experiences of men, and if we really want to understand how women make the decision to run for office so now we re going to at the factors that women weigh more heavily to demonstrate that women and men are driven by different factors and ultimately make the decision to run if different ways Sanbonmatsu, Kira and Susan J. Carroll. Women s Decisions to Run for Office: A Relationally Embedded Model. The Political Psychology of Women in US Politics, edited by Angela L. Bos and Monica C. Schneider, Routledge, 2017, pp. 148 164. (available for purchase on Amazon) used survey data from CAWP Recruitment Studies from 1981 and

2008 to test the model and compare the responses of female and male state legislators.

WHY RUN? Sanbonmatsu and Carroll, 2016 State legislators (representatives and senators) were included in the study, and were asked to reflect on why and how they made the decision to run for office. Representatives were asked to select the most important reason for their pursuit of office Women s top responses were: 1. One or more specific public policy issues 2. Being asked by a party leader or elected official 3. Longstanding desire to be involved in politics Men s top responses were: 1. Longstanding desire to be involved in politics 2. One or more specific public policy issues 3. Desire to change government being asked is not even in the top three This reinforces the idea that men and women use different criteria when making the decision to run. Additionally, it demonstrates the importance of being asked for women. 23.8% of women stated that being asked was the most important reason that they sought office compared to only 14.8% of men. see Sanbonmatsu and Carroll citation in the notes of slide 13

FAMILY CONSIDERATIONS Sanbonmatsu and Carroll, 2016 women in the study were less likely to have young children women and men weighed their families and family responsibilities differently when making the decision to run for office women are more likely to consider HOW their candidacy will impact their families participants were asked to consider their first run for office, and were asked to rank various factors based on their importance in the decision making in both surveys, women were significantly more likely to state that their children s ages were very important

ORGANIZATIONAL ENCOURAGEMENT Sanbonmatsu and Carroll, 2016 Participants were asked whether an organization, like Annie s List or a community organization, played an important role in making the initial decision to run, and in both surveys, women were more likely to report benefiting from organizational encouragement this shows that men and women value organizational encouragement differently, not to say that men receive less encouragement, but to say that they don t value encouragement as highly as women or at the same rates as women

Lawless If Only They d Ask; ; Previously discussed research demonstrates that it s important to women to be asked to run for office; and this study shows that those needs aren t being met. Study by Lawless and Fox found that female candidates are less likely to be recruited by actors in their political party This includes party leaders, elected officials, and activists The recruitment gap could be a contributing factor to the gender disparity in representation To me it shows, that conscious efforts will need to be made in order to get more women running for office; either from political parties or organizations like Annie s List

PARTY INVOLVEMENT CrowderMeyer: Gendered Recruitment Without Trying Building on the research another study, over a 30 year period reinforces the findings: Study of a survey of party leaders across the nation and found two types of recruitment paths within political parties: Hierarchy model: Using current and past legislators to recruit potential candidates and found to be more prevalent in the Republican Party; and this structure resulted in the recruitment of more male candidates Social Network model: Loose network based structure that found candidates amongst local level offices like school boards, as well as education and childrelated organizations more prevalent in the Democratic Party and drew more women candidates; Political parties have used mass advertisements and mailings to recruit candidates; but this study showed that men were more likely to respond than women. This underscores that women may need to be personally asked to run for office. Further illustrates the importance of women being asked to run for office. So, ultimately the way the party structure influences the candidates are

recruited and this could be a reason why there is a lack of women running for office. Women are not being approached in a way that will motivate them to run for office. If there aren t changes to recruitment methods; then it will not increase the proportion of women running for office.

BY CONSIDERING THEIR RELATIONSHIPS Sanbonmatsu and Carroll, 2016 so ultimately, all of this information reinforces this idea that women make their decisions to run for office using different factors than men women are driven by different things, as we saw, they were more likely to run because of a policy problem, while men were most likely to run because they had alway viewed politics as a career goal additionally, we saw that women considered their families and organizational and party encouragement differently women were more likely to consider the impact of their candidacies on their families and valued encouragement more highly than their male counterparts so if we really want to help women run for office, we need to stop looking at their experiences through the male lens, but instead, view women through their own framework Sanbonmatsu and Carroll see that the idea of running for office often originates outside of the individual over 50% of female legislators said that they had not thought about running until someone else suggested it, compared to 28% of male legislators When making the decision to run, women are more likely to be influenced by beliefs and reactions of others.

