michaelamcneeceaugie-blog

[michaelamcneeceaugie-blog]

Gender and Sexuality Portfolio Post One: Introduction to Special Interest Topic

In striving for political rights, governmental status, and overall representation, women often find themselves with limited, inadequate opportunities. Despite advances in women’s rights, political representation for women is poor compared to men. As we have seen with recent elections, heads of state still have the tendency to choose male representation over women, and while many countries are exploring measures to change this, the United States has put in generally no effort to increase the governmental status for women. As I will discuss in this essay, there is little research on why this (under-representation) is occurring.

The topic I selected for my special interest topic is women in politics in the United States. I selected this topic because it not only affects me, it also affects our local and national government. I want answers on why women aren’t being represented in office, despite the fact that women make up 50% of the population. Is it simply that women aren’t running for political positions, or is it something a little more complicated? In our recent presidential election, the nation saw Hillary Clinton lose the presidential election despite her winning the popular vote, and with Trump’s cabinet being almost all men, it leads me to believe that there is a serious issue not just with our society, but deep within our political system. I hypothesize that sexism and prejudice are to blame for women’s under-representation, and I believe that the reason for women’s lack of political participation also has to do with this atmosphere of inferiority.

As personally expected, there was not a lot of search results on women in politics, especially in regards to the United States. At first, I only researched women in politics, and although this is a very broad topic I was interested in seeing the types of articles that would appear. Interestingly enough, the journals were almost always about other countries. A large amount of attention was particularly paid to smaller countries and countries with poor (general) women’s rights - such as India and countries in the Middle East. Finally, when I decided to focus my topic on the United States, there was little to no adequate research articles. While this made finding lengthy, decent articles very difficult, I was determined to stick to my topic. I came to the conclusion that my topic was extremely important, not just to me but to everyone in general. The good articles deserved recognition and the lack of articles needed to be discovered. After rewording my topic over and over again - from women in politics, to women in politics in the United States, to United States politics, to women’s representation in government - the most articles I could find was 140 articles (which was about 5 pages of search results); however a big reason why this occurred was due to there being little recent research from 2016 - 2018 (if you did not put a restriction on the publication of the articles there were over a thousand search results). At first, I was very discouraged and disappointed with my findings, but after thinking about it I realized that this was something I really needed to see. It is important to recognize what we are failing to discuss, and the reasons behind this inadequacy. I found it a little ironic that there was both little women representation in government and on Ebsco search results. Yet, I was still able to find very interesting and helpful articles that aided in my search for answers.

With every article I choose they all aimed to understand the reasons behind the underrepresentation of women in elected offices in the United States. They all acknowledge that there is little data behind this reality. Due to this, almost all of the authors reference past elections and review the general public opinion on women in the government. Hanson and Dolan use data from a 2014 CCES (Cooperative Congressional Election Study) survey, Angevine uses a dataset of three Congresses (2005-2010), and two other articles reflect on the election between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (West), and Clinton and Trump (Parikh). The other articles tended to focus on books and other types of data collection. All of their data ultimately leads to the ideas that the reasons behind underrepresentation for women are: voter percentages, media framework of women in office, individual factors, the environment in government, and deeply ingrained sociological ideas on women in politics (Funk, Coker). There are a lot of different ideas for future studies as we cannot generalize certain findings across past studies. A lot of the authors of the articles suggest watching the results of future political processes and environments surrounding women. Others suggest that we need to continue to find the differences and similarities in how men and women connect with voters and conduct themselves in office. The Parikh article discusses the election between Trump and Hillary Clinton, which is the most recent article I could find. For future studies, it will be important to write articles on their run for president. Finally, other articles suggest that instead of studying voters, that we should study Democrats and Republicans and how they view women in politics, which can have great influence on the general population when voting (Butler).

    In the modern era, women continue to have great influence within governmental systems; however, equal representation is still lacking. Women make up an equal portion of the population so why aren’t we equally represented? The articles that I looked over attempted to answer this question through studies, interviews, data collection, and comparative analysis. Altogether, most agree that the problem lies with the general population and the government as a whole (including political parties) (Butler). Over time women are continuing to overcome these challenges, but as most of the articles state, we need to continue to collect data and observe the issues lying with women in politics.

Reference

Parikh, C. (2017). On the Road Again with the American Girl. College Literature 44(4), 491-497. Johns Hopkins University Press. Retrieved September 6, 2018, from Project MUSE database.

Bucchianeri, P. (2018). Is Running Enough? Reconsidering the Conventional Wisdom about Women Candidates. Political Behavior, 40(2), 435-466. doi:10.1007/s11109-017-9407-7

Crowley, J. E. (2016). Women in Politics in the American City. Political Science Quarterly (Wiley-Blackwell), 131(1), 206-208. doi:10.1002/polq.12456

Carroll, S. .., & Walters, S. D. (2017). Ask a Feminist: A Conversation with Susan J. Carroll on Gender and Electoral Politics. Signs: Journal Of Women In Culture & Society, 42(3), 771-783.

