It Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don't Run for Office

This important work constitutes a systematic, nationwide empirical account of the effects of gender on political ambition. Based on data from the Citizen Political Ambition Study, a national survey of 3,800 "potential candidates" conducted by the authors, it relates these findings: --Women, even at the highest levels of professional accomplishment, are significantly less likely than men to demonstrate ambition to run for elective office. --Women are less likely than men to be recruited to run for office. --Women are less likely than men to consider themselves "qualified" to run for office. --Women are less likely than men to express a willingness to run for a future office. According to the authors, this gender gap in political ambition persists across generations, despite contemporary society's changing attitudes towards female candidates. While other treatments of gender in the electoral process focus on candidates and office holders, It Takes a Candidate makes a unique contribution to political studies by focusing on the earlier stages of the candidate emergence process and on how gender affects the decision to seek elective office.