Cover: The Private Roots of Public Action: Gender, Equality, and Political Participation, from Harvard University PressCover: The Private Roots of Public Action in PAPERBACK

The Private Roots of Public Action

Gender, Equality, and Political Participation

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PAPERBACK

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$50.00 • £43.95 • €45.95

ISBN 9780674006607

Publication Date: 09/30/2001

Short

480 pages

14 line illustrations, 126 tables

World

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Why, after several generations of suffrage and a revival of the women’s movement in the late 1960s, do women continue to be less politically active than men? Why are they less likely to seek public office or join political organizations? The Private Roots of Public Action is the most comprehensive study of this puzzle of unequal participation.

The authors develop new methods to trace gender differences in political activity to the nonpolitical institutions of everyday life—the family, school, workplace, nonpolitical voluntary association, and church. Different experiences with these institutions produce differences in the resources, skills, and political orientations that facilitate participation—with a cumulative advantage for men. In addition, part of the solution to the puzzle of unequal participation lies in politics itself: where women hold visible public office, women citizens are more politically interested and active. The model that explains gender differences in participation is sufficiently general to apply to participatory disparities among other groups—among the young, the middle-aged, and the elderly or among Latinos, African-Americans and Anglo-Whites.

Awards & Accolades

  • 2002 Johan Skytte Prize for Political Science, Skytte Foundation at Uppsala University
  • Co-Winner, 2002 Victoria Schuck Award, American Political Science Association

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