Gender and political vocation: Women campaign consultants

This research explores why there are so few women political consultants and how the experiences of women consultants differ from their male counterparts. Women make up roughly 18.0% of the campaign consulting industry, including general consultants, media and direct mail consultants, pollsters and fund-raisers. This research seeks to see if there are differences between men and women consultants in terms of their professional and personal characteristics, their attitudes, and their relationships with other campaign actors: the political parties, candidates, and other consultants. A survey of 505 campaign consultants conducted for the Improving Campaign Conduct project by the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies and The Pew Charitable Trusts is used to compare men and women consultants on a variety of demographic variables, their attitudes about the role of consultants and the political parties in elections, and the quality of candidates running for office. In addition, elite interviews with men and women D.C. area consultants were conducted to further explore the experiences of men and women consultants and their relationships to each other, the political parties, and candidates, particularly women candidates. This research found that men and women differed on a few personal variables, most notably, women consultants were significantly less likely to be married and have children than their male counterparts. In addition, this research found that a gendered division of labor exists within the consulting profession and in the entry-level jobs in campaign politics. Women are more likely to be fund-raisers than their male counterparts and as such have less impact over the course of the campaigns that they work on. Finally, this research found evidence of a possible relationship between women consultants and women candidates. Future research should further examine the way in which gender impacts the hiring of a candidate's consultant team and the impact women consultants have on the overall structure and direction of the campaign.