Why So Few (Republican) Women? Explaining the Partisan Imbalance of Women in the U.S. Congress

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12075
• Published date: 01 May 2015
• Date: 01 May 2015
• Author: Danielle M. Thomsen

DANIELLE M. THOMSEN

Duke University

Why So Few (Republican)

Women? Explaining the Partisan

Imbalance of Women in the U.S.

Congress

This article examines why the percentage of Democratic women in Congress has

increased dramatically since the 1980s while the percentage of Republican women has

barely grown. The central claim is that ideological conformity with the party influences

the decision to run for office, and I suggest that partisan polarization has discouraged

ideological moderates in the pipeline from pursuing a congressional career. The findings

have gendered implications because, first, Republican women in the pipeline have his-

torically been to the left of their male counterparts, and second, there is a dearth of con-

servative women in the pipeline.

The question “Why are there so few women in politics?” has moti-

vated more than three decades of political science scholarship. The

underrepresentation of women in elective off‌ice remains as relevant now

as it was 30 years ago, particularly in the American context. At the

national legislative level, the United States is ranked 78th worldwide,

with women comprising only 18% of the US House of Representatives

(IPU 2012). While the number of women in Congress has increased over

time, the growth rate has stagnated since the early 1990s. The persistent

dearth of females in congressional off‌ice is especially puzzling in light of

the fact that there are more women engaged in the professional careers

traditionally seen as providing the necessary experience and qualif‌ica-

tions for political off‌ice.

The underrepresentation of women in Congress has received ample

attention to date, but existing research has largely overlooked a critical

feature of this trend. Contemporary patterns of women’s representation

have a distinctly partisan f‌lavor: the number of Democratic women in

Congress has increased dramatically since the 1980s, while the number

of Republican women has barely grown. Of the 232 Republicans now

serving in the House of Representatives, a mere 19, or 8% of the party

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 40, 2, May 2015 295

DOI: 10.1111 /lsq.12075

V

C2015 The Comparative Legislative Research Center of The University of Iowa

delegation, are women. Women are more than three times as likely to be

Democrats, though just 30 years ago they were evenly distributed

between the two parties. The 1992 “Year of the Woman” elections led to

the f‌irst signif‌icant jump on the Democratic side, but what is perhaps

most striking is that there has been a steady increase in the number

of Democratic women elected to Congress since then. As shown in

Figure 1, women now make up nearly 30% of the Democratic delega-

tion; by contrast, the proportion of females in the Republican Party has

hovered between 6% and 10% since the 1980s. The traditional emphasis

on the underrepresentation of women in Congress masks this crucial par-

tisan variation.

Scholars have largely pursued party-blind and party-neutral

explanations for the underrepresentation of women in off‌ice, but even

our most prominent theories fail to account for this growing partisan dis-

parity. And despite the increasing importance of partisan polarization,

the impact of candidate ideology has received little attention in the gen-

der literature. This article introduces a party f‌it explanation for the

FIGURE 1

Women in the US Congress, by Party (1980–2012)

Source: Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), “Women in the US Congress,”

2013. Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University.

296 Danielle M. Thomsen