Thread by @jennpiscopo

In this @bostonreview piece, Shauna Shames & I argue not that democracy has failed women, but that democracy without women fails everyone. A Saturday thread about the awesome @womenalsoknow scholars whose work shaped our piece. 1/11
bostonreview.net/politics-gende…

We draw on my research w/ @abclayton24 & @dianazobrien in @AJPS_Editor, which shows that U.S. voters view gender-balanced legislatures as more legitimate than all-male legislatures. Even men & even Republicans have this view. 2/11 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111…

The U.S. is hardly unique. For instance, @taniaverge, Nina Wisehomeier & Ana Espirito Santo show in @EJPGjournal that voters in Spain & Portugal also prefer to see women in office. 3/11
ingentaconnect.com/content/bup/ej…

Yet mainstream democracy scholars often ignored the link between women & democracy. Many feminists make this point, but a great primer is @labaldez's piece in @PoPpublicsphere on the gender lacuna among political scientists studying democratization. 4/11
cambridge.org/core/journals/…

Of course, feminist activists make including women their rallying cry. We give examples, like women demanding space in India's parliament (@carolespary is an expert) & women winning gender-balanced rules for Chile's constitutional conventional (thanks to @RedPolitologas) 5/11

Yet the connection b/w politics & men is hard to break. Voters like women in office in the abstract or under experimental conditions, but when actual women like Clinton or Warren run, suddenly women are unlikable and unelectable. @dawn_teele makes this point often. 6/11

Since arguing for women's presence based on fairness often doesn't work, activists pivot to arguing based on outcomes. Fortunately, political science supports claims that women politicians deliver, as @dianazobrien & I summarize in @palmacpolitics. 7/11
link.springer.com/chapter/10.105…

So much great research shows women politicians outperforming men, but check out @TAMU's Sarah Fulton's work in @PRQjournal, which shows that women candidates are better than men on most metrics. 8/11
jstor.org/stable/4163523…

And of course, seeing women in office makes young girls more likely to believe they can govern and makes everyone more engaged in and knowledgeable about politics. Fantastic scholars here include @C_Wolbrecht @MikiKittilson @LonnaAtkeson. 9/11

Finally, an equal number of women in power guards against democratic decay. As @nancylcohen wrote in the @latimes, “Shoring up men’s traditional prerogatives and putting women in their place are tried-and-true weapons in the autocrats’ arsenal.” 10/11
latimes.com/opinion/story/…

En fin, we write: "As the United States celebrates the centennial of woman suffrage, the best repudiation of Trump’s right turn would be to keep electing women."
11/11
bostonreview.net/politics-gende…