It Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don't Run for Office

by Jennifer L. Lawless, Richard L. Fox

This important work constitutes a systematic, nationwide empirical account of the effects of gender on political ambition. Based on data from the Citizen Political Ambition Study, a national survey of 3,800 "potential candidates" conducted by the authors, it relates these findings: --Women, even at the highest levels of professional accomplishment, are significantly less likely than men to demonstrate ambition to run for elective office. --Women are less likely than men to be recruited to run for office. --Women are less likely than men to consider themselves "qualified" to run for office. --Women are less likely than men to express a willingness to run for a future office. According to the authors, this gender gap in political ambition persists across generations, despite contemporary society's changing attitudes towards female candidates. While other treatments of gender in the electoral process focus on candidates and office holders, It Takes a Candidate makes a unique contribution to political studies by focusing on the earlier stages of the candidate emergence process and on how gender affects the decision to seek elective office.

Genres: Social Justice

220 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 2005

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Turns out I read this one and not It Still Takes A Candidate like I marked to-read years ago. Whoops.
Hopefully that version is more up to date. Published in 2005, this book loudly wonders why Hillary Clinton chose not to run for president.
Hmm.
Didn't really reveal anything I found surprising and overall irritated me with its supercilious tone. Further, the "academic" writing style did much to mask the the readability of the findings until the authors point-blank draw their very messaged conclusion which left me skeptical.

[Sophie]

Why don't women run? It's a combination of family obligations, the daunting task of fundraising, and a pre-existing confidence gap. Women need to be asked to run 7 times before they'll consider it. And on the other end of the spectrum, ambitious women are not received well.

There's absolutely nothing remarkable about 20% of congress being women.

[Cherylin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I still think of this book often.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this for a college class and it has stuck with me ever since.