Political Elites and Sex Differences in Political Ambition: A Reconsideration

Abstract

This study examines the political ambitions of representative national samples of women and men holding comparable elective offices in 1981. In contrast to the findings of previous research on sex differences in political ambition, most of which focused on party activists, women are found to be as ambitious for public officeholding as their male counterparts. Two possible explanations for the differences in results between this and earlier studies are tested. The first is that the findings of earlier studies were misleading because they failed to control for officeholding status, thereby masking underlying similarities in the ambitions of women and men who had similar levels of officeholding experience. The second is that the ambitions of political women, relative to those of political men, increased over time. Because neither of these explanations receives empirical support, differential selection into party activist and public officeholding elites is suggested as the most likely reason for the difference in findings. The implications of the findings for the numerical representation of women in national and major statewide offices are discussed.

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