Running as a Woman
Gender and Power in American Politics
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Women have become a strong force in electoral politics, as candidates, office holders, and vocal constituents. In Running as a Woman, Linda Witt, Karen Paget, and Glenna Matthews explore the significant issues for women in public life: their marital status, the threat of sexual innuendo, what’s involved in becoming a credible candidate, and raising enough money to run. They also explain how voters are mobilized to vote for women, how the media cover them, how they get their campaign message out, what it’s like to lose, and what difference women make once elected. In addition, Running as a Woman includes a compelling history of women in politics that both records the political role women have played throughout the last two centuries and explains how and why women have continually been stifled in their attempts to enter political life.
While the 1992 elections were hailed as a giant leap forward for women, the 1994 elections created a skepticism that real, permanent changes occurred. In Running as a Woman, the authors set the record straight with a chapter that analyzes the results of the 1994 elections and their relevance for women today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A journalist, a political scientist and a historian at UC Berkeley, respectively, here offer a broad and anecdotal account that instructively analyzes the evolving history of women as political candidates. The earliest candidates, like Jeannette Rankin who in 1916 became the first woman member of Congress, invoked altruism as their motivation; only after the birth of feminism could women admit to ambition. Despite increases in numbers over the years, the comparative paucity of women politicians means that those who run are likely to be viewed through expectations born of feminine stereotypes. They must face questions about dress, motherhood and marriage that male politicans are never asked. Although women have recently begun to succeed in political fundraising, mobilizing the ``women's vote'' is more difficult and the authors offer only a few tentative suggestions. More perspicacious is their criticism of media coverage of women politicians and their analysis of how individual candidates ``phrase'' the gender issue. Nonetheless, the authors conclude that women, collectively and individually, are gradually accruing the power necessary to reframe the issues that affect them.
