Women are still underrepresented in local government, despite a woman running for president

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Women are still underrepresented in local government, despite a woman running for president

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Kamala Harris is at the top of a major party ticket running for president. Some people have

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, hoping that it will excite voters enough to elect the first woman president.

But the glass ceiling that

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is still sturdy at other levels of political office across the country.

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research with

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,

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and

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shows that in cities and counties, women remain underrepresented among local officeholders in nearly every political office.

Like many other characteristics of officeholders, such as

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or

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, the gender of elected officials influences the way they make policy.

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has shown that women, and especially

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, elected to state and federal government offices in countries around the world make different spending decisions. Having more women in elected offices might matter especially at the local level, where the details of many of these federal or state spending decisions actually play out.

Congress is infamous for having few women in office. But until now, researchers and the public knew very little about how women and different ******* groups were represented outside the federal government.

We

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from city, county and school district elections covering the past three decades in any city with a population of at least 50,000 people and any county with a population of at least 75,000 in 2020. Using this data, we calculated the share of winning candidates who were women or men.

Our

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shows that women make up a smaller share of elected officials in county governments and city governments than they represent in the population.

The gap between women’s share of the population in counties and women’s share of officeholders in counties is especially large. While women make up just over half of the population in counties, they make up only a little over a quarter of legislators who serve on county councils or county commissions. Women serving as county executives, sheriffs and prosecutors are even rarer. The office of sheriff is especially dominated by men, with women serving in less than 5% of these positions.

City government offices look a little better for women’s representation. Women are not well represented in the mayor’s office—only 24% of mayors are women—and just over a third of elected city councilors are women. The relatively smaller gender gap of elected officials in city government is an improvement over counties, but it is far from gender parity.

School boards are the one exception. On the school boards we studied, women are slightly overrepresented in office relative to men. This may be a result of school boards being what political scientists like us call “

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” offices for women, whom

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.

People learn early in life, through a process researchers call “

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,” to question women’s place in politics. For this reason, women are less likely to express an interest in politics or run for office, and they first show this lack of political ambition early in their childhood. Other research shows that in adulthood,

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can further limit their interest in running for office. Our research shows the consequences of these ambition gaps between men and women in politics: Women remain underrepresented in nearly every local political office, except for school boards.

As Kamala Harris takes on Donald Trump in the presidential election this fall, many pundits and voters are

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—in politics. But no matter the outcome in November, the gender gap between city and county residents and their local elected officials will be large. As a result, the important policies that local governments make might not fully represent the wishes of the people.

Provided by
The Conversation

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under a Creative Commons license. Read the

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Women are still underrepresented in local government, despite a woman running for president (2024, September 16)
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