GRSJ224/GenderInequalityinNorthAmericanPolitics

Since the rise of capitalism, there is a significant increase in women’s participation in the workforce, which enables them to become economically independent. For the past three decades, women are having higher college graduation rates and the gender gap reversal in education has resulted in the decline of educational hypergamy.For instance, the increase in the proportion of women in the US Congress is less than 8% in the past two decades, while there is a less than 4% increase in the percentage of female state legislators from 1993 to 2012 Based on existing literature, the contributing factors to the lack of women in electoral offices can be categorized into two main groups: formal and informal influences. While formal influences, namely the configuration of the electoral system, party ideologies, and gender quota have received considerable attention from scholars; the informal cultural and sociological influences that prevent women from running have not.

Individual Candidate Attributes

When considering the factors that contribute to the lack of women in electoral offices, the culprit is being pointed towards individual candidate attributes. Female candidates are often considered as having a lower level of educational attainment and lack the competency to comprehend, analyze and explain complex concepts. Furthermore, the social construction of femininity is associated with traits like softheartedness and understanding as opposed to the image of an ambitious and aggressive politician.

Cultural influences

In the research findings of Lawless: “Women are less frequently encouraged to run for office at the suggestion of both those involved in politics and other personal contacts.” In fact, the upbringing of young girls creates norms that guide their behaviors by internalizing cultural messages. A US-based study found that girls as young as six years old hold the belief that intelligence is a male trait. When girls reach high school, they are also less likely to choose fields such as physics, mathematics, and politics as their academic paths. The research also found that early in children’s development, parents heavily influence their children’s socialization to gender roles.

Marxist Feminism

The Marxist approach to gender inequality stems from the dual-system theory of capitalism and patriarchy. During the time of tribal ownership, "the social structure is limited to an extension of the family; patriarchal family chieftains, below them the members of the tribe, finally slaves."As capitalism emerges, the emphasis on a nuclear family “where wife and children are the slaves of the husband” demonstrates a division of labor, which assigns male with a productive labor compensated by wage and female with a domestic role that remains uncompensated in the capitalist system.".This type of family structure assigns the role of breadwinner to men and the role of family caregiver to women. Much like the relationship between the proletariats and their bourgeois masters, men are recognized by the capitalist system, as essential laborers for the production of commodities while women’s role seems secondary. As a result, this unequal distribution of labor further solidifies men’s superior position in the household due to the fact that women are economically dependable on men because women’s domestic work receives no salaries.

Gender Performativity

In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler puts forth a controversial argument that one’s gender is constructed through his or her repetitive performance of gender. As an example, newborn boys and girls are given different colored clothing and different types of toys. Young girls are given pink clothing and Barbie dolls to play with, while young boys often wear the color blue and are encouraged to play with toy cars and to engage in competitive sports. On a more concrete term, when two toddlers perform the same action such as kicking upward, parents and friends of the male toddler are more likely to make a comment that the boy wants to be a boxer when he grows up. However, the female toddler receives no such comment, although she performs the exact same action. This example portrays how gender behaviors are not the result of biological predisposition, but rather due to the repetition of acts, mimicking the dominant discourse of gender.