| After the 2018 midterm election,the number of American congresswomen reached a new high,with 127 women were successfully elected.Although the 2018 election produced great gains for women,it further highlighted the partisan gap in women’s number in Congress.Among the 127 congresswomen,106 are Democratic women,while mere