A Comparative Study of Native American and Hispanic Women in Grassroots and Electoral Politics

Abstract

Feminist scholarship exploring the role of women in politics has flourished over the decade of the nineties. Increasingly, social scientists are examining the leadership of women in grassroots organizations and in elected office to learn their motives, goals, and strategies for political leadership. 1 Much of this work integrates the study of gender, race/ethnicity, and class with scholarship on women's politics. Nevertheless, with some important exceptions, 2 relatively few of these works have specifically examined the political participation of Native American or Hispanic women. Furthermore, as researchers tend to focus their studies on either grassroots activists or public officials, rather than comparing these two groups, we know little of whether, or how, women in grassroots leadership differ from their counterparts in public office. 3 For example, how do the demographic characteristics of grassroots activists and public officials compare? What are their experiences of political socialization, and how do their experiences differ? What motives do activists and officials have for assuming political leadership, and how do these motives differ? How do grassroots activists and public officials acquire political leadership? And, to what extent are their leadership trajectories similar? In an effort to begin filling the gaps in the literature, this article seeks to identify some of the similarities and differences that exist among grassroots women leaders and women in public office, and to contribute to the growing scholarship on the politics of Native American and Hispanic women. 4

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 21 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.