The 2018 midterms resulted in the election of an historic number of women to the U.S. Congress (CAWP 2019). Consistent with the experiences of female politicians throughout history (Githens 2003; Burns, Scholzman, and Verba 2001) many of the women who ran for Congress in 2018 boast unique and diverse backgrounds relative to many of the men. Specifically, women are more likely than men to deviate from the “conventional” careers that typically precede a political candidacy (law, business, education, and politics), opting instead for more varied, “unconventional” paths to elected office. Existing research has not yet addressed how these gender differences in candidates’ occupational experiences impact candidate emergence and electoral success. This project builds on prior research to analyze how the gender differences in candidates’ pathways to office are predictive of the political environment in which they emerge and the ways in which they are evaluated by voters. Using an original data set of the candidates in the 2018 election for the U.S. House of Representatives and district-level data, I find that unconventional female candidates tend to emerge in distinct political environments that are different from those where unconventional candidates and female candidates emerge. Using a survey experiment, I find that candidates’ differing occupational experiences have more influence in voters’ evaluations and preferences than candidate gender. Determining the conditions in which gender differences in candidate emergence and electoral success become prominent can provide important insight into the challenges women face in running for office.
Author: Taylor Gordon
Advisors: Monica Schneider and Kevin Reuning, Department of Political Science
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