Part 2: Social Structures, Labor & Political Participation

According to Teele (2018, Journal of Politics), what best explains when US states extended the vote to women between 1893 and 1920?

political competition combined with movement strength

What are social structures

• Affects the supply of potential women politicians

• Includes family, education, labor force, ect

• May prevent women from gaining the skills and resources necessary for competing for public office

• can help us explain both why women may not WANT to run for office but also why the CANNOT run for office

Economic development & political power

Countries move from agricultural → industrial → post industrial

• Raise in standard or living

• women gain more access to education and labor force

  • women move into higher status roles

    • citizens are more likely to support women taking up political leadership roles

  • women overrepresented in agriculture and service sectors

• women and men gain more free time

• rural to urban migration

Economic explanation for segregation

individual preferences for work

• women have less skills because of choices over allocation of time between home and work

Human capital explanation for segregation

result of care burden

• care work forces women into low-paid, lower skilled work

sociology explanation for segregation

cultural division of labor

• different views on what type of work each gender is best suited for

  • related to family structure and care

• barriers to women’s entrance in some occupations and roles

what long term consequences does gendered employment segregation have

• political careers

• the economy

• government policy

what career sectors are more likely to produce politicians than others

• prestige

• money

• networks

• skills

• role models

• recruitment

IF ELECTIONS ARE DOMINATED BY MEN, THE PIPELINES WILL ALSO BE DOMINATED BY MEN

Labor and the GPD economic consequences

the greatest gender gap in data is the absence of women’s unpaid labor in the calculation of GPD

• women are seen as a “costless resource”

what is a GPD

The total market value ($), of all final goods and services produces in an economy in a given year

• does not include intermediate goods (man-made used to produce other good or services, becoming part of those goods or services)

What do we miss when we leave women’s unpaid work out

unpaid work could account to 50% of the GPD for high income countries

what is a time use study

asks people to account for a full day or week, often in fixed time intervals

• Methods

  • Time Diaries (BEST)

  • Stylized recall questions

Why are time use studies useful

• makes INVISIBLE unpaid work VISIBLE (not captured in GPD)

• Allows paid & unpaid work to be compared in the same footing (total work burden)

• Supports “Time poverty” analysis

• Enable life-cycle and life-event analysis (marriage, childbirth, aging)

What is time poverty

You don’t have enough time to do the things you need to, to take care of yourself

Limitations of time use data

Recall and self-report bias, even in same-day diaries (You could lie)

• Care work likely undercounted (overestimating is worse than under)

• National surveys are infrequencies especially in low and middle income countries

Life-Cycle dimension

Marriage and parenthood impose a time-use penalty on women

• effects are small or positive for men

• women work more total hours than men BUT get paid less

Double burden

adding politics on top of double burdens of household and family responsibilities is asking for too much

• may be ONLY ELITE WOMEN & those from majority ethnic and religious groups who are able to run for office

• stops capable women from participating in politics at all levels

Proxy vote

A ballot casted by one person (representative) on firm behalf of another

Women politician characteristics

Young and childless or older with children who are grown

• if they have children, it’s not a lot

Outright hostility

bias that occurs when people hold ENTRENCHED PREFERENCES against a specific group

Double standards

bias that occurs when traits are judged differently DEPENDING on which GROUP holds them

Double bind

bias that occurs when desirable traits require more investment, or are associated with different burdens, for members of NON DOMINANT GROUPS

What is self perception

• gender roles

• role models

• qualifications

Even though they want to run, they don’t think they’re qualified

Traditional gender roles

Some differences in ambition stem from TRADITIONAL SEX-ROLE socialization

• girls are encouraged to focus on the PRIVATE, INTRAfamilial affairs, and boys focus on the PUBLIC, EXTRAfamilial affairs

• Politics seem reasonable for men but unconventional for women

  • women are less encouraged to run for office by their parents

Role models

having women in prominent political positions challenges messages girls might not receive about their place in politics

• is there someone with the same background that has done it?

• Presence of high-prole women candidates and discussion of women in politics can provide a role model

• women engage in politics more when there are more women candidates

Qualifications

Men and women agree on the skills and emotional traits necessary as qualifications for public office

• issue knowledge, being a good public speaker, or having thick skin

  • men are more likely than women to express their overconfidence in the skills they possess, overestimate their intelligence, and be more self-congratulatory than women

Theoretical Analysis for Candidates

Women are less inclined to run if they feel the election is less truthful

• truth vs cheap talk

• less likely to run with a controlled environment

Gender stereotypes

simplistic generalizations about the gender attributes, differences, and roles of individual and/or groups

Political gender stereotyping

The gender is based off assigning of different traits, behaviors, or political beliefs to make and female politics

• what they’re good at vs not good at

Why are there generally stereotypes?

• Evolutionary mechanism

  • finding a good partner

    • Certain types of men

• Psychological defense mechanism

  • in group vs out group (friend vs foe)

Why are there politically stereotypes?

• Information or voting shortcuts

  • the less voters know about the candidate, the more likely they are to use their gender in order to make INFERENCES about the person

Viability stereotype

women are less likely to be successful

Trait stereotype

Traits we ascribe to people (EX:assertive)

Issue stereotypes

issues (policies) we think men and women are interested in

• women weren’t allowed to work in masculine policies (economic, foreign, gun)

Ideology stereotypes

The idea than men and women are more liberal or conservative based on their gender