The Private Roots of Public Action: Gender, Equality, and Political Participation - Softcover

Burns, Nancy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674006607 ISBN 13: 9780674006607

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2001

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Nancy Burns is Warren E. Miller Collegiate Professor and Director for the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan. Kay Lehman Schlozman is J. Joseph Moakley Endowed Professor of Political Science at Boston College. Sidney Verba (1932–2019) was Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor, Emeritus, and Research Professor of Government at Harvard University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674006607
• ISBN 13: 9780674006607
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 472