Research shows that women approach the question of running for office differently from men. Women frequently report a relationally embedded model of candidate emergence, instead of an ambition model the authors contend that relationships can cause ambition to develop

IDENTITIES IMPACT EMERGENCE within this evolving research on candidate emergence, there was a study done here in Texas that explored women s decision to run stories the researchers interviewed women here in Texas who had run for office, and ultimately found that encouragement played a different role for women of different racial groups so we should note that while encouragement may be important for some women, it may not hold the same value for all groups of women, namely women of color Frederick, Angela Who Better to Do It Than Me!: Race, Gender & the Deciding to Run Accounts of Political Women in Texas Qualitative Sociology, 2014 37:3, pp. 301321.

Do women face more barriers on the campaign trail? The earlier cited Lawless and Fox 2012 study, Men Rule found a number of reasons for the current underrepresentation of women once such reason was that women included in their survey were more likely to perceive electoral environment to be highly competitive and hostile to women Women viewed scenarios (provided in the survey) as political deterrents at a higher rate than men Women reported more negative views of fundraising, voter contact, dealing with the press, and engaging in a negative campaign 41% of men were deterred compared to 52% of women with these negative perceptions in mind, we decided to examine research on campaign experiences including family life, media coverage, voter attitudes, fundraising, and incumbency to determine whether or not these negative perceptions reflect outcomes

FAMILY AND PERSONAL LIVES Barbara Lee Foundation First thing we decided to look at is whether a woman s personal life negatively impacted her candidacy. Research from a focus group conducted by Barbara Lee Foundation conducted a study with simulated scenarios including attack ads on fictional female candidates. Research shows that female candidates with young children face a tougher challenge in overcoming voter critiques than their peers with older children On the other hand, female candidates that do not have children or a family are perceived to be unable to understand the concerns of families People in the focus groups recognized the double standard of attacking a woman based on her family however, they still felt that candidates need to be prepared to address these concerns But the study showed that women can overcome these negative attacks by acknowledging their family lives and bringing the focus back to policy and their plans to govern.

MEDIA COVERAGE Hayes and Lawless, 2016 Danny Hayes and Jennifer Lawless recently looked into the media coverage of congressional elections Local news matters o people are 4x as likely to get info from a local newspaper (House district races) They explored whether local news coverage served as an obstacle for women o 10,375 stories about 1550 candidates in 815 districts o Analyzed local news stories for campaigns in 2010 and 2014, and found almost no gender differences in the volume or substance of news coverage o 95% of women and 96% of men received no coverage of their appearance at all o Slight difference when discussing women s issues o Might shape the discussion I expected the media to focus on appearance, or family life, when discussing a woman candidate, or even to cover her campaign at a different, but looking at this data, we see that women did not receive less coverage and they didn t receive different coverage. Hayes, Danny and Jennifer L. Lawless. Women on the Run, Cambridge, 2016. (available for purchase on Amazon)

VOTER ATTITUDES Hayes and Lawless, 2016 Again: Women on the Run, 2016, Hayes and Lawless The lack of women s representation makes people think that women experience discrimination when it comes to the ballot, but studies show that women just perform as well as men: 2016 State Legislative Candidate Win Rates (CAWP) when comparing female and male candidates in the 2016 State Legislative races: Democrats: women won 53.21% and men won 54.48% when it came to the Senate and House races last year, Democratic women actually fared better than men on both levels of Congress (see slide 27) Political Parity conducted a study of Congressional races between 19802012 found that women were only 13% of candidates also found that women of color were much more likely than white women to win the general election : Additionally, Hayes and Lawless argue that our current political landscape is more equitable to women than any before women and men run similar campaigns, receive similar media

coverage, and similar treatment by voters candidates focus on content > media focuses on content > voters focus on content Political polarization and partisanship is the focus, not gender people focus more on the party of the candidate, rather than the gender or specifics of the candidates whether someone aligns with a voter s idea of their party is the most important factor right now surveyed 3000 voters to see if they assessed candidates differently based on gender 487 comments, only 27 referenced gender many participants didn t even make comments at all stereotypes persist, but are prevalent when gender is a novelty

