Women's Organizations and the Partisan Gender Gap
Open AccessWhy does the Republican infrastructure for recruiting and supporting women lag so far behind the Democratic structure? Prior research established the disparity between Republican and Democratic campaign and recruitment efforts towards women, but we know much less about the source of this disparity. In the dissertation, I argue that Republican women’s groups experience organizational ambivalence, meaning organizations are torn between a desire to support women and a party culture that emphasizes gender-blindness and conservatism. Additionally, I argue that nonpartisan groups predominantly support Democratic women candidates due to their similarity to Democratic groups, partisan issue association, and variations in the pool of eligible candidates. To assess the motivations underlying support patterns, I leverage information from an original data set on the activities of partisan and nonpartisan women’s organizations, a state-level survey of women’s organizations, and more than two dozen interviews with leaders of national organizations. After depicting the current role of women’s groups in the United States, I use an original data set of financial contributions and endorsements to establish that women’s groups primarily support Democratic women. Utilizing the survey and interviews, I find suggestive evidence that Republican women’s groups experience organizational ambivalence, impacting the amount of individualized support available for Republican women. This support pattern is compounded by nonpartisan groups primarily supporting Democratic candidates. The project offers new evidence on the importance of women’s organizations in promoting women who run for office and provides insight into how these organizations can continue to diversify the candidate pipeline.
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