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Gender Pools and Puzzles: Charting a “Women's Path” to the Legislature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 September 2006

Kira Sanbonmatsu
Kira Sanbonmatsu
Affiliation:
Rutgers University
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Extract

The “social eligibility pool” stands as one of the most common, and most powerful, explanations for women's underrepresentation in elective office. By this view, women are underrepresented in elite politics because sex discrimination and socialization have produced a gender imbalance in the occupations that typically precede a political career (Darcy, Welch, and Clark 1994). The scarcity of women in law and business has implications for politics: “The absence of women from these stepping-stones to political office does explain a good portion of women's under-representation in public office. A decrease in this under-representation helps explain gains in women holding office” (1994, 179).

Type
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON GENDER AND POLITICS
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , September 2006 , pp. 387 - 400
Copyright
© 2006 The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association

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