Description

Becki Scola's book provides an explanation for two interrelated puzzles on electoral gender gaps. She examines the factors surrounding the uneven proportional distribution of female legislators, and then explores why gender appears to be an advantage for women of color office holders. Building on a model of institutional influence, her analysis proposes that some institutional structures at the state level "demand" that women to run for office while others do not. Scola also finds that across time, the variables that are important for predicting women's office holding across the states are different for white women and women of color. The first book-length study to analyze how race informs gender in terms of patterns of office holding, Gender, Race, and Office Holding in the United States provides insight into both underrepresentation in general as well as the underlying dynamics of representation within specific groups of women.