Virginia Sapiro

If U.S. Senator Baker Were A Woman: An Experimental Study of Candidate Images

About five percent of American political office holders are women. On this indicator of womens status, the United States approximates the worldwide norm (Putnam, 1976). A central research question for those who study womens political roles is why, given the lack of legal or obvious structural barriers to recruitment of female elites, are women still so underrepresented among political officials. The literature on women and politics offers a number of plausible answers.

Research Frontier Essay: When Are Interests Interesting? The Problem of Political Representation of Women

Recent years have witnessed an increasing demand by women for political representation of women. This demand points the way toward a number of important problems for political research, many of which remain unsolved primarily because of the segregation of womens studies from the dominant concerns of political science. This discussion focuses on the problem of group interests and representation, drawing on and suggesting further research on public opinion, interest groups, social movements, international politics, political elites, and public policy.

The Variable Gender Basis of Electoral Politics: Gender and Context in the 1992 US Election

Despite considerable research, the theory of gender difference in electoral behaviour remains underdeveloped, especially in accounting for variation across elections. We focus on two aspects requiring particular attention: (1) accounts of gender difference, especially distinguishing between positional explanations, in which gender differences stem from men and women taking the same considerations into account, but having different positions on those considerations, or structural explanations, in which gender differences stem from men and women taking different considerations into account in making judgements; (2) the effects of electoral context in cuing gender as a consideration, thus stimulating or inhibiting the appearance of gender differences. We use a case study of the 1992 US presidential election, often labelled ‘The Year of the Woman’, to explore these problems.

Gender, Context, and Television Advertising: A Comprehensive Analysis of 2000 and 2002 House Races:

Are men and women portrayed differently in campaigns? Much scholarship and commentary expects that this is so, yet previous studies provide ambiguous evidence on the extent of gender difference.The authors provide a comprehensive analysis of gender differences in television advertisements in congressional races in 2000 and 2002 with data that allow them to take into account the frequency of airings, the sponsorship of the advertisements, partisanship, and competitiveness of the race. Although some gender differences emerge, the analysis reveals undeniable similarity in the presentation of male and female candidates in television advertisements.

Spectacular Politics, Dramatic Interpretations: Multiple Meanings in the Thomas/Hill Hearings

Symbolic politics theories suggest that political events take on multiple meanings and that societal groups respond to a given event on the basis of different interpretations. We explore this claim through a quantitative case study of popular responses to a single political spectacle, the Senate hearings that investigated Anita Hills claims against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Our findings suggest that Hill and Thomas supporters responded to the hearings on the basis of fundamentally different considerations. Moreover, the considerations that drove support for each actor varied across groups defined by race, gender, and levels of media attention. Finally, different structures of consideration influenced the direction and extremity of mass responses to this spectacle. Our analysis supports interpretivist theories of political communication and casts doubt on the presumption that citizens with opposing responses to a political event share a common dimension of conflict. In addition, we argue that...

Gender Equality in the Public Mind

Abstract Most conceptual research on equality revolves around theoretical texts or legal theory and decisions, thus reflecting the thought of legal, political, or cultural elites. But in a democratic polity, we must attend to the political thought not just of politicos and academics, but ordinary citizens as well. In terms of its political significance, “What does equality mean” requires answering the question: what does equality mean to the mass public? We thus probe the meanings of “gender equality” in the public mind, using a unique set of questions included in the National Election Studies 1991 Pilot Study, and con-textualized within the literatures of feminist and legal theory and political psychology and public opinion. Most importantly, we distinguish among “empirical” and “normative” equality and discontent and among the domains of the polity, economy, and family; feature the problem of “equality” versus “sameness” and consider the relationship of these orientations to peoples own structural circumstances and their other policy and political attitudes. Among the key findings, empirical and normative equality and discontent are functionally different and grounded differently in peoples everyday experiences; they distinguish among different domains of life and, especially, between public and private; and there are generational differences in the relationship of “equality” to “sameness.” We discuss substantive and methodological implications.

Feminism: A Generation Later

Investigations by political psychologists reveal some of the changes in public opinion, gender consciousness, and gender ideology that have taken place since the beginning of the womens movement. There is more general acceptance of equality between the sexes, but even young people still show some adherence to traditional divisions of roles, and traditional gender ideology still plays a part in maintaining inequality. There is still widespread support for a womens movement, especially among women.

Campaigning for Congress in the “9/11” Era: Considerations of Gender and Party in Response to an Exogenous Shock

This article takes advantage of a naturally occurring experiment to examine how congressional campaign advertising responds to dramatic events. Integrating the literatures on issue ownership and gender stereotypes, we ask how campaign rhetoric and substance changed after the attacks of September 11, 2001, paying particular attention to how those responses were mediated by party and gender expectations. Using data from the Wisconsin Advertising Project (WiscAds) of all ad-airings (not merely ads created) in the top 75 to 100 media markets in 2000 and 2002, we find that campaigns stepped up issues relevant to 9/11 consistent with party- and gender-based issue ownership. Republican men gave more attention to the military than any other group and more attention to foreign affairs than Democratic men or women. However, most noteworthy was the dramatic increase in the symbolic use of the flag for all candidates.

Participation by Women in Annual Meetings, 1970-78

In the late sixties, women in the United States became sensitized to their second-class status and organized to raise their consciousness and change their conditions. At the same time women in academia began to organize within their disciplines to address the problems they faced there. Political science was no exception; in 1969, when women constituted 5 percent of the membership of the APSA and 8 percent of all political science faculty teaching in colleges and universities, the APSA Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession and the Womens Caucus for Political Science formed. Numerous reports have revealed a moderate increase in the presence of women in the profession in recent years.1 As Table 1 shows, the percentage of degrees in political science awarded to women has increased since 1970. By the academic year 1976-77 women constituted 11 percent of full-time Jfaculty and 18 percent of part-time faculty. Twenty-three percent of the students entering Ph.D. programs in 1977 were women, a downturn of 3 percent from the previous year, although an overall rise from the previous decade.2

The American National Election Studies: A Progress Report

covering all thirteen presidential elections, and 10 midterm elections, since 1948, a crucial turning point came in 1977 when NSF established NES as the first national social science resource, a model NSF later used with the General Social Survey and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Prior to this time, the leaders of the Michigan election studies, the predecessors of NES, sought funding independently for each election study. Although team leaders, including especially Warren E. Miller, placed great value on developing the time series, sought to explore the frontiers of research on electoral politics and public opinion, and understood the significance of these studies for the broader re-