It Really Just Takes A Candidate: An Evaluation of the Gender Dynamics of State Legislator’s Pre-Office Résumés

Fox and Lawless’ groundbreaking work on candidate emergence transformed the way we think about the representation gap in American politics. One of the key findings of their work was that while women are less likely to run than men, this is due to a difference in perceived qualifications. In this paper I analyze the difference in qualifications between male and female state legislators to find that ultimately this perception is simply that. There is no significant difference in the qualifications of male and female state legislators prior to entering the chamber