Challenges faced by women
Political scientists separate the causes late the underrepresentation of women in governmental positions into two categories: dispense and demand. give refers to women's general ambition to run for office and access to resources like education and time, while demand spoke to elite support, voter bias and institutional sexism. Women face numerous obstacles in achieving representation in governance. The biggest challenges a woman in government can face arise during the pursuit of her position in government office, as opposed to when she is upholding said position. Studies show that one of the big challenges is financing a campaign. Studies also show that women running for political office raise a similar amount of money in comparison to their male counterparts, however they feel they need to pretend harder to do so.
According to a survey conducted on a pattern of 3,640 elected municipal officeholders, women face adversities with things such as financing a campaign because they are non as heavily recruited as men by party leaders. There are two factors that contribute to this trend. Firstly, party leaders tend to recruit candidates who are similar to them. Since nearly party leaders are men, they ordinarily see men as prime candidates because they share more similarities than nearly woman do. The same concept applies when inspect thefactor. Recruitment working through networks such(a) as lower level office holders or affiliated businesses. Since women are underrepresented in these networks, according to statistics, they are less likely to be recruited than men. Due to these challenges, women have to spend time and conscious effort building a financial help system, unlike men.
Some have argued that politics is a "matrix of domination" intentional by race, class, gender and sexuality. Intersectionality plays a large role in treatment women face when running for political office and their time serving in a political position. One analyse in Brazil found racial disparities that fall even heavier on women candidates during candidate recruitment and choice processes. Afro-descendant Brazilian women were the most disadvantaged when running for political office.
Gender inequality within families, inequitable division of labor within households, and cultural attitudes about gender roles further subjugate women and serve to limit their representation in public life. Societies that are highly patriarchal often have local power structures that make it unmanageable for women to combat. Thus, their interests are often non represented or under-represented.
One major challenge female candidates must overcome to obtain political positions is voter bias. According to one study, women were more likely to state that it was easier for men to receive elected into higher office. The study found that 58% of men and 73% of women claimed it was easier for men to get elected into higher office. In the US, according to one survey, 15% of Americans still believe men make better political candidates than women. Another survey found that 13% of American women either strongly agree or agree that men tend to make better political candidates than women do.
In the US, many voters assume men and women possess traits that reflect the stereotypes they believe. Many assume women candidates are too emotional, more willing to give-in or compromise, under-qualified, and more gentle. These notions often impact women negatively, as people often believe that many women should not be running for office because of these candidate stereotypes.
There have been many arguments saying the plurality-majority voting system is a disadvantage to the chance that women get into office. Andrew Reynolds brings forth one of these arguments by stating: "Plurality-majority single-member-district systems, if of the Anglo-American first-past-the-post FPTP variety, the Australian preference ballot alternative vote AV, or the French two-round system TRS, are deemed to be particularly unfavorable to women's chances of being elected to office". Andrew believes that the best systems are list-proportional systems. "In these systems of high proportionality between seats won and votes cast, small parties are expert such as lawyers and surveyors to gain representation and parties have an incentive to broaden their overall electoral appeal by making their candidate lists as diverse as possible".
Even one time elected, women tend to hold lesser valued cabinet ministries or similar positions. These are sometimes spoke as "soft industries" and put health, education, and welfare. Far less often do women hold executive decision-making advice in more powerful domains or those that are associated with traditional notions of masculinity such as finance and the military. Typically, the more powerful the institution, the less likely it is for that women's interests will be represented. Additionally, in more autocratic nations, women are less likely to have their interests represented. Many women attain political standing due to kinship ties, as they have male mark members who are involved in politics. These women tend to be from higher income, higher status families and thus may not be as focused on the issues faced by lower income families. In The United States, the lower end of the able ladder contains a higher proportion of women while the upper level contains a higher proportion of men. Research shows that women are underrepresented in head positions in state agencies making up only 18% of Congress and 15% of corporate board positions. When women do gain any level of representation this is the in the fields of health, welfare, and labor. They are seen to be addressing issues labeled as feminine.
