Pathbreaker or Underdog? Women’s Ambition for Local Political Office

Women express less ambition for political office than do men. While women face important structural and political barriers to candidacy, their disinterest in pursuing elected office remains an important factor in explaining women’s persistent underrepresentation. How can women’s ambition be increased? One possibility is that women pathbreakers inspire other women to view a political career as attractive and attainable, a role model effect. Alternatively, messages that highlight women’s underrepresentation may reinforce women’s concerns about bias and exclusion and discourage them from political careers. In this paper, we first use our original survey of civically- and politically-engaged women in the U.S. and a new dataset on women in local office to determine whether the presence of women in local politics helps encourage more women to run at the local level, an important stepping stone to further representation. Then, we analyze survey experiments testing the impact of different messages—woman as political pathbreaker, women as political underdogs—to further explore the tensions between these messages as a means for advancing women’s political ambition.