Election of Women to City Councils.

Abstract

IN public the THE (discriminatory) LAST sectors DECADE of American WOMEN patterning HAVE society. EXPRESSED of Despite sex roles INCREASING the in potential both DISCONTENT the policy-making private OVER and the (discriminatory) patterning of sex roles in both the private and publ c secto s of America so iety. D spit the po en ial polic -making authority of elected women officials and their visibility as models for other females, however, except for a few studies of Congress and state legislatures,2 virtually nothing is known about the candidacy of women for elective office, their rate of representation in different types of political positions, or about the impact of ecological factors on their success in American politics. Information about females in local elections is perhaps the most sketchy. Given the only occasional surfacing of limited fugitive data3 and the difficulty of gathering comprehensive information on municipal elections, the dearth of empirical literature on women in local races is understandable. Such a gap in the social science literature is unfortunate nonetheless, since the thousands of elective positions at the local level provide significant opportunities for women to enter the political system as authoritative decision makers; victory in municipal races does not likely require as much role dispensibility,4 thereby permitting women who gain election to remain in their home communities; municipal elections do not ordinarily necessitate the expenditure of as much campaign money as do state and congressional contests, hence improving the chances of women who probably would encounter greater problems

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