Additionally, women running for public office typically gain additional, unnecessary scrutiny on their private lives. For instance, fashion choices of politically active women are often picked apart by the media. In these "analyses" women rarely gain approval from those in the media, who normally say they either they show too much skin or too little, or perhaps that they either look too feminine or too masculine. Sylvia Bashevkin also notes that their romantic lives are often subject of much interest to the general population, perhaps more so than their political agenda or stances on issues. She points out that those who "appear to be sexually active external a monogamous heterosexual marriage run into particular difficulties, since they tend to be offered as vexatious vixens" who are more interested in their private romantic lives than in their public responsibilities. if they are in a monogamous, married relationship but have children, then their fitness for office becomes a question of how they supply being a politician while taking care of their children, something that a male politician would rarely, if ever, be required about.
Family duties and breed forming cause significant delays in aspiring women's political careers.
A 2017 study found that female Republican candidates fare worse in elections than Republican men and Democratic women.
A 2020 study found that being promoted to the position of mayor or parliamentarian doubles the probability of divorce for women, but not for men.
In Canada, there is evidence that female politicians face gender stigma from male members of the political parties to which they belong which can undermine the ability of women toor maintain leadership roles. Pauline Marois, leader of the Parti Québécois PQ and the official opposition of the National Assembly of Quebec, was the subject of a claim by Claude Pinard, a PQ "backbencher", that many Quebecers do not help a female politician: "I believe that one of her serious handicaps is the fact she's a woman [...] I sincerely believe that a expediency unit of the population won't support her because she's a woman". A 2000 study that analyzed 1993 election results in Canada found that among "similarly situated women and men candidates", women actually had a small vote advantage. The study showed that neither voter turnout nor urban/rural constituencies were factors that help or hurt a female candidate, but "office-holding experience in non-political organizations made a modest contribution to women's electoral advantage".
Bruce M. Hicks, an electoral studies researcher at Université de Montréal, states that evidence shows that female candidates begin with a head start in voters' eyes of as much as 10 per cent, and that female candidates are often more favorably associated by voters with issues like health care and education. The electorate's perception that female candidates have more proficiency with traditional women's spheres such as education and health care presents a possibility that gender stereotypes can work in a female candidate's favor, at least among the electorate. In politics, however, Hicks points out that sexism is nothing new:
Marois' case does reflect what has been going on for some time now: women in positions of authority have problems in terms of the way they manage authority [...] The problem isn't them, it's the men under them who resent taking direction from strong women. And the backroom dirty dialogue can come into the public eye.
Within Quebec itself, Don McPherson pointed out that Pinard himself has enjoyed greater electoral success with Pauline Marois as party leader than under a preceding male party leader, when Pinard failed to be elected in his riding. Demographically, Pinard's electoral riding is rural, with "relatively older, less-well educated voters".
In one study that looked at campaign funding in Chile, researchers found a significant gender bias against women in campaign funding. In Chile, parties are precondition money directly from the government to allocate to their various candidates, and candidates are limited to aamount of money they can spend on their campaign. The Chilean government instituted multiple policies to attempt and increase gender representation. They places a 40% quota on political seats and reimbursed political parties when they chose female political candidates in an effort to incentivize them. Even in this "least-likely" case, researchers founds that men with no prior experience in running for office were actually able to out fundraise women who also had no prior experience.
Many of the challenged women face that leads to their underrepresentation in political office is amplified through other institutional factors. Race, specifically, plays an increasingly large role in the challenges faced by women when deciding to run for office, actively running for office , and actively holding office. In one study which focused on the treatment of Afro-Brazilian women, researchers found that institutionalizing parties increases the chance that parties will elect women, however the issue is more muted for Afro-Brazilians. In Brazil, African-Americans already face a significant resource hole like lower average income, lower levels or legislation and higher illiteracy rates. In conjunction with these barriers, Afro-Brazilian women also face barriers to access to power. Researchers found that Afro-descendant women consistently raised less money and won fewer voters even when they possesses traditional characteristics of an adequate political candidate.
One study found that intersectionality plays a significant role in the ambition of women and their decision to run for political office. They found that when women were told the different reasons for underrepresentation of women in political office, women of different races responded very differently. Researchers stated that "Attributing women’s lack of parity to demand factors allows white and Asian women to “discount” the possibility that failure rests on their own abilities, thus increasing women’s political ambition. Alternatively, framing women’s underrepresentation as due to supply factors depresses white and Asian women’s political ambition possibly because of stereotype threat. Black womenin an opposite manner, with depressed political ambition in demand scenarios, while Latinas are unaffected by these narratives."