The Impact of Women in Public Office

by Susan J. Carroll (Editor)

"[A] well-integrated volume by...one of the best known political scientists working on women and politics.... [It] includes contributions by leading scholars in the field, and provides a well-written and accessible overview of the impact of women in office at
every level..." —Pippa Norris, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University "This [book] will be the standard-bearer not simply because it contains most of the early research in the field but more importantly, because of the wide-ranging scope and diversity of the research and the subsequently nuanced and contextualized arguments presented."-Beth Reingold, Emory University In recent years the numbers of women serving in public offices at various levels of government have increased markedly. Is the increasing presence of women in public office making a difference? Are women public officials having a distinctive impact on public policy and the political process? These questions are central to the studies in The Impact of Women in Public Office. These studies examine the impact of women public officials serving in various offices and locales at local, state, and national levels. They are the product of a large, coordinated research project sponsored by the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers University and funded by the Charles H. Revson Foundation. The subjects of these studies range from a single, very prominent U.S. Senator, who served in Congress from the early 1940s to the early 1970s, to local council members in a New Jersey county in the 1980s. They include state legislators from across the country. The research presented in this volume offers compelling evidence that women public officials do have a gender-related impact on public policy and the political process. Nevertheless, context matters; these studies demonstrate that the impact of women public officials varies considerably across political environments. Finally, the research in this volume suggests that identification with feminism and/or of particular racial or ethnic group also influence how and to what extent women public officials are making a difference. Contributors include Edith J. Barrett, Susan Abrams Beck, Janet K. Boles, Susan J. Carroll, Debra L. Dodson, Lyn Kathlene, Elaine Martin, Nancy E. McGlen, Meredith Reid Sarkees, Janann Sherman, Sue Thomas, Sue Tolleson-Rinehart, and Susan Welch.

288 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2001

About the author

Susan J. Carroll is Professor of Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University and Senior Scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) of the Eagleton Institute of Politics. Her books include: Women as Candidates in American Politics (Second Edition, Indiana 1994); The Impact of Women in Public Office (Indiana 2001); Women and American Politics: New Questions, New Directions (Oxford 2003); and Gender and Elections: Shaping the Future of American Politics (Second Edition, Cambridge 2010, with Richard L. Fox). Carroll also has published numerous journal articles and book chapters focusing on women candidates, voters, elected officials, and political appointees in the United States. Her current research focuses on the recruitment of women to state legislatures. As a nationally recognized expert on women’s political participation, Carroll is frequently called upon for media commentary. from -http://www.susanjcarroll.com/

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book of combined statistical and historical studies on women in American politics ever published, and it is thought-provoking in the extreme. More a poli-sci book than a history book, it particularly examines women in the 1970s and 1980s in regards to their methodologies and philosophies of governance. While some of the conclusions are tentative at best - even today the ratio of women to men in public office is damnably small - they do provide tremendous initial insight into the ways women in the second wave of feminism tended to govern, and offer ideas on how to work with potential issues these particularities may suggest.