Key figures in the women’s movement were together in July 1971 for a National Women’s Political Caucus news conference in Washington. Seated, from left, are Gloria Steinem, Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-N.Y.) and Betty Friedan; standing behind them is Rep. Bella Abzug (D-N.Y). One of the council’s goals was to see that women made up half of the delegates to the 1972 presidential conventions. (Charles Gorry/AP)
Half a century after the start of the modern feminist movement, American women make up only 19 percent of members of the U.S. Congress and just 24 percent of all state legislators.
Many factors help to explain such severe underrepresentation – and one key issue is that political careers are particularly lacking in job flexibility. Elected officials work long hours, travel extensively, and cannot easily interrupt work obligations to care for children. Because women still do most of the housework and child care, challenges in balancing their obligations dissuade many from running for public offices, in the same way that women often avoid other inflexible careers like business leadership.
This matters not only for the individuals involved, but for states and the nation, because female politicians are more likely to raise issues and vote for policies that matter to women. With women underrepresented in the halls of government, our democracy not only misses out on vital talent; it cannot fully address everyone’s concerns.
My research offers evidence that concerns about balancing paid work and family obligations do indeed factor into women’s decisions to forego political careers.
In a new paper published recently in the Quarterly Journal of Political Science, I use geographical and survey evidence to see how expectations about conflicting work obligations may indeed affect the supply of potential women legislators. Time spent traveling to and from work is the common thread in my analyses – an issue known to be particularly important to parents who divide time between paid posts and care for children. Because mothers are usually the primary caregivers for children, elected offices that require a politician to travel a long distance should be less attractive to many women.
First, I look at how far state legislative districts are from state capitals. Holding other factors constant, after controlling for other important explanatory factors (such as district ideology), it turns out that districts that are far away from the capital (and hence have higher travel time) are less likely to have women running as candidates or serving in legislative office. For every hour of travel time between the district and the state capital, the district is two percentage points less likely to have a female candidate or representative. Strikingly, there are just as many women serving in local offices in far away districts as in near ones, which suggests that there isn’t any shortage of women interested in public service in these districts. The problem plausibly is that they don’t want to take positions that are hard to reconcile with their obligations at home.
Second, I did a survey on a nationally representative sample of undergraduates in the midst of choosing their own careers. Participants were asked to imagine that they are deciding between serving as a state legislator or as a member of Congress. All were told that the national capital is five hours from home, but some participants were assigned to a subgroup told that the state capital is five hours from home, while others were told that it is just 15 minutes from home. When the state capital was said to be close to home, women were, on average, twice as likely to forgo a possible career in Congress and opt instead for a career in the close-by state legislature.
Together with other studies, this suggests that worries about balancing work and family obligations are one important reason that American women are less willing to run for public office than men. Even if political parties recruit women and men with equal fervor, giving them the same resources and support, many women will still hold back from careers in this time-pressured line of work. Nor will it be enough to inspire individual women and men to become equally confident about their qualifications and prospects for elective public office. Even if all other factors are equalized, in short, the sorts of barriers scholars call “structural” would still matter – chief among them the persistently different obligations men and women have in their families. Absent an equal distribution of housework and childcare, women will likely remain underrepresented in government – unless extra steps are taken to help them manage dual obligations.
These issues have broader implications. If even relatively privileged upper-middle-class mothers are reluctant to run for office due to family responsibilities, others may find it even harder – including some fathers with child care responsibilities and virtually all working-class women who lack extra resources to buy help. The basic point is that, even with formal equality in law and institutional rules, service in governing institutions is more readily possible for some groups of people compared to others, undermining ideals of equal representation in U.S. democracy.
Rachel Silbermann is a Lecturer in Political Science at Yale University.
