
The Impact of Feminism on Women’s Political Participation in the United States
- 1 Durham University
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Over the past few decades, there has been a significant increase in the number of women in politics in the United States (U.S.), which has gradually enhanced the status and opportunities for women in the political arena. The emergence of this phenomenon means that women’s political status has gradually been recognised by society, and women’s aspirations for political ambitions have shown a trend of increasing value. However, most of the related literature has adopted the quantitative analysis of the number of women’s participation in politics by means of regression equations. This paper will examine the impact of the feminist movement on women’s political participation in the U.S. by qualitatively analysing the political phenomenon from a feminist perspective. Through this analysis, the study establishes that feminism has played an active role in eliminating sexism in politics by calling for women’s political participation and campaigning for their rights, encouraging increasing numbers of women’s participation in political elections in the U.S..
Keywords
politics, participation, women, feminism, United States
[1]. Veness, F.P.L. and Sweeney, J.P. (1987) “1 women in the political arena”, in Le Veness, F. and Sweeney, J. (eds.) Women Leaders in Contemporary U.S. Politics. Boulder, USA: Lynne Rienner Publishers, pp. 1-8. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781685859480-002.
[2]. Welch, S. (1977) “Women as Political Animals? A Test of Some Explanations for Male-Female Political Participation Differences”, American Journal of Political Science, 21(4), pp. 711-730. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/2110733.
[3]. Welch, S. (1978) “Recruitment of Women to Public Office: A Discriminant Analysis”, Western Political Science Quarterly, 31(3), pp. 372-380. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/106591297803100307.
[4]. Han, L. (2010) “3 Women as Political Participants”, Women and US Politics: The Spectrum of Political Leadership. Boulder, USA: Lynne Rienner Publishers, pp. 45-68. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781685856861-005.
[5]. Costantini, E. (1990) “Political women and Political Ambition: Closing the gender gap”, American Journal of Political Science, 34(3), pp. 741-770. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/2111397.
[6]. Frankovic, K.A. (1982) “Sex and Politics. New Alignments, Old Issues”, PS, 15(3), pp. 439–448. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/418905.
[7]. Gilligan, C. (1982) In a Different Voice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
[8]. Smith, T.W. (1984) “The polls: Gender and attitudes toward violence”, Public Opinion Quarterly, 48(1), pp. 384-396. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2748632.
[9]. Shapiro, R.Y. and Mahajan, H. (1986) “Gender Differences in Policy Preferences: A summary of trends from the 1960s to the 1980s”, Public Opinion Quarterly, 50(1), pp. 42-61. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1086/268958.
[10]. Gilens, M. (1988) “Gender and Support for Reagan: A comprehensive model of presidential approval”, American Journal of Political Science, 32(1), pp. 19-49. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/2111308.
[11]. CAWP. (2022) Share of women in the United States Congress from 1971 to 2023. Statista. Statista Inc.. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/952906/us-congress-share-women-congress/.
[12]. History. (2022) “Seneca Falls Convention”, 9 March. Available at: https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/seneca-falls-convention#declaration-of-sentiments.
[13]. Rix, S.E. (1987) The American Woman 1987-88: A Report in Depth. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
[14]. Li, J.Q. (2009) “er shi shi ji ba shi nian dai mei guo fu nv can zheng Zhuang kuang yan jiu”, zhe xue yu ren wen ke xue; she hui ke xue I ji. Available at: https://kns.cnki.net/kcms2/article/abstract?v=3uoqIhG8C475KOm_zrgu4lQARvep2SAk6at-NE8M3PgrTsq96O6n6bEscBknr6V2pLNqAruYaaR9iVXwjbhSX3G0lADwGcNd&uniplatform=NZKPT.
[15]. Bertolini, J.C. (1987) “6 Elizabeth Holtzman: Political Reform and Feminist Vision”, in Le Veness, F. and Sweeney, J. (eds.) Women Leaders in Contemporary U.S. Politics. Boulder, USA: Lynne Rienner Publishers, pp. 65–76. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781685859480-007.
[16]. Han, L. (2010) “2 The Women’s Movement and Feminism in the United States”, Women and US Politics: The Spectrum of Political Leadership. Boulder, USA: Lynne Rienner Publishers, pp. 17–44. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781685856861-004.
[17]. Holvino, E. (2007) “13 Women and Power New Perspectives on Old Challenges”, in Kellerman, B. and Rhode, D.L. (eds.) Women and Leadership: The State of Play. Hoboken, NJ: Jossey- Bass, pp. 361-382. Available at: http://www.chaosmanagement.com/images/stories/pdfs/Women%20and%20Powerchapterfinalproof4-07.pdf.
[18]. CAWP (no date) Women in the U.S. Congress 2022. Available at: https://cawp.rutgers.edu/facts/levels-office/congress/women-us-congress-2022.
Cite this article
Feng,S. (2023). The Impact of Feminism on Women’s Political Participation in the United States. Communications in Humanities Research,14,192-197.
Data availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
Disclaimer/Publisher's Note
The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of EWA Publishing and/or the editor(s). EWA Publishing and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content.
About volume
Volume title: Proceedings of the International Conference on Global Politics and Socio-Humanities
© 2024 by the author(s). Licensee EWA Publishing, Oxford, UK. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. Authors who
publish this series agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the series right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this
series.
2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the series's published
version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial
publication in this series.
3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and
during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See
Open access policy for details).