Political Parties: The Missing Variable in Women and Politics Research

Abstract

An explosion in the literature on women and politics has been stimulated by the contemporary women's movement. This paper argues that an early diversity in theoretical orientation and methodology has been replaced by a narrow orthodoxy characterized by the use of polling and the survey method, and the theoretical voting behavior model employed by the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan. Left out of this approach is the study of political parties as organizations-a variable presented here as essential to the study of women in politics. The image of parties in women and politics scholarship is surveyed, as are the theoretical implications of ignoring women's gains in political parties in such studies.