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Gendered Civil Society Context, Local Party Strength, And Candidate Emergence: Explaining Female Representation Across The Us State Legislatures, Colleen Dougherty Burton

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This dissertation examines the substantial and persistent variation in female representation observed across states and party caucuses in the US state legislatures. I develop and test the theory of gendered civil society context and party strength to explain why female candidates are more likely to run for office in some places rather than others. Gendered civil society context refers to the gender balance of civil society groups (e.g. unions, service organizations, advocacy groups, professional associations) in a party’s local strategic environment; party strength is defined as the capacity of political parties to influence candidate nomination.

Two main hypotheses guide the …