VERIA, Ohio — This month, the political candidates elected in November will be sworn into office. Both US Senators from Ohio are male. Of her 15 U.S. Representatives in Ohio, only four are women. Nan Whaley was the first woman in state history to run for a major party for governor, but she lost. There are no women in any of her five statewide executive departments in Ohio. The number of women in the Ohio Senate will remain the same, but the number of women in the Ohio House of Representatives will decrease. If current trends continue, the Ohio State Capitol won’t be gender equal until about her 2072.
Elsewhere in the United States, meanwhile, more and more women are entering elected office. During 2018 and her 2020 election cycle, the number of women running for office at the national and state levels increased dramatically. In Ohio, the increase is… well. So why is the integration of women into public office stalled in Ohio?
An analysis of Ohio’s 2022 House election provides some clues. About a third of the primary candidates were women (72 out of 216). About a third of the primary winners were also women (57 out of 168). About a third of women (30 out of 99) also won the general election. About one-third of the Ohio House of Representatives will be women in the new Congress starting in January. All this suggests that it doesn’t matter how many women run for office in each district, it does matter how many districts women are running for.
Nearly 80% of women who ran won in Ohio’s House primary, compared with 78% of men. Female incumbents performed slightly better than male incumbents. Women had the same potential to run unchallenged as men. Women were just as likely to run for another female candidate as men.
No matter how we analyzed this data, women had the same win rates as men.
This suggests that the problem is that women are less likely to run. Of her 99 races in the Ohio House general election, only her 47 races featured at least one of her female candidates. In other words, less than half of all voters in Ohio congressional districts saw a female name on the ballot. We know the role model effect is important. If she doesn’t see someone like her in a position of power, she’s less likely to imagine herself in that position. The more women vote, the more women will run for office.
Studies show that women are not encouraged to run as often as men. Men are much more likely to be told to run for office by party leaders, their friends and family members (including spouses), men are much more likely to be self-motivated, wake up and enter public office. It seems that he has decided to run for office. Women don’t.
So the solution is simple. Tell your sisters, mothers, wives, girlfriends, nieces, daughters and granddaughters to run for election. Again, if you’re a woman reading this, run away! what else do you have to lose? You are as likely to win as the next guy.
Barbara Palmer is a professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Women and Politics at Baldwin Wallace University in Ohio. Christina Vitakis is a Baldwin Undergraduate Fellow at her Center for Women and Politics at Wallace College, majoring in Psychology.
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