More Women Can Run (and should)

A few months ago, we looked at some of the hurdles that women face when running for elected office. In this week’s seminar, however, Kira Sanbonmatsu of Rutgers University discussed her new book with Susan Carroll on how, in fact, More Women Can Run.

It’s a strange paradox that on many counts, women are more politically involved than men---since 1980s, they’ve voted at a higher rate, for example---but still comprise less than ¼ of most state legislatures and less than 18% of the US Congress.

Sanbonmatsu and Carroll surveyed a number of successful female candidates for state legislature around the country for their views on electoral success. In spite of enduring impediments like male incumbency bias and the fact that women are often socialized to behave in certain ways, results from the survey provided three important reasons why and how the decision to run can be made easier for women.

First, successful female officials provided a vast array of answers on the qualifications necessary to run for office. Some said education and personability were vital, others suggested engagement with the community, still others said an enduring electoral base or fundraising ability was the key to success. The conclusion is that there are, in fact, no specific qualifications for electoral success, and successful women come from a wide diversity of backgrounds. Many more women are in fact qualified than realize it.

Second, the decision to run is often more related to a woman’s relationships and networks---certainly more so than for men. For example, a woman is more likely to run for office if a political party leader, spouse, or organization encourages her to do so, than she would be on her own volition. While this relational dependency seems like a barrier, it also means that women’s initial tendencies against running can be changed with a little encouragement; that their initial socialization can be nudged. Increasing women’s representation, then, might just be accomplished with some effective recruitment.

Lastly, some of the current gender disparity, in particular the fact that women’s representation in state legislatures has plateaued in recent years, has more to do with party composition than the role of women per se. While Democratic women hold 32.3% of their party's seats in state legislatures, Republican women hold 16.5%. Today, women are better represented as Democratic state legislators. Changes in partisan politics, then, have had consequences for overall representation of women. According to Sanbonmatsu, this should not be understood as a loss for women generally, but an opportunity for each party to include more women, both parties recruit more female candidates, particularly women of color.

Despite some of the other hurdles, more women can run with more ease than they think---and considering some of the benefits of having women represented, should.

Are Women Less Competitive Than Men?

A recent New York Times article asks, “Why are there still so few women in science?” Focusing on American society, the article explores some of our cultural biases related to women in science. The TV show “The Big Bang Theory,” for example, features a crew of geeky men with physics PhDs with a few token women (the “hip” ones are all math duds), while in the movie “Mean Girls,” the female lead hides her mathematical talent to impress a boy and fit in.

But does it start even earlier? In Thursday’s WAPPP Seminar, “Gender,Competitiveness, and Career Choices,” Stanford University’s Muriel Niederle, presented some of her research on whether there are some non-cognitive reasons: do women simply shy away from competition? Do men compete too much?

In her experiments of simple math competitions, Professor Niederle found that even the lowest performing (i.e. “stupidest”) men were much more willing to join a competitive game with rewards than even the smartest women. In fact, 73% of all men chose to enter the competition while only 35% of all women did. (There was pretty much an even distribution in peoples’ actual results and intelligence, by the way).

Muriel Niederle, “Gender, Competitiveness, and Career Choices”

What adds to this are a few factors: women tend to be more risk-averse generally; and despite their objective talent, women also tend to rate themselves as lower than they are. And though these tests were done on college students, apparently similar trends on willingness to compete are visible by age three!

Though proclivity to compete with other people per se ought not determine aptitude and success, the reality is that it does. In the classroom, this has path-dependent effects: how young women perceive themselves to be at math influences which course of study, and later career, they pursue. And years later, we see the effect of that in the paucity of women in math and science---but not in subjects like literature.

Some fields have had lower and harder glass ceilings than others. The reason for that may certainly be structural, in terms of decision-makers denying career mobility. But those structures start to oscillate based on the stories we tell ourselves and each other. Eileen Pollack, the author of that Times piece, writes that “the most powerful determinant of whether a woman goes on in science might be whether anyone encourages her to go on.”



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Social Norms and Stereotypes: What Happens When Everyone's a Little Bit Sexist?

Upon seeing one of those “reuse your towel” cards in a hotel, have you ever wondered how many people were actually reusing their towels? An experimental study found that when the message was supplemented with information that “nearly 75 percent of hotel guests reuse their towels,” the guests receiving the message became more likely to reuse their towel than the guests who got the standard note. This is an example of the power of social norms – when the desired action is perceived as the norm, compliance increases. The same mechanism is at work in reverse for an undesirable behavior – people are less likely to litter when they perceive that only a few “anti-social types” litter.

Social norms are often more powerful than explicit messages. The signs in the Petrified Forest National Park used to read something like this: “Don’t take petrified wood, 14 tons a year are being stolen in small pieces.” That last part essentially signaled to the visitor: “everybody is doing it.” When that part was removed, compliance improved.

Now, let’s connect this information to racial and gender stereotyping and bias – generally, people view bias as undesirable and actively work against it. However, the 2000’s saw a growing body of research on unconscious biases. The notion that most people have unconscious stereotypes and biases captivated the popular press. The cover of the Washington Post Magazine on January 23, 2005 read: “Many Americans believe they are not prejudiced. Now a new test provides powerful evidence that a majority of us really are.” So, it’s like the song from Broadway musical Avenue Q, “Everyone's a Little Bit Racist.”
 
But what does that mean for social norms? Does knowing that everyone has unconscious biases make it seem permissible to let our own biases slide?

Those are the questions Melissa Thomas-Hunt, Associate Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, set out to answer with her colleague Michelle Duguid, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Washington University in St. Louis Olin Business School. Thomas-Hunt and Duguid designed a series of creative experiments to test how messages of high and low prevalence of stereotyping affect behavior.
 
In one of the experiments, pairs of women and men were negotiating a car sale. All of the men were told to avoid thinking of others in a stereotypical manner. Some of the men were primed with a “high prevalence of stereotyping” message – they were not told what gender biases might be, just that an influential body of research finds that the majority of people do stereotype. Other men were primed with a “low prevalence” message – that very few people hold stereotypical misconceptions. Yet another set of men received a “high prevalence of counter stereotyping” message – that most people actively try to overcome biased misconceptions.

After the negotiation, the women, who did not know anything about these messages, were asked to rank their opponents' assertiveness. The researchers also compared negotiated price outcomes. The men who were told that most people stereotype, despite being cautioned not to do so themselves, consistently claimed more value in the negotiation and were ranked as more assertive by their female counterparts than were the men in both other groups. The division of value was more equitable in the pairs where men received “few people stereotype” and “most people work to avoid stereotyping.” The men were also perceived to be less assertive by their female counterparts. In other words, the men who perceived the social norm to be in line with stereotypes of women as weak negotiators were more likely to treat them as such, while the men who thought the social norm was to counter stereotypes treated their negotiating partners more equitably.

Thomas-Hunt’s and Duguid’s experiments point to the conclusion that it’s not enough to be aware that we have conscious and unconscious biases. We need social norms to counter these biases. We need a culture in which most people work hard not to stereotype. In companies, this could be a consistent internal message from the highest ranks, but in society it will take all of us holding each other accountable and working not to be even a little bit sexist.

Melissa Thomas-Hunt presented at a WAPPP Seminar titled, "Condoning Stereotyping: How Awareness of Stereotyping Prevalence Impacts Stereotype Expression in Negotiations and Beyond," on April 4, 2013.


Anya Malkov is an MPP candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, a WAPPP Cultural Bridge Fellow, and an alumna of From Harvard Square to the Oval Office.