Doctoral Dissertation Research: Understanding the Barriers to Political Representation of Women

本研究探讨妇女如何成为新民主国家的候选人。虽然在许多国家，担任民选职位的妇女人数一直在缓慢增加，但人们对往往使妇女比男子更难成为候选人的独特挑战的了解有限。 为了解释为什么妇女可能不太可能被选为候选人，这项研究的重点是党的看门人在党控制的候选人提名中发挥的作用。根据对党内官员和候选人的访谈，PI研究了候选人选择中的障碍是如何通过评估和排名候选人的党内看门人所使用的非正式选择标准而对妇女放大的。尽管男女候选人都要接受地方和国家一级的非正式甄选标准，但只有妇女必须明显地证明她们满足政党看门人在财政和动员方面的期望。这些性别化的期望给寻求政党提名的妇女带来了更大的成本，因为她们必须在候选人甄选过程中以男子不需要的方式证明自己的财富和关系。这项研究为妇女参政的组织障碍提供了新的见解。它显示了偏见如何在一个政党的候选人选择过程中产生和复制。这项研究有助于对民主体制仍然薄弱的发展中国家的妇女参政情况进行研究。首先，虽然现有的奖学金的妇女办公室求职者往往侧重于立法代表性的综合措施或他们在选举中作为政党候选人的成功，该项目侧重于研究不足的第一顺序的问题：妇女如何成为候选人？她们是否面临着与男性不同的障碍？本研究包括一项调查，采用了一种新颖的设计，以评估如何政党成员的候选人的偏好是受政治经验，矛盾的性别歧视，以及财务或动员的期望。在实验上，该调查采用了两种不同的设计来评估项目的假设。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

This study examines how women become candidates in new democracies. While the number of women in elected positions has been slowly increasing over time in many countries, there is limited understanding of the unique challenges that often make it more difficult for women to become candidates when compared to men. To explain why women may be less likely to be selected as candidates, this study focuses on the role played by party gatekeepers in party-controlled candidate nominations. Drawing on insights from interviews with party officials and candidates, the PI examines how barriers in candidate selection are magnified for women through the informal selection criteria used by the party gatekeepers who assess and rank candidates. Although both male and female candidates are subjected to informal selection criteria at local and national levels, only women must visibly demonstrate that they satisfy the financial and mobilizing expectations of party gatekeepers. These gendered expectations entail greater costs for women seeking party nominations because they must demonstrate their wealth and their connections during the candidate selection process in ways that are not demanded from men. This study provides new insights into the organizational impediments to women's inclusion in politics. It shows how biases can arise and be replicated within a party's candidate selection process. This study contributes to new knowledge in the study of women in politics in developing countries where democratic institutions remain weak. First, while existing scholarship of women office-seekers tends to focus on aggregate measures of legislative representation or their success as party candidates in elections, the project focuses on the understudied first-order questions: How do women become candidates? Do they face obstacles that are different from men? This study includes a survey that employs a novel design to assess how party members' candidate preferences are influenced by political experience, ambivalent sexism, and financial or mobilizational expectations. Experimentally, the survey employs two different designs to assess the project's hypotheses.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.