House IN Women'S Hands?

Key points from the study's update:

1. Female candidates will be crucial to party control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
2. Women, as a proportion of all candidates running for the nomination to the U.S. House of Representatives, increased in 2006.
3. The gender gap between the Democratic and Republican parties has widened.
4. Most female incumbents are electorally secure.

Read the current update (PDF file).

a Gender Insurgency in Politics

Men have been making policy in Washington for as long as most of us can remember. But much of the political future rests in the hands of women. - From David Broder writing in The Washington Post (Oct. 15, 2006).

New Research Maps Women’s Paths to Power

Why is it taking so long for women to be elected in greater numbers to Congress when they’ve achieved so much in other spheres of American life? That question drove political scientists Dennis Simon of SMU and Barbara Palmer, a scholar with the Women and Politics Institute at American University, to search for clues to this political gender gap. Since 1916, only 203 women have been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Working from data that includes all elections to the U.S. House of Representatives in all Congressional districts from 1956 to 2004, they found that upscale, urban and diverse Congressional districts are more women-friendly, while rural, Southern and traditional districts are the least friendly to women.

Read Dennis Simon's Aug. 23 Q&A with The Dallas Morning News.

HEAR IT FROM THE WOMEN

• “A Congresswoman must look like a girl, act like a lady, think like a man ... and work like a dog.” Read more.
• How friendly – or unfriendly – is your district for women candidates? Find out here.
• Which female member of the House lost re-election after her husband wrote a public letter asking her to “come home” from Washington, D.C.? Take the quiz.