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

这项研究考察了女性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随着时间的推移一直在缓慢增加，但人们对与男子相比往往使妇女更难成为候选人的独特挑战的了解有限。为了解释为什么女性可能不太可能被选为候选人，这项研究关注的是政党看门人在政党控制的候选人提名中所扮演的角色。根据对党内官员和候选人的采访，PI研究了如何通过党内把关人员使用的非正式选拔标准来放大女性在候选人选择方面的障碍，这些标准是由党内把关人员评估和排名候选人的。尽管男性和女性候选人都要遵守地方和国家两级的非正式遴选标准，但只有女性必须明显地证明她们满足了政党守门人在财务和动员方面的期望。对于寻求政党提名的女性来说，这些性别期望带来了更大的成本，因为她们必须在候选人选择过程中以男性不要求的方式展示自己的财富和人脉。这项研究为妇女参政的组织障碍提供了新的见解。它展示了偏见是如何在一个政党的候选人选择过程中产生和复制的。这项研究有助于在民主体制仍然薄弱的发展中国家研究妇女参政的新知识。首先，虽然现有的女性候选人奖学金倾向于关注立法代表或她们作为政党候选人在选举中取得成功的总体衡量标准，但该项目侧重于研究不足的第一级问题：妇女如何成为候选人？她们是否面临着与男性不同的障碍？这项研究包括一项调查，该调查采用了一种新颖的设计来评估政党成员的候选人偏好如何受到政治经验、矛盾的性别歧视以及财务或动员期望的影响。在实验上，这项调查采用了两种不同的设计来评估该项目的假设。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.