Women in Local Government

• DOI: 10.1177/0160323X17732608
• Published date: 01 December 2017
• Date: 01 December 2017
• Author: Mirya R. Holman
• Subject Matter: Reviews & Essays

Reviews & Essays

Women in Local Government:

What We Know and Where

We Go from Here

Mirya R. Holman

1

Abstract

Women are underrepresented in most elected and appointed positions in local government in the

United States. This essay details what we know about women’s representation in cities and counties,

with a discussion of the factors associated with women’s higher or lower levels of representation.

The effects of women’s lack of parity are then discussed including policy attitudes, the policy process,

and policy outcomes. In sum, this essay organizes knowledge on women in local government,

identifies gaps in what we know, and promotes future investigations to expand our knowledge of

gender politics, local politics and governance, and public policy.

Keywords

local government, women and politics, representation, gender

This review essay e valuates the exist ing state of

knowledge aboutwomen in local government in

the United States. Women in local government

are an understudied group of political actors in

the United States. Indeed, scholars of political

science, publicadministration, and urbanstudies

know very little about even basic information

about levels of women’s representation, the

institutional and demographic factors associated

with these levels of representation, or the effects

of women’s lack of parity on local policy. This

essay reviews whatis known, focusing on recent

research on women’s local representation. In

doing so, it highlights key gaps in knowledge,

best practices in collecting and analyzing infor-

mation, and points to what we still need to

understand about women in local government.

The first focus of this essay is on how we

still lack comprehensive data on women’s rep-

resentation—particularly the representation of

nonwhite women—in many local bodies.

Lacking even this basic knowledge limits our

understanding of how and when women’s rep-

resentation matters in local government. From

the (limited) existing data, this essay docu-

ments that women remain underrepresented in

almost all local elected and appointed offices,

from mayor and city council to city manager,

from county boards to county sheriff. What

we do know about levels of women’s represen-

tation is catalogued and presented, including

differences among nonwhite women.

The second part of the essay discusses the

institutional and demographic factors associated

with varyinglevels of women’s representationin

1

Department of Political Science, Tulane University, New

Orleans, LA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Mirya R. Holman, Department of Political Science, Tulane

University, 6823 St. Charles Avenue, Norman Mayer

Building, New Orleans, LA 70118, USA.

Email: mholman@tulane.edu

State and Local GovernmentReview

2017, Vol. 49(4) 285-296

ªThe Author(s) 2017

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DOI: 10.1177/0160323X17732608

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