Gender and Political Ambition Revisited: What Questions Does American Politics Research Raise for Western Europeanists? Louise K. Davidson-Schmich University of Miami Paper Presented at the 2006 APSA Annual Meeting Aug 31 – 3 Sept, Philadelphia Abstract This paper reviews the different approaches scholars have used to explain women’s political underrepresentation in long-term democracies. Scholars of American politics often study political ambition and attribute the dearth of women in U.S. politics to American women’s lack of desire for a political career. In contrast, comparativists focusing on western Europe have attributed variation in women’s political representation to structural factors such as the electoral or party system in a given country. Here I combine the two approaches and ask how political institutions condition women’s political ambition cross nationally. Using preliminary evidence I hypothesize that the use of gender quotas may work to increase women’s political ambition in countries that use them. Alternatively, even if women remain less politically ambitious than men in such settings, women’s legislative representation may be improved by forcing political parties to deliberately seek out the available ambitious women in order to fill their quotas. Among the long-term post-industrial democracies there is considerable variation in women’s political presence in national (See Table 1) and subnational legislatures as well as in executive branches. While nowhere have women reached parity with men, in 11 of the EU-15 member states, Norway, Switzerland, and the European Parliament, there are higher percentages of women represented than in the U.S. Congress. In many of these countries representation is considerably higher than in the United States. The European Parliament contains 30.3% women and all western European countries – even Ireland, Italy, France, and Greece whose national parliaments contain fewer women than the U.S. House – send delegations to Brussels with a higher percentage of female deputies than Congress contains. Women have also served as chief executive and have been elected head of state in western European countries while the U.S. Presidency remains an exclusively male domain. Not only does women’s representation differ across the Atlantic, however, so too do the academic explanations for the causes of the degree of women’s representation in various regions. Comparativists studying western Europe have primarily focused on structural factors, or explanations external to women themselves, when trying to explain the presence or absence of women in national legislatures. These factors include, to name just a few, various aspects of the electoral system used (Is it PR? What is the district magnitude? Is there preferential voting?), the presence of gender quotas and/or the type of quota present, the nature of political parties (What nomination procedures do they use? 2 How centralized is the party? What is the party ideology?), the strength of the women’s movement in a given country, the level of modernization, and the national religion.1 While the American politics literature has certainly not ignored such structural influences on women’s representation,2 Americanists have for decades also been very concerned with individual women’s attitudes toward running for office. There is a long tradition of studying gender and political ambition in the American context and much of the explanation of U.S. women’s political underrepresentation has been rooted in the notion that American women just don’t seem to desire political office as much as American men do. To my knowledge, very little (if any) systematic research on gender and political ambition has been done in the western European context. Fiona Mackay’s 2004 essay on “Gender and Political Representation in the UK: The State of the ‘Discipline’” doesn’t mention any literature on political ambition other than to state that this explanation for women’s under representation does not seem plausible (106). Although Americanists and comparativists focusing on western Europe have traditionally sought the roots of women’s political underrepresentation in different places, both sides could benefit from studying the other’s approach. Americanists would profit from considering more closely how the U.S. political structure may constrain American women’s political ambition; studying the United States in an explicitly comparative context would allow them to do so. The focus of this essay, however, will be what 1 For references to this vast literature see Davidson-Schmich 2006. 2 Since political opportunity structures within the U.S. do not vary much, it is difficult for Americanists to assess their causal impact on women’s political underrepresentation in the US. This likely accounts for the dearth of American literature on this front. 3 questions the Americanist literature on gender and political ambition raises for students of comparative politics, specifically those who focus on western Europe. This latter concept has been too long ignored by comparativists. Below I review the American politics literature on gender and political ambition and the questions that the high level of women’s political representation in western Europe raises for the study of gender and political ambition. I then hypothesize about research strategies and possible answers to these questions. The Concept of Political Ambition The study of political ambition was introduced into the American political science field in 1966 with the publication of Joseph Schlesinger’s Ambition and Politics. Schlesinger argued that the accountability of democratically-elected politicians to citizens was ensured because individual politicians are ambitious. That is, they want to either remain in their political position – what Schlesinger termed static political ambition – or, if conditions are right, advance to the next highest position available to them – what he identified as progressive political ambition (1966, 10).3 In both cases, Schlesinger argued, ambitious politicians act on the interests of their voters because doing aids them in their own desire for advancement. Schlesinger’s arguments were well received and this assumption of political ambition pervades the study of American politics today. Gender and Political Ambition in American Politics 3 He also recognized the possibility that politicians could have discrete political ambition. This involves a desire for a particular office for one term – in other words a plan to retire from politics rather than contest the next election. 