An Upward Trajectory?: Explaining Fluctuations in Women’s Recruitment and Representation in the U.S.

The U.S. lacks formal recruitment mechanisms for women candidates. Yet, recruiting women candidates in the U.S. is crucial for women’s political representation, as women are more reticent to run for office than men in the U.S. Therefore, in recent years, informal recruitment mechanisms for women candidates have grown. We lack a full picture of the extent of these mechanisms, however. In our project, we map American informal recruitment for women candidates. By creating a catalogue of recruitment organizations using web searches and through interviews with recruitment groups, we describe the types of informal recruitment organizations in the US, assess their goals and tactics, and evaluate their success. From the population of organizations, we also use interviews with women’s recruitment organizations. We hope to identify whether informal recruitment in the U.S. can take the place of a more institutionalized mechanism like party quotas to increase the number of women candidates in the U.S. This project is part of the Gender Equality and Public Policy Project.