As women increasingly play a role and gain even greater prominence in congressional politics, they need to navigate the at times conflicting demands of loyalty to party culture, responsiveness to party leadership, political goals, and the need to get re-elected. Based on extensive interviews and historically informed, this book examines differences between Republican and Democratic political cultures, how these differences affect women members of congress as they pursue agendas and seek to bolster their electability, and the effectiveness of women within an institution traditionally dominated by men.

"This book explores the reasons behind the contrasting dynamics of women's representation in elective office and offers an explanation for why Democratic women have made consistent and impressive gains while Republican women's representation in elective office has stalled and in many cases reversed"--]cProvided by publisher.

Explore the effects women have had on Congress!Containing vital insights into the role women play in Congress, Women and Congress: Running, Winning, and Ruling is a unique look into the political standing of female candidates and congresswomen. Chapters written by noted political scientists consider the challenges of being a congresswoman in the male-dominated political arena, illustrate the fundamental and advanced techniques vital to winning an election, and show how congresswomen have been most effective once in office.Women and Congress brings you thoughtful discussions of: how campaign finance, speaking on the floor, introducing new legislation, and political action committees have contributed to the success of women politicians the effect of media on election outcomes, including the media’s portrayal of women and the ways female candidates present themselves to the media discrimination against women in media coverage differences in the ways Democratic and Republican women view political issues the political glass ceiling (how incumbency, gender, and strategy play a role in elections) and much more!

Always a classic, Dodd and Oppenheimer's Congress Reconsidered is the recognized source for in-depth, cutting-edge scholarship on Congress geared to undergraduates. Thoroughly updated for the 112th Congress.

The rise and fall of a feminist reform powerhouse Jan Doolittle Wilson offers the first comprehensive history of the umbrella organization founded by former suffrage leaders in order to coordinate activities around women's reform. Encompassing nearly every major national women's organization of its time, the Women's Joint Congressional Committee (WJCC) evolved into a powerful lobbying force for the legislative agendas of more than twelve million women. Critics and supporters alike came to recognize it as "the most powerful lobby in Washington." Examining the WJCC's most consequential and contentious campaigns, Wilson traces how the group's strategies, rhetoric, and success generated congressional and grassroots support for their far-reaching, progressive reforms. But the committee's early achievements sparked a reaction by big business that challenged and ultimately limited the programs these women envisioned. Using the WJCC as a lens, Wilson analyzes women's political culture during the 1920s. She also sheds new light on the initially successful ways women lobbied for social legislation, the limitations of that process for pursuing class-based reforms, and the enormous difficulties the women soon faced in trying to expand public responsibility for social welfare. A volume in the series Women in American History, edited by Anne Firor Scott, Susan Armitage, Susan K. Cahn, and Deborah Gray White

The State of the Parties 2022 brings together leading scholars of parties, elections, and interest groups to provide an indispensable overview of American political parties today. The 2020 presidential election was extraordinary. What role did political parties play in these events? How did the party organizations fare? What are the implications for the future? Scholars and practitioners from throughout the United States explore the current state of American party organizations, constituencies and resources at the national, state and local level.

""As women continue to gain more prominence as active participants in the American political and electoral process as voters, candidates, and officeholders, it becomes even more important to understand how gender shapes political power and the distribution of resources within our society. There are many areas of research in a variety of disciplines focusing on women, gender, and feminism, and many of them intersect with a discussion of women in American politics. Our goal in writing this book is to present these topics in an interesting, lively, and timely way through an analysis of contemporary political gender-related issues. We hope to have provided just enough of an historical context to get students interested in the evolution of women in American political life, and enough theory and analysis to inspire them to seek more information and knowledge about gender justice today. The study of women and U.S. politics, as well as the role gender plays in the broader political context, has emerged as a powerful voice within the discipline of Political Science in the last few decades. As such, we hope that readers find this text a useful addition to the ongoing dialogue while instructors find it to be a useful pedagogical tool for their courses on women/gender and politics"--

This title argues that political parties fundamentally structure the ways in which women legislators represent women's interests. Using original election, sponsorship and roll call data across the US state chambers, Osborn shows how parties shape the policy alternatives women offer.

While existing literature provides compelling evidence that women in public office make a difference, the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation of women in political institutions long the domain of men is neither simple nor certain. Embracing New Institutionalists' warnings of the dangers of studying behaviour in an institutional vacuum, this book uses two strikingly different yet consecutive congresses - the Democratically controlled 103rd Congress elected during the 'Year of the Woman' and the Republican-controlled 104th Congress elected during the 'Year of the Angry White Male' - as laboratories to explore the complexity of the relationship between women's presence and impact. In-depth interviews with hundreds of staff, lobbyists, and women members of Congress, along with other quantitative and archival data, are the foundation for case studies of three highly visible policy areas (reproductive rights, women's health, and health care policy) important to women, but with strikingly different outcomes across the two Congresses. The inquiry is quickly moved beyond the simple question 'Do women make a difference?' Dodson confronts the contested issues surrounding difference which often lurk beneath the surface - the probabilistic rather than deterministic relationship between descriptive and substantive representation of women, the contested legitimacy of women representing women, and the disagreement about what it means to represent women. The analysis moves the literature toward a better integrated understanding of how gendered forces at the individual, institutional, and societal levels combine to reinforce and redefine gendered relationships to power in the public sphere. The results can be generalized over time and across settings, are meaningful even in periods when the answer to the question of whether women make a difference seems to be more frequently 'no' than 'yes,' and point to strategies that may bolster the impact of women's presence for substantive representation of women.