4 With the exception of one brief section to be discussed below, however, throughout Ambition and Politics Schlesinger uses exclusively male pronouns to refer to politicians. In the intervening forty years, considerable ink has been spilled over the question of whether Schlesinger’s assumption of ambitious politicians applies to women as well as men. The general consensus in the literature is that American women are less politically ambitious than American men. Some of the earliest officeholders in American politics were widows who served out their deceased husband’s term and then returned to private life (Flammang, 1997, 159) – a clear example of discrete political ambition. In 1962, 45% of all female House members to date had been Congressional widows (Gertzog, 2002, 96). One of the earliest studies of women who were elected in their own right was Irene Diamond’s 1977 book Sex Roles in the State House which examined female state legislators in New England, most of whom expressed little or no political ambition of any kind.4 As one of her “housewife-benchwarmer” legislators recalled, the townspeople came and asked me if I would take over [a departing representative’s seat.] I ran unopposed and here I am. … I was really very … unhappy about it. I really didn’t want to do it (Diamond, 1977, 120). Also at this time, Jeane Kirkpatrick, based on a study of female state representatives and senators, observed, “Women do not have the habit of making long range plans for themselves. Few plan careers, or train for them; until recently, few planned families” (1974, 78). This lack of strategic career planning is clearly inconsistent with Schlesinger’s concept of political ambition. 4 She did find a few individuals who were exceptions to this rule, however. 5 A decade later, Susan J. Carroll’s 1985(b) study of female Congressional and state legislative candidates also found limited numbers to be interested in a life-long political career. Further, most candidates did not have ambitions beyond state-level office, a contrast to Schlesinger’s expectation of progressive ambition. Costantini (1990) studied Democratic and Republican presidential nominating convention delegates from California between 1964 and 1986 and found women less ambitious than men, although the gap closed considerably over the period studied. In a subsequent study, Susan J. Carroll (1985a) agreed with this assessment of party activists but found that women who held political office in the 1980s, in contrast to the party activists who became campaign delegates, were just as ambitious as their male counterparts. Further, like Constantini, Gertzog found similar increases in progressive political ambition when tracing U.S. House members’ careers throughout the twentieth century (2002). Despite this closing gap, women’s march into professional occupations, and their rising (but still very limited!) presence in American government, women’s political ambitions remained limited in the 1990s. Bledsoe and Herring (1990) found American male city councilors twice as likely to have progressive ambitions as female city councilors. That is, men were more likely than women to view their local political role as a springboard to higher office. Furthermore, even ambitious women were less likely than ambitious men to actually run for a higher post. Flammang (1997) also found women in local politics in Santa Clara, CA to have only static ambitions. In 1994, the National Women’s Political Caucus found women less than half as likely as men to consider running for office (1). 6 The most recent scholarship in this area, led by Fox and Lawless (2004, 2005) and Lawless and Fox (2005) still finds American women less likely than similarly-placed men to consider a run for office, to think themselves qualified to run for office, or to be willing to run for office.5 Furthermore, women who do serve in Congress are less willing than men to remain there under certain circumstances, harboring only discrete ambitions (Lawless and Theriault 2006; Thomas, Herrick, and Braunstein, 2002, 414). How Students of American Politics Explain this Ambition Gap: Internal Factors While American women have generally been found to be less politically ambitious than their male counterparts over the past four decades, the explanations for these low levels of ambitions have varied over time.6 The primary thrust of this literature has been to look at women themselves – their individual beliefs and qualifications – as the sources of their low levels of political ambition. Initially, scholars stressed the role political socialization played.7 Early studies found that women didn’t see themselves as capable political actors, viewing politics as a man’s job (Lee, 1977, 131). Instead, women were raised to think that competition was unfeminine and competitive behavior would be punished by social sanctions (Lee, 1977, 119). Observers agreed that women were socialized to sit back and wait and be asked to do something; they were not likely to be self-starters (Carroll, 5 Indeed, qualified women’s opting out of top positions in corporate America have also made headlines in the past several years. See Belkin (2003), Kellerman and Rhode (2004), Tischler (2004). 