Laurel Elder

The Partisan Gap Among Women State Legislators

Even a decade into the twenty-first century, women remain severely underrepresented in state legislatures. Much research has focused on the factors that help or hinder womens representation as a group, a focus that has masked the striking difference in womens progress within the two parties. The representation of Democratic women in state legislatures has continued to increase, while the number of Republican women has actually decreased. This article employs state-level data to explore why women legislators have such different levels of representation within the two parties. The central argument is that, as of the twenty-first century, the parties have distinctive cultures that hold consequences for their respective abilities to produce, recruit, and support women elected officials. Processes at both the elite and mass level work together to foster the representation of Democratic women and inhibit the representation of Republican women.

Whither Republican Women: The Growing Partisan Gap among Women in Congress

While the 2006 elections produced important gains for womens representation and power in Congress, they also exacerbated a troubling trend in American politics, the growing partisan gap. Twenty years ago, women in Congress were equally likely to be Republicans or Democrats. Today, Republican women form slightly less than 29 percent of the women in Congress. The partisan gap among women in Congress is a fairly recent, but quickly growing phenomenon in American politics, and one that has significant and disturbing implications for the descriptive and substantive representation of women, as well as the image, functioning, and policies of the major parties. This paper examines the composition of Congress and state legislatures over time and finds that several developments in American politics have contributed to the emergence and growth of the gap: a growing partisan imbalance in the congressional pipeline, the regional realignment of the parties, and the comparatively bigger gains made by non-white women in obtaining congressional seats. The paper concludes by assessing the consequences of the partisan gap and predicting that the gendering of the parties-in-government will only intensify in the wake of the 2008 elections and beyond.

The Politics of Parenthood Parenthood Effects on Issue Attitudes and Candidate Evaluations in 2008

This project employs 2008 National Election Study (NES) data to explore whether parents are different than nonparents in terms of their political attitudes and candidate evaluations. We find that parenthood does have political consequences although often not in ways suggested by conventional wisdom. Rather than finding parents to be a conservative group, our results support the idea that raising children has liberalizing effects on the attitudes of women. Fatherhood shapes attitudes less than motherhood, but these fewer effects are in a conservative direction. We argue that the distinctive politics of mothers and fathers reflects the impact of parenting as a gendered socialization experience combined with the contrasting parenthood themes articulated by the Republican and Democratic parties. Finally, despite media coverage suggesting Sarah Palin’s “Hockey Mom” image would attract parents, especially mothers, to her candidacy and the Republican ticket we find no support for this idea.

Political information, gender and the vote: the differential impact of organizations, personal discussion, and the media on the electoral decisions of women and men

Abstract Although there are many demonstrated ways in which men and women approach politics differently, we know very little about how sources of political information, e.g., mass media, political organizations, differentially influence the vote choices of men and women. Using a rich, contextual dataset containing measures not only of respondent perceptions of political information, but actual content coding of those sources of political information, we estimate how television, newspapers, personal discussants, organizations, and political parties may have impacted the voting of men and women in the 1992 U.S. presidential election. We find that women’s vote choices are more likely than men’s to be influenced by the organizations to which they belong. Women are also more likely to respond to television news with a hostile media bias—they see television newscasts as definitively favoring the candidate that they oppose. We address possible explanations for these patterns of results and point towards directions for additional research.

Perceptions of candidate spouses in the 2012 presidential election: the role of gender, race, religion, and partisanship

ABSTRACT The wives, and more recently, the husbands, of presidential candidates have taken on vital roles in campaigns, acting as surrogates for their partners, mobilizing voters, fundraising, and making high-profile speeches as well as appeals to targeted groups of voters. Despite their importance, presidential candidate spouses represent an under-investigated set of political actors. This project draws on American National Election Study data to analyze public perceptions of the 2012 presidential candidate spouses, Michelle Obama and Ann Romney, and explore how these perceptions compare to attitudes about previous presidential candidate spouses going back to 1992. Since these two spouses represent historic firsts, with Michelle Obama the first Black presidential candidate spouse and Ann Romney the first Mormon presidential candidate spouse, our analysis pays particular attention to the role of gender, race, and religion in public evaluations of these two women. This study also explores how and why candidate spouses are able to remain quite popular even in today’s highly partisan environment. Our results provide insights into key areas of stability and change in the public’s views and expectations for would-be first ladies.

