Women In National Politics Cont.

There were some really good comments in yesterday's thread, along with a lot of referrals to the work of Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox. Thanks for that. Here's Jamelle following up on that note:

Thankfully, there's also a lot of good news, and the solutions are mostly straightforward: women are just as likely as men to respond to political recruitment, and targeting recruiting efforts at women is likely to have a large effect in closing the gap in political ambition.

What's more, a large part of the gap in political ambition can be explained by differences in education; women are more likely to believe that they aren't qualified to run for office and campaign. As Lawless and Fox write, "those seeking to recruit and encourage women candidates must work to dispel women's anxiety and negative views about the mechanics of a campaign."  It helps too that women are more interested than men in learning about the mechanics of campaigning and are extremely likely to respond positively if they had access to candidate training programs.

Finally, the single greatest obstacle to closing the gender gap in political ambition is our gendered division of labor, but as Lawless and Fox point out, moves toward a more family friendly workplace as well as robust assistance for childcare can provide women with the flexibility needed to run for office.

On the whole, closing the gap in political ambition isn't a matter of difficulty, none of these solutions are particularly hard to implement, it is a matter of will.  If we as a political culture want women to participate in politics -- and we should, as the benefits are tremendous -- then we will take the necessary steps to facilitate their involvement.