I bring this up because it's an interesting and counterintuitive analysis of women's electability in politics - something that came up in the primaries. A very strange result! http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/palin-paradox-women-more-likely-to-be.html The Palin Paradox: Women More Likely to be Elected in Male-Dominated Districts Alaska isn't the first place you'd expect to see a woman elected to higher office. With its harsh climate and reliance on traditionally male-dominated industries like fishing, mining, and oil extraction, it has the most male population in the country: 106 men for every 100 women. Things are a bit worse still for the guys on Alaska's single scene -- the ratio of unmarried men (15 years or older) to unmarried women is 114:100. Throughout the rest of the United States, the men have it a bit easier, as the ratio is 86:100 nationally. And yet, Alaska is one of just five states to have elected a female governor -- the irrepressible Sarah Palin. One of its two Senators, Lisa Murkowski, is also a woman. But Alaska is a quirky state, and presumably this is highly irregular behavior. Except that -- it really isn't. Although women are still having a relatively tough time getting elected in general -- they represent just 17 percent of the members of the U.S. Congress -- Congresswomen, as opposed to Congressmen, are more plentiful in areas where the male-to-female ratio is higher. I have a database containing the names of 535 members of the Congress -- 435 Representatives plus 100 Senators -- as well as a bunch of demographic information on their states and districts. Of these 535 geographies, 91, or about 17 percent, elected a woman at their last opportunity. (A couple of methodological notes: state-level observations are deliberately double-counted, to represent the two senators that each state has. I also look at the identity of the person who was last elected in each geography, so if someone has since resigned their seat in the Congress, I'm still counting as holding their seat unless there has already been a special election held to name their replacement.) The chart below lists the 25 most male "districts" in the country (from here forward, I will refer to state-level observations on the Senate side as "districts" in addition to actual congressional districts from the House side), along with the 25 most female districts. The female office-holders are highlighted in red. Nine of the 25 most male-dominated districts (36%) most recently elected a woman to office, as compared with 4 of the 25 most female-dominated districts (16%). This alone is somewhat interesting -- however, it actually conceals the strength of the relationship because female-dominated districts are more likely to vote Democratic, and Democratic-leaning districts are more likely to elect women to office regardless of their sex ratios. Let's look, for instance, at what's happening only in strongly Democratic districts, which I define as those with a PVI of D+10 or higher: ... The most male-dominated from among these strongly Democratic districts elected women in 10 out of 15 instances. The 15 most female districts elected just 3 women. Next, moving to moderately Democratic districts with a PVI of between D+3 and D+9. (lots more with charts - I'm too lazy to keep cutting and pasting).
this is just my initial thought so don't jump on it, in a state like alaska, most of the men are up their for the work, oil & gas, fishing, etc. why else would any live up their. That leaves a lot of the other functions to be filled by women, including politics, just a guess.
Interesting. But possibly too small/skewed a sample size to really conclude? 6 of the 9 elected in the 'male' districts were CA, and 3 of 4 in the female were NY.
I'll have to look at it further. I thought about that, and initially looking I see a lot of Texas, California, Nevada, in the more male dominated districts, so I was thinking maybe those were also remote places. But then I see Shelia Jackson Lee and Nacy Peolsi so it kind of blows that theory out the water because they are from metropolitan areas
Or it could be the obvious -- that female voters have a slight bias for male candidates or male voters have a slight bias for female candidates.
Or it could just be pure coincidence, right? My question is - if it is determined that there is a slight bias, then can/should that bias be eliminated somehow in the voting process since gender shouldn't factor into it?
I'm assuming the study is statistically robust. Though I do wonder if you might be getting those results because those communities happened to have strong female candidates. A bigger sample would be nice, but we'd have to elect more women to get that (not that there's anything wrong with that). Certainly not. I don't know how you would even go about doing that. But, even if you could, I wouldn't want it. Voting is the average person's one chance to wield his (infinitessimally small) political power and make the government answer to him instead of the other way around. If the voter wants to be a racist, sexist, partisan fool, more power to him. He'll get the politician he deserves.
We know that Palin is considered by some to be pretty MILFish, what do these other female Congressmen look like? Are they cashing in on their looks in these heavily male districts?
