It Takes More Than a Candidate

Jennifer L. Lawless is Leone Reaves and George W. Spicer Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. She has written or co-authored nine books, including News Hole: The Demise of Journalism and Political Engagement (2021), which won the 2023 Goldsmith Book Prize. Her research, which has appeared in numerous academic journals, is regularly cited in the popular press. She is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Political Science. Richard L. Fox is Dean of the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts and Professor of Political Science at Loyola Marymount University. He has written numerous books and articles focusing on the US Congress, elections, media, and gender. His work has appeared in top disciplinary journals including the American Political Science Review and the American Journal of Political Science. He has also published op-eds in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

• 1. Still a man's world? 2. Gender and candidate emergence; 3. The gender gap in political ambition; 4. Family dynamics and running for office; 5. Gender, party, and political recruitment; 6. Gendered self-perceptions of candidate viability; 7. Taking the plunge; 8. The persistent gender gap in political ambition.

'This latest work by Lawless and Fox is an all-to-rare thing in social sciences - authors returning again and again to important questions and examining those questions over time, in different contexts, and during different political periods. The three waves of the Citizen Political Ambition Study examine a fundamental political question - how can women enter politics at higher levels when our gendered society remains a drag on ambition? Their identification of the forces still facing women provides both reasons to be pessimistic and a clear sense of the roots of the problem.' Kathy Dolan, distinguished professor at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and author of When Does Gender Matter?