Elisabeth Clemons Zohar Lechtman University of Chicago
Women's participation in American politics in the last three decades has been on the rise. In state and city legislatures they constitute a large minority, and even a majority. Infact, women's representation has more than tripled in the last thirty years across the United States, and the change is even greater when individual states and cities are considered. Typically, the discussion regarding women and politics revolves around the obstacle facing women in the way to full gender equality. Constraints on women's access to resources outside the political arena, and masculinity as the organizing ideology of the political arena itself are the main barriers in their full inclusion. Although women are not represented equally across the political arena, the change in the last thirty years suggests that there is room to consider the opposite question: how women move from an outsider status to become part of the political arena. The study explores the cultural and structural mechanisms involved in the transformation of gender relations in politics, aiming to generate models of gender relations in the political arena that account for a legitimized power for women. The project builds on the contribution of organizational theories to the understanding of political change and social movements, suggesting that a detailed examination of politics in the context in which it is practiced can provide a broader understanding of gender and political relations. Integrating gender analysis into organizational analysis this study examines the way different organizations contribute to women's political success and institutionalization of position of power for women in one political arena.
This project is a case-study in one municipal system, comparing different political and organizational biographies of political actors to examine the factors that contribute to electoral success. This study includes an additional exploratory component, examining potential implication of political organizational biography to political repertories. The project progresses in three stages. The first stage is my preliminary analysis of election returns. This stage identified quantitative trends in women's political representation in the city and yielded a database of political actors. Stage two will address the role of civic voluntary associations in facilitating women's political success. It will use data from in-depth detailed interviews to examine the organizational practices involved in women's political careers. A third, exploratory stage will follow up with participant observation of selected city wards, on the basis of interview results. This stage will examine the effect of female leadership's organizational background on political culture and division of labor in six selected communities.
Broader Impacts. The project will expand our understanding of political processes. In particular, through detailed data collection and analysis, this project enhances our understanding, beyond how the political arena serves as a barrier to women's participation, but to understand how transformation in gender relations in the political can occur. This project could potentially provide knowledge, for practicing political activists in addition to academics, on the strategies by which a marginal group can become, not only a contesting, but also a legitimate actor in formal political institutions.
