County Governing Boards: Where are All the Women?

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-19-2017

Publication Title

Politics, Groups, and Identities

First page number:

14

Abstract

This research seeks to explore the extent of women representation on county governing boards. This study evaluates a random sample of 394 counties in the United States. Half of the counties did not have any women serving on their county governing boards. A two-stage analysis using first a logit model sought to explain when counties have women commissioners and then a truncated regression analysis evaluated the percentage of women serving on county boards. Size of governing boards, size of government, religious adherence, and two election formats had significant effects in explaining when a county had women commissioners. Religious adherence and the level of vote support for President Obama were the only significant predictors of the percentage of women serving on county governing boards.

Keywords

Women, Descriptive representation, U.S. counties, Local politics

Language

eng

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