FINNEMAN, T. (2018). “The Greatest of Its Kind Ever Witnessed in America”: The Press and the 1913 Women’s March on Washington. Journalism History, 44(2), 109-116.

West, E. A. (2017). Descriptive Representation and Political Efficacy: Evidence from Obama and Clinton. Journal Of Politics, 79(1), 351-355. doi:10.1086/688888

Butler, D. M., & Preece, J. R. (2016). Recruitment and Perceptions of Gender Bias in Party Leader Support. Political Research Quarterly, 69(4), 842-851. doi:10.1177/1065912916668412

When Women Win: EMILY’S LIST and the Rise of Women in American Politics. (2016). Pennsylvania Literary Journal (2151-3066), 8(2), 41-45.

Funk, M. E., & Coker, C. R. (2016). She’s Hot, for a Politician: The Impact of Objectifying Commentary on Perceived Credibility of Female Candidates. Communication Studies, 67(4), 455-473. doi:10.1080/10510974.2016.1196380

Winslow, B. (2017). The Highest Glass Ceiling: Women’s Quest for the American Presidency. Journal Of American History, 103(4), 1115. doi:10.1093/jahist/jaw619

Angevine, S. (2017). Representing All Women: An Analysis of Congress, Foreign Policy, and the Boundaries of Women’s Surrogate Representation. Political Research Quarterly, 70(1), 98-110. doi:10.1177/1065912916675737

Burden, B. C., Yoshikuni, O., & Masahiro, Y. (2017). Reassessing Public Support for a Female President. Journal Of Politics, 79(3), 1073-1078. doi:10.1086/691799

Dolan, K., & Hansen, M. (2018). Blaming Women or Blaming the System? Public Perceptions of Women’s Underrepresentation in Elected Office. Political Research Quarterly, 71(3), 668-680. doi:10.1177/1065912918755972

LEVITOV, D. (2017). Using the Women’s March to Examine Freedom of Speech, Social Justice, and Social Action through Information Literacy. Teacher Librarian, 44(4), 12-15.

McCall, L., & Orloff, A. S. (2017). The multidimensional politics of inequality: taking stock of identity politics in the U.S. Presidential election of 2016. British Journal Of Sociology, 68S34-S56. doi:10.1111/1468-4446.12316.

[michaelamcneeceaugie-blog]

Gender and Sexuality Portfolio Post One: Introduction to Special Interest Topic

In striving for political rights, governmental status, and overall representation, women often find themselves with limited, inadequate opportunities. Despite advances in women’s rights, political representation for women is poor compared to men. As we have seen with recent elections, heads of state still have the tendency to choose male representation over women, and while many countries are exploring measures to change this, the United States has put in generally no effort to increase the governmental status for women. As I will discuss in this essay, there is little research on why this (under-representation) is occurring.

The topic I selected for my special interest topic is women in politics in the United States. I selected this topic because it not only affects me, it also affects our local and national government. I want answers on why women aren’t being represented in office, despite the fact that women make up 50% of the population. Is it simply that women aren’t running for political positions, or is it something a little more complicated? In our recent presidential election, the nation saw Hillary Clinton lose the presidential election despite her winning the popular vote, and with Trump’s cabinet being almost all men, it leads me to believe that there is a serious issue not just with our society, but deep within our political system. I hypothesize that sexism and prejudice are to blame for women’s under-representation, and I believe that the reason for women’s lack of political participation also has to do with this atmosphere of inferiority.

As personally expected, there was not a lot of search results on women in politics, especially in regards to the United States. At first, I only researched women in politics, and although this is a very broad topic I was interested in seeing the types of articles that would appear. Interestingly enough, the journals were almost always about other countries. A large amount of attention was particularly paid to smaller countries and countries with poor (general) women’s rights - such as India and countries in the Middle East. Finally, when I decided to focus my topic on the United States, there was little to no adequate research articles. While this made finding lengthy, decent articles very difficult, I was determined to stick to my topic. I came to the conclusion that my topic was extremely important, not just to me but to everyone in general. The good articles deserved recognition and the lack of articles needed to be discovered. After rewording my topic over and over again - from women in politics, to women in politics in the United States, to United States politics, to women’s representation in government - the most articles I could find was 140 articles (which was about 5 pages of search results); however a big reason why this occurred was due to there being little recent research from 2016 - 2018 (if you did not put a restriction on the publication of the articles there were over a thousand search results). At first, I was very discouraged and disappointed with my findings, but after thinking about it I realized that this was something I really needed to see. It is important to recognize what we are failing to discuss, and the reasons behind this inadequacy. I found it a little ironic that there was both little women representation in government and on Ebsco search results. Yet, I was still able to find very interesting and helpful articles that aided in my search for answers.

