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Gender Backlash in American Politics?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2008

Kira Sanbonmatsu
Kira Sanbonmatsu
Affiliation:
Rutgers University
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Extract

In this essay, I start to sketch a research agenda about an electoral backlash against women's descriptive representation. Few scholars have considered the possibility of such a backlash. By “backlash,” I mean resistance to attempts to change the status quo. As Jane Mansbridge and Shauna Shames argue in this issue, when actors disadvantaged by the status quo work to enact change, they may be met by a reaction by those seeking to maintain existing power arrangements. In the following pages, I introduce the idea of a backlash against women's representation, propose several preliminary hypotheses about a backlash, and discuss ways of testing them.

Type
Critical Perspectives on Gender and Politics
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 4 , Issue 4 , December 2008 , pp. 634 - 642
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2008

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