This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
In recent years, a growing number of women have been elected to city government. In some cities, like Chicago and Seattle, the mayor is male and men comprise a majority of council members. However, in other cities like Atlanta and Baltimore, the mayor is female and women hold at least half of the council seats. Currently, 16 percent of the nation's mayors and 25 percent of its city council members are women, up from five percent and 13 percent, respectively, in the late 1970s. In light of this trend, my dissertation asks several questions: Does the increasing number of women in city government make any difference? Do cities with significant numbers of women in elected offices have more women-friendly policies? Do women need to obtain the most powerful positions to make those policies happen?
This project contends that women do need power in city government--getting elected is a first step, but it is the power they actually have once there that makes the difference. When women obtain leadership positions in city government and when the offices women hold have greater power relative to other municipal positions, they will be more likely to produce policies that correspond to women's needs and interests. In this project, policies that benefit women include those that improve women's political, economic, and social status in relation to men, address women's unique needs, and/or concern women's traditional role as caregivers.
The project investigates these claims in several ways. First, it uses statistical analyses on the 239 American cities with populations over 100,000 to examine whether women's presence and power in city government affects policymaking in a distinctive manner. It also includes an in-depth study of two cities to see how women's power matters and to determine whether the general findings of the statistical analyses are valid.
When completed, this will be the most extensive study on women in city government. It will make important contributions to our general understanding of representation in American politics and should be valuable to scholars, leaders in local government, and city residents throughout the country. The data gathered, which will be one of the very few sources on multiple cities over an extended time period, can be used to study how well other groups, especially racial and ethnic minorities, are represented in city policymaking. By digging deeper into the nature of representation of and by women, the project also speaks to the legitimacy of democracy itself.