6 One possibility may simply be that American women are as ambitious as American men and have been socialized to deny or downplay their ambition, as it is considered a male trait unbecoming to women (Bledsoe and Herring, 1990, 218; Fox, 1997, 27). While this is indeed possible, the anonymous survey methodology used in many of the studies makes this seem unlikely. Furthermore, since the empirical research cited above has found women in candidate pools less likely than men to actually run, and if elected, to have higher levels of discrete ambition, their actual behavior seems consistent with reported attitudes. 7 Flammang 1997 summarizes this literature well. 7 1985b, 28; Kirkpatrick 1974). Later scholars criticized this work as “blaming the victim” (Darcy, Welsh,and Clark, 1987; Carroll 1993) and more recent work makes much less mention of these aspects of socialization. Nonetheless, many studies have found correlations between a woman’s support for feminism and her level of political ambition (Diamond 1977, Carroll, 1993, 204; Carroll, 1985b, 131; Fox and Lawless, 2003) and it seems likely that the generation of women researched in early studies may indeed have held limited ambitions due to traditional socialization.8 This finding is reinforced by the many studies in American politics that find regional disparities in the numbers of women elected to U.S. state legislatures (Hill 1981, Nechemias 1987, Rule 1990, Flammang, 1997 Fox, 2000, 235). These authors rely on Daniel Elazar’s categorization of regional political culture in the United States (1966). Women hailing from states with traditional political cultures (i.e., the deep South) were less likely to serve in the state legislature than women from other states. More recently, however, Fox and Lawless 2004 find regional culture makes little difference to women’s political ambition, suggesting that even in the most traditional states competitiveness and political ambition may now be socially more acceptable in girls. Indeed, studies of American voters suggest that they are now willing to vote for women and that when women run, women win elections just as often as similarly-placed men (Darcy, Welsh and Clark 1987; Seltzer, Newman, and Leighton, 1997; Duerst-Lahti, 1998, 15). This may explain the closing of the ambition gap between the 1960s and the 1980s. 8 Recent work by Fox and Lawless (2005) finds that politicized upbringing increases political ambition; if girls don’t receive such an upbringing they are unlikely to be ambitious later. 8 While society may now be more willing to accept women candidates in principle, traditional socialization may still make women less ambitious in practice, however – at least in certain stages of their lives. The long and irregular hours associated with a political career make it difficult to combine political office with childrearing and household tasks9 – especially if the office held requires the politician to spend considerable time in Washington or in the state capital. Repeated studies have found women with children at home to have lower levels of political ambition than other groups, especially when an office far from home is considered (Lee, 1977, 128-130; Flammang, 1997, 162-67; Mandel 1983, 86, Fox and Lawless, 200310). Finally, some observers have noted that women are less single-minded about pursuing a political career because they also get satisfaction from their role in the family (Bledsoe and Herring, 1990, 218). However, it is also important to mention that women may not uniquely be burdened with family responsibilities. Other studies have also found men reluctant to run because it could take time from their family (Fowler and McClure 1989, NWPC 1994, Fox and Lawless 2005). It is also the case that not all women are married or have children, and even those who are, do not spend their entire adult lives raising small children. In fact, more women than men in the “eligibility pool” for American candidates are unmarried and/or childless (Fox and Lawless, 2003, 39). Thus family responsibilities might diminish some women’s ambitions at some points in their lives, but seems unlikely to explain the overall political ambition gap. 9 An extensive literature finds that these tasks continue to fall disproportionately to women, even when both parents are employed (See Fox and Lawless, 2003, 22 for references). 10 The same authors do not replicate this finding in their 2004 study, however. 9 Even without children, however, women may focus more on the effects of a political career on their interpersonal relationships than their male counterparts. American women have been found to consider more factors than men do when weighing an elective office (Flammang, 1997, 160; Fox, Lawless, and Feeley 2001). Having a supportive spouse has been shown to be of vital importance for American women considering a run for office while men often ignore their spouse’s opposition (Carroll 1993, 201; Mandel 1983, 73). A study of potential candidates done by the National Women’s Political Caucus found men more likely than women to say that running for office might hurt their personal lives, but nonetheless more men than women were willing to run (1994). Ruth Mandel, found that wives were more likely to support their husband’s candidacy because it would add to family’s income/ status. Husbands, in contrast, were less likely to support their wives’ campaigns because the family’s welfare wasn’t as dependent on her winning; further, husbands were less available than wives to work on campaigns because they more often had their own careers to attend to (1983, 77; see also Thomas, Herrick, and Braunstein, 2002, 404). The fact that spousal support is critical, but often not forthcoming, depresses American women’s overall levels of political ambition. American women are also more likely to leave political office if it clashes with their family responsibilities (Thomas, Herrick, and Braunstein, 2002, 414). Other scholars initially attributed the ambition gap to women’s lack of qualifications for office. Early work found women underrepresented in the professions from which American politicians were usually drawn, such as law and business (Darcy, Welsh, and Clark 1987), making it perhaps unsurprising that they did not feel qualified to run for 10