Women and Local Politics: How Different Offices Affect Female Candidacies

Women’s office seeking has been the subject of considerable research, but how likely a female candidate is to seek one office over another has not. Using a unique data set of office seeking in California local governments between 1996 and 2019, we address the likelihood that women will seek certain types of offices over others; and whether and how female office seeking is affected by the context of local elections. In general, we find that women are most likely to seek citywide administrative offices, followed by school board seats. Local office-seeking by women, however, also varies by jurisdiction size, political context, and over time, particularly for county-level offices. Our focus on offices as a key part of female candidate entry sheds important new light on candidate behavior and the prospects for greater descriptive representation in local government.