My Research

My book project considers the role of political organizations in shaping women's political ambition and behavior. Through a theory of Organizational Identity Signaling, I argue that women's organizations are distinctly equipped to increase women's representation in political office, because they send a signal to potential women candidates that they are experts at addressing gendered barriers to running. Women's Candidate Training Organizations (WCTOs) are a vast network of political organizations operating in 44 U.S. states and putting thousands of hours and millions of dollars into the recruitment and training of women for state and local office. I expect that these organizations are uniquely positioned to address women's underrepresentation both because they send a signal to women of their interest in group-based mobilization (gendered recruitment) and place an emphasis on addressing women-specific barriers to running for office in their programming (gendered training and candidate support). However, not all women will perceive women’s organization’s as similarly relevant and supportive of people like them, shaping their effectiveness at increasing the racial diversity of women’s ambition. Using interviews with 57 organizations that train candidates to run for political office, I provide evidence that WCTOs are more likely to address women’s material and psychological barriers to running, than non-gender candidate training organizations (NGCTOs). However, I also find that women's organizations are less likely to talk about barriers faced by non-white and non-straight candidates. Then, using an original online survey experiment, I demonstrate that the strategies used by women's organizations to recruit and train candidates increase women's ambition, but that these organizations are perceived differently across women’s race and ethnicity. This research has critical implications for understanding the role of identity-specific interest groups is shaping representation.

This project reconsiders the long-standing narrative in political science that women participate less in politics. Using expansive survey data from the 1970s to the present across multiple sources, including the Current Population Survey, the American National Election Study, and the National Politics Study, we focus on three critical trends. First, we show that while the gender gap has disappeared in terms of participation and donating (and reversed for voting), the gaps across racial groups have held quite steady. We consider two possible mechanisms for the shift in women's political participation over time -- changes in resources and changes in the political environment. We unequivocally demonstrate that changes in the political environment, from increases in women's representation, to political interest, to the salience of gender in Hillary Clinton's campaign, cannot explain major shifts in participatory behavior by gender. Instead, the expansion of women's access to education and employment over time is critically associated to the growth of their political voice.

What is the relationship between feminism and political participation? How does partisanship moderate this relationship? Prior research shows that gender attitudes and particularly sexism, rather than gender identity per se, are increasingly shaping vote choice and participation in U.S. elections. However, the role played by feminism in voter behavior remains scarcely understood. As feminist identification crosses partisanship, we argue that its impact on engagement with campaigns and turnout depends on party ID. We therefore expect feminist identity, and the ways in which it intersects with either aligned or conflicting partisan identity, to impact partisans’ participation asymmetrically. Using data from the 2016 and 2020 American National Election Studies, our results provide support for these expectations. Holding the mutually reinforcing identities of Democrat and feminist has a significant mobilizing impact, while holding the cross-cutting identities of Republican and feminist tends to lead to a decline in political participation.

What explains the gender gap in support for the protection and advancement of women’s rights? This paper argues that because boys receive less and more delayed information outside the home about gender inequality than girls, the cues boys receive inside the home play an outsized role in their adult attitudes about women’s rights. Using a large national survey, we demonstrate that men’s attitudes towards women’s rights are, in fact, more heavily influenced by the perceived attitudinal norms within their family than are women’s. Through a follow-up survey experiment with a national sample of U.S. teenagers, we explore this further and illustrate that one-time statements from a single family member shift support for women’s rights among young men, but not young women. Importantly, statements from other authority figures don’t impact attitudes. Our findings highlight the gendered manner in which familial socialization shapes the gendered attitudes that frame women’s lives.

Political science has long demonstrated a relationship between anger and political participation, and that relationship is likely to significantly vary across intersectional groups. While anger has increased overall, Black men and women have generally reported lower levels of anger and a weaker relationship between anger and electoral participation than white men and women. However, 2020-2022 was a period of particularly high participation, from the protests following George Floyd’s murder, to the high turnout in 2020 and in states with abortion ballot initiatives in 2022. What role did anger play in shaping participation across race and gender during these salient political moments? Using two nationally representative surveys, we demonstrate that both race and gender impact the association between anger and electoral and non-electoral participation. In 2020, Black women, along with both white men and women, when angry, were mobilized to participate electorally. Further, while Black women were mobilized by anger to protest, white women were the only group for whom anger motivated non-electoral engagement in both 2020 and 2022. This research has critical implications for understanding the circumstances and channels through which anger is mobilizing and highlights the powerful role of anger in U.S. politics, particularly for white and Black women.

How do different experimental designs that study candidates’ race and ethnicity influence how respondents process that information? Traditionally, studies looking at how a candidate’s race and ethnicity influence vote choice have used vignette experiments, where respondents receive a paragraph candidate biography and researchers vary relevant characteristics (race, gender, age, traits, etc.). However, there has been a growing shift towards using conjoint experiments to study preferences toward political candidates. In conjoint experiments, information is presented line-by-line in a table format rather than lumped in a paragraph, allowing researchers to evaluate decision- making in a multi-dimensional context. We argue that this shift from presenting candidate information in a vignette to a conjoint also influences how characteristics are understood, processed, and used in candidate evaluations by survey respondents. Using a two-wave experiment, we demonstrate that differences in the treatment mode (vignette or table) impact how respondents use information about a candidate’s ethnicity to determine vote preference, particularly for Latino candidates. Then using a follow-up survey experiment, we test the possible mechanisms for this variation, looking at differences in time, salience, and task difficulty.

In this paper, I propose a framework for balancing standardization and flexibility when using in qualitative interviewing within the positivist tradition, and then demonstrate how I address these tradeoffs in my own research. When researchers believe that tailoring their tactics to a particular respondent will increase their ability to generate more accurate data, then they should prioritize flexibility. When researchers believe that keeping their approach constant across units will minimize major threats to inference, then they should prioritize standardization. Overall, this approach is framed around two questions for interview researchers to consider when making decisions – Will this decision make it more likely that the information I gather and how I interpret it accurately reflects the phenomenon of interest? – and – Will this decision introduce noise into my findings that could change my results, because of how that decision introduces differences in treatment across units, rather than real differences in respondents?