Why don't more women run for office?

RALEIGH -- With John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate there's been a great deal of discussion about the political "glass ceiling." Many in North Carolina, as well as around the nation, believe that gender equality in politics is close at hand. Last month, in a news story headlined "Women crowd the North Carolina ballot," political analysts and officeholders bragged about how many women are running for office.

Although voters will elect a woman as U.S. senator on Nov. 4, may elect a woman as governor and may help elect the first female vice president, the landscape of North Carolina politics remains decidedly skewed in the favor of males.

High-profile candidates such as Sarah Palin, Elizabeth Dole, Kay Hagan and Beverly Perdue are actually exceptions, not the rule. An examination of current officeholders and office seekers reveals that much work is left to do before women achieve equality here.

For example, women hold 22 percent of all elected offices in North Carolina, despite being 54 percent of registered voters. If school board membership is factored out, women hold fewer than 20 percent of all policy-making offices, including the state House and Senate, county board of commissioners and city and town councils.

Over one-third of all counties in North Carolina (37 percent) have no women serving on the board of commissioners, and about an equal percentage of city and town councils lack female representation. Female officeholders are generally clustered in and around major metropolitan areas. Many counties and communities in the rural mountain counties and in the less populated counties east of Interstate 95 do not have women involved in the policy-making process.

This means that for local issues such as economic development, education and public health, a large number of places have no female voices at the table advocating about these issues.

THIS SITUATION IS NOT GOING TO IMPROVE IN THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE, because relatively few women are becoming candidates for elected office. Since 1992, around 15 percent of all candidates in the state have been women. This year, even with high-profile women at the top of the ballot, only about 16 percent of candidates on the composite North Carolina ballot are women.

Without significantly more women running for offices throughout the state, there will continue to be fundamental inequality in terms of gender representation.

Why do so few women declare themselves for elected office? Neither major political party consistently recruits and trains women to be effective candidates and, thus, officeholders. But the Democratic and Republican parties aren't solely to blame here. Many women are reluctant to express interest in running for office.

Political scientists Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox demonstrate through their studies that women are only about half as likely as men to express an interest in running for office. In addition, they are less likely to approach party insiders to talk about running.

The issue keeping many women off the ballot has to do with socio-cultural and psychological obstacles that individual women have to overcome in order to emerge as candidates. Because many women have traditional family role orientations, they don't consider running until primary care-giving duties with children and aging parents are resolved. The average first-time female candidate in North Carolina is 12 years older than her male counterpart.

Women also see themselves differently than men when it comes to feeling qualified to run for office. Women, according to scholarly studies, are about half as likely to view themselves as ready to run for office, even when their credentials are equal to that of men.

If North Carolina is going to achieve gender equality in its elected officials, it is going to take more than women getting elected as vice president, senator and governor. It will demand a systemic approach within the education and political communities to transform how women see themselves as leaders and political participants.