Beyond the Gender Gap: Women's Bid for Political Power

In: Social science quarterly, Band 64, Heft 4, S. 718-733

Abstract

It is argued that what is new in US politics is not the gender gap in voting, which has existed for thirty years, but the fact that women are making successful bids for the power of public office. The proximate source of women's success at the polls is the emergence of political groups & coalitions formed during a decade of effort to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. The new political organizational structure is in turn rooted in demographic & economic changes that have stimulated a new form of attachment to the LF among women & a new form of gender solidarity in the workplace & polity. A discussion is provided of women's impact once they become a significant force, rather than a token presence in US politics. 37 References. HA.