With every article I choose they all aimed to understand the reasons behind the underrepresentation of women in elected offices in the United States. They all acknowledge that there is little data behind this reality. Due to this, almost all of the authors reference past elections and review the general public opinion on women in the government. Hanson and Dolan use data from a 2014 CCES (Cooperative Congressional Election Study) survey, Angevine uses a dataset of three Congresses (2005-2010), and two other articles reflect on the election between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (West), and Clinton and Trump (Parikh). The other articles tended to focus on books and other types of data collection. All of their data ultimately leads to the ideas that the reasons behind underrepresentation for women are: voter percentages, media framework of women in office, individual factors, the environment in government, and deeply ingrained sociological ideas on women in politics (Funk, Coker). There are a lot of different ideas for future studies as we cannot generalize certain findings across past studies. A lot of the authors of the articles suggest watching the results of future political processes and environments surrounding women. Others suggest that we need to continue to find the differences and similarities in how men and women connect with voters and conduct themselves in office. The Parikh article discusses the election between Trump and Hillary Clinton, which is the most recent article I could find. For future studies, it will be important to write articles on their run for president. Finally, other articles suggest that instead of studying voters, that we should study Democrats and Republicans and how they view women in politics, which can have great influence on the general population when voting (Butler).

    In the modern era, women continue to have great influence within governmental systems; however, equal representation is still lacking. Women make up an equal portion of the population so why aren’t we equally represented? The articles that I looked over attempted to answer this question through studies, interviews, data collection, and comparative analysis. Altogether, most agree that the problem lies with the general population and the government as a whole (including political parties) (Butler). Over time women are continuing to overcome these challenges, but as most of the articles state, we need to continue to collect data and observe the issues lying with women in politics.

Reference

Parikh, C. (2017). On the Road Again with the American Girl. College Literature 44(4), 491-497. Johns Hopkins University Press. Retrieved September 6, 2018, from Project MUSE database.

Bucchianeri, P. (2018). Is Running Enough? Reconsidering the Conventional Wisdom about Women Candidates. Political Behavior, 40(2), 435-466. doi:10.1007/s11109-017-9407-7

Crowley, J. E. (2016). Women in Politics in the American City. Political Science Quarterly (Wiley-Blackwell), 131(1), 206-208. doi:10.1002/polq.12456

Carroll, S. .., & Walters, S. D. (2017). Ask a Feminist: A Conversation with Susan J. Carroll on Gender and Electoral Politics. Signs: Journal Of Women In Culture & Society, 42(3), 771-783.

FINNEMAN, T. (2018). "The Greatest of Its Kind Ever Witnessed in America": The Press and the 1913 Women's March on Washington. Journalism History, 44(2), 109-116.

West, E. A. (2017). Descriptive Representation and Political Efficacy: Evidence from Obama and Clinton. Journal Of Politics, 79(1), 351-355. doi:10.1086/688888

Butler, D. M., & Preece, J. R. (2016). Recruitment and Perceptions of Gender Bias in Party Leader Support. Political Research Quarterly, 69(4), 842-851. doi:10.1177/1065912916668412

When Women Win: EMILY’S LIST and the Rise of Women in American Politics. (2016). Pennsylvania Literary Journal (2151-3066), 8(2), 41-45.

Funk, M. E., & Coker, C. R. (2016). She's Hot, for a Politician: The Impact of Objectifying Commentary on Perceived Credibility of Female Candidates. Communication Studies, 67(4), 455-473. doi:10.1080/10510974.2016.1196380

Winslow, B. (2017). The Highest Glass Ceiling: Women's Quest for the American Presidency. Journal Of American History, 103(4), 1115. doi:10.1093/jahist/jaw619

Angevine, S. (2017). Representing All Women: An Analysis of Congress, Foreign Policy, and the Boundaries of Women's Surrogate Representation. Political Research Quarterly, 70(1), 98-110. doi:10.1177/1065912916675737

Burden, B. C., Yoshikuni, O., & Masahiro, Y. (2017). Reassessing Public Support for a Female President. Journal Of Politics, 79(3), 1073-1078. doi:10.1086/691799

Dolan, K., & Hansen, M. (2018). Blaming Women or Blaming the System? Public Perceptions of Women's Underrepresentation in Elected Office. Political Research Quarterly, 71(3), 668-680. doi:10.1177/1065912918755972

LEVITOV, D. (2017). Using the Women's March to Examine Freedom of Speech, Social Justice, and Social Action through Information Literacy. Teacher Librarian, 44(4), 12-15.

McCall, L., & Orloff, A. S. (2017). The multidimensional politics of inequality: taking stock of identity politics in the U.S. Presidential election of 2016. British Journal Of Sociology, 68S34-S56. doi:10.1111/1468-4446.12316.