The Politics of Walmart Moms: Parenthood and Political Attitudes in the 2012 Election

ABSTRACT This research uses 2012 National Election Studies data to explore how parenthood shapes the public opinion of women and men. Our analyses show that being a parent shapes attitudes on issues directly connected to children, such as government funding for education and day care, but also on issues less connected to the day-to-day activities of parenting, including the appropriate role of government and abortion. While the label “Walmart Mom” captures the reality that a large and growing number of mothers are struggling economically, the effect of motherhood, on most issues, holds for all women, regardless of socioeconomic status. This article discusses the implications of our findings concerning the politics of motherhood and fatherhood in light of the changing structure of America’s families.

The Children Gap on Social Welfare and the Politicization of American Parents, 1984–2000

Having and raising children bring about tremendous change in the lives of parents, and it seems likely that these changes may have a political dimension to them. In this article, we use National Election Studies data from 1984 to 2000 to explore the impact of children on social welfare policy attitudes, with special focus on how children influence the sexes differently. Our findings show that having children does have a significant effect and affects the views of men and women differently. Women with children were significantly more liberal on social welfare issues than those without, whereas children had either no effect or possibly a conservative impact on the views of men. Moreover, the impact of parenthood grows stronger across the 1990s. We argue that two factors lie behind the increased and gendered impact of parenthood: the changing nature of the American family, particularly the role of mothers, and the politicization of the American family.

Parenthood and the polarisation of political attitudes in Europe

Becoming a parent can affect the lives of men and women by introducing salient new social roles and identities, altered social networks and tighter constraints on financial resources and time. Even though modern family life has evolved in many important respects, parenthood continues to shape the lives of men and women in very different ways. Given that parenthood can change the lives of men and women in profoundly different ways, it seems that it would bring about changes in the way women and men think about politics and policy issues. Using data from the Wave 4 of the European Social Survey, this article investigates how parenthood, and the distinctions of motherhood and fatherhood, influence attitudes. The findings suggest that parenthood can have a polarising effect on attitudes, and that the polarising effect is most evident in countries where there is less support from the state for parental responsibilities.

Red Parents, Blue Parents: The Politics of Modern Parenthood

Abstract Over the past several decades the major parties in the US have not only politicized parenthood, but have come to offer increasingly polarized views of the ideal American family. This study builds on recent scholarship exploring the political impact of parenthood (e.g. Elder, Laurel, and Steven Greene. 2012a. The Politics of Parenthood: Causes and Consequences of the Politicization and Polarization of the American Family. Albany, NY: SUNY Press; Greenlee, Jill. 2014. The Political Consequences of Motherhood. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.) by comparing Republican and Democratic parents in terms of family structure as well as attitudes about parental roles and child rearing. This study draws on a fairly unique data set, the Pew Research Center’s Gender and Generations Survey, as well as more traditional data sets, to further our understanding of the politics of modern parenthood in the United States. We find that the starkly contrasted red families versus blue families painted in some research and news commentary does not hold up when examined with individual level data. On average, Republican and Democratic parents start their families at the same age and have the same number of kids. And despite the parties’ polarized messages about the ideal family structure, Republican moms are just as likely to be working as Democratic moms. Where partisanship does divide red and blue families is on attitudes about working mothers and perhaps most interestingly, when it comes to the way men conceptualize their roles and performance as fathers. Democratic dads possess more egalitarian attitudes about parenting and less authoritarian attitudes about child-rearing, and, perhaps because they expect more from themselves as care-givers, they struggle more with work-family balance and are less satisfied with themselves as parents. In contrast, Republican fathers embrace more traditional views about parenting and parental authority and rate themselves more highly as parents. This study concludes by exploring the implications of the politics of modern parenthood for the 2016 presidential election and beyond.

Contrasting party dynamics: A three decade analysis of the representation of Democratic versus Republican women state legislators☆

Abstract This research explores the partisan dynamics characterizing womens representation in state legislatures over time, a dynamic that is obscured when focusing on women as a single group undifferentiated by party. The realignment of the parties ideologically, and over the appropriate role for women in particular, has impacted their respective abilities to recruit, support, and elect women. As the Republican party became more conservative over the past three decades, gains among Republican women legislators stalled, and in some cases reversed. Republican women have faced their biggest obstacles in conservative states dominated by Republicans and made their biggest gains in states trending Democratic, where Republican seats are arguably less valuable. In contrast, the Democratic partys comparatively stronger support for gender equality, as well as its alliance with feminist groups focused on electing more women to office, has made it a more welcoming home for women seeking political careers. The Democratic party has effectively tapped into the growing pool of working women to facilitate a steady increase in Democratic women legislators in all regions of the country. These differing party dynamics have implications for womens descriptive and substantive representation, the prospects for women in higher office, and the image and future viability of the two parties.