Good Reasons to Run: Women and Political Candidacy

After the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, a large cohort of women emerged to run for office. Their efforts changed the landscape of candidates and representation. However, women are still far less likely than men to seek elective office, and face biases and obstacles in campaigns. (Women running for Congress make twice as many phone calls as men to raise the same contributions.)

The editors and contributors to Good Reasons to Run, a mix of scholars and practitioners, examine the reasons why women run-and do not run-for political office. They focus on the opportunities, policies, and structures that promote women’s candidacies. How do nonprofits help recruit and finance women as candidates? And what role does money play in women’s campaigns?

The essays in Good Reasons to Run ask not just who wants to run, but how to activate and encourage such ambition among a larger population of potential female candidates while also increasing the diversity of women running for office.

Shauna L. Shames is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University-Camden. She is the author of Out of the Running: Why Millennials Reject Political Careers and Why It Matters; co-author of Survive and Resist: The Definitive Guide to Dystopian Politics; and co-editor of The Right Women: Republican Party Activists, Candidates, and Legislators. Rachel I. Bernhard is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis. Mirya R. Holman is an Associate Professor of Political Science, Tulane University and the author of Women in Politics in the American City (Temple). Dawn Langan Teele is the Janice and Julian Bers Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the editor of Field Experiments and Their Critics: Essays on the Uses and Abuses of Experiments in the Social Sciences and author of Forging the Franchise: The Political Origins of the Women’s Vote.