Support for Women Political Candidates

Abstract

Research on support for women political candidates has shown that respondent race and gender play a major role in determining that support. The research reported here considers the influence of another respondent characteristic on support for women candidates: family structure. Might being raised in a family headed by a woman make one more likely to be accepting of a woman in positions of leadership? The hypothesis tested here is that people raised in a female-headed household will be more supportive of women political candidates. While the data offer no support for the significance of family structure itself, the analysis does reveal other variables significantly related to support for women candidates in single-parent families and significant differences in the variables influencing those raised in different types of families.