INCUMBENCY Palmer and Simon, 2008. Incumbency does not benefit women in the same way that it does men 2x more likely to be challenged Role Model Effect Another issue that women encounter along the campaign trail, is that of incumbency. Last year, incumbents in the US House of Representatives had a win rate of 98%. This impacts women because incumbents are usually male. They retain their seats with high success rates, and if they are keeping their seats, this means that there are fewer open seats that women can run for. A recent study, conducted by Barbara Palmer and Dennis Simon, found that even when women are incumbents, they face a more difficult campaign environment than men. "in an average election year, over 70 percent of incumbents have no opponent in the party primary" Female incumbents were twice as likely to be challenged in primaries and general elections. 6.9% vs 14.6% So while female incumbents may win at the same rate as men, and

sometimes at higher rates, they run more difficult campaigns. Palmer, Barbara and Dennis Simon. Breaking the Political Glass Ceiling: Women and Congressional Elections, Routledge 2008. (available for purchase on Amazon)

FUNDRAISING Burrell, 2014. Money and Women Candidates We also decided to look into campaign fundraising. I originally thought that women would struggle to raise as much money as men. Barbara Burrell looked at Congressional races in a 19 year period (19932012); focused on candidates with major party opponents; used FEC data to compare average amounts of money male/female candidates raised in these elections Found that women outperformed men, edged ahead in 2000 and continued to outpace over time Men and women were initially raising similar amounts of money; and over time women have begun to outperform men it s not that women aren t good at raising money; as Ari just mentioned men are more likely to be incumbents and benefit from incumbency when it comes to fundraising for example, incumbents in 2002 had a $31 million dollar advantage over their challengers (see Palmer and Dennis) Looked at these factors of campaign trail to see what barriers women face in campaigning for office We found that some factors that negatively impact women; but

women do succeed in other aspects of the campaign trail things aren t as negative as we perceive them to be; that is evident in the win rates specifically looking at the win rates for state legislature Burrell, Barbara. Gender in Campaigns for the US House of Representatives, the University of Michigan Press, 2014, pp. 116 149. (available for purchase on Amazon)

STATE LEGISLATIVE WIN RATES Democrats Republicans Women Men Women Men All General Election Nominees 53.21% 54.48% 66.67% 72.54% Incumbent 94.57% 93.93% 94.50% 96.89% Nonincumbent 23.79% 13.60% 35.83% 29.52% Main Takeaways: Women have nearly equivalent win rates to their male counterparts Nonincumbent Democratic women fared better than their male counterparts Dittmar Candidates Matter: Gender Differences in Election 2016 Study over the 2016 election published by the Center for American Women in Politics found that women are winning at nearly the same rate as men and that non incumbent Democratic and Republican women fared better than their male counterparts. There are barriers for women in running for office; but women are performing and outperforming men in other factors The study demonstrates that when women run; they win!

YES AND NO One of our questions was whether women face more barriers on the campaign trail. Yes and No Women didn t have a more difficult time of campaigning, but they did have different experiences campaigning than men So what this means is that while women and men perceive the campaign trail to be more difficult, that may not always be true, so we need to help people understand that just because there is a perception that the campaign process to be more difficult for women; that s not what we necessarily in action Hopefully by clearing up some of these perceptions, more women will feel confident to run for office Yes: Women aren t as likely to be approached by political actors to run for office Incumbency doesn t affect women the same way Potentially women can face additional scrutiny over their families and personal lives No Lawless research demonstrates that women perceive campaigning as more discriminatory; however the research that we have shown to you today largely debunks those perceptions

Research shows that media coverage isn t based on gender, but on political polarization Research shows that when women run, they win

Q&A

HELP ELECT WOMEN Connect and Support our Mission El Paso Reception 8/11 Austin Reception 9/26 Houston Reception 10/5 Build the Ballot Tarrant County 10/19 San Antonio Luncheon 10/27 Dallas Luncheon 11/10 Ready To Run: Campaign Training El Paso 8/12 Greater Houston 9/9 North Texas 9/23 Central Texas 11/4 Preparing to Run Tarrant County 8/28 Williamson County 10/10