IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/bjposi/v52y2022i4p1523-1543_2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Location, Location, Location: How Electoral Opportunities Shape Women's Emergence as Candidates

Author

Listed:
  • Ondercin, Heather L.

Abstract

Despite evidence that women win when they run for office, the number of women in the US House of Representatives has not increased substantially. I argue that women win when they run because women engage in strategic behavior by emerging in locations where they are most likely to win. While strategic behavior is a necessary condition for increasing women's representation in office, it is not a sufficient condition. Analyzing regularly scheduled elections between 1992 and 2014, I demonstrate that women engage in strategic behavior by emerging in elections where they are most likely to win. However, the electoral opportunities for women are far from “gender neutral” and are shaped by the parties. Democratic and Republican women are most likely to emerge as candidates in districts where they are likely to win the primary and general elections; however, Republican women face even more constrained electoral opportunities.

Suggested Citation

  • Ondercin, Heather L., 2022. "Location, Location, Location: How Electoral Opportunities Shape Women's Emergence as Candidates," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(4), pages 1523-1543, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:52:y:2022:i:4:p:1523-1543_2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0007123421000508/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:52:y:2022:i:4:p:1523-1543_2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jps .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.