Contentious Civic Spheres and Gender Inequality

Gender inequality persists in civic and political arenas. Historically, school volunteer positions have served as a bridge to encourage women’s mobility into politics, specifically through school board elections. This school board service can facilitate women’s advancement into higher political office. However, some school boards have recently experienced high levels of public attention, activism, and conflict around school policies. Further, it is possible women and men face different levels of criticism or attacks in these polarized arenas. Given this overall context, we ask: has the increase in conflict over school policies qualitatively changed the nature of school board service, especially for women? Are there gender differences in political aspirations across school board members? To investigate these questions, we analyzed survey data from 380 elected school board trustees in Texas. We find that women, relative to men, express lower levels of political ambition and have more concerns about campaigning. To understand why, we also conducted a qualitative analysis of school board experiences. We find that women, relative to men, report more personal attacks and negative experiences, especially from constituents. This suggests that more acrimonious civic environments could disproportionately affect women’s civic engagement and ambition. In turn, this could ultimately affect gender representation in government.