Local Elections, the "Political Pipeline," and Women's Underrepresentation in Elective Office.

Despite high success rates when they run for office, women are still underrepresented in federal, state and local elective office. Past research has explored factors that contribute to the scarcity of female candidates on the state and federal level, but little attention has been paid to the local level. This paper begins to fill that gap by exploring electoral and fundraising patterns in mayoral and council elections in seven cities. We find that, similar to state and federal elections, women do just as well as men when they seek office but fewer women run. Further, of the women who do mount campaigns their backgrounds are quite similar to male candidates. As for fundraising, female candidates receive contributions from the same sources as male candidates and in comparable amounts. In general, we found few differences between male and female candidates. These findings highlight the importance of self-selection in the decision to run for office and informs the body of research on why more women do not run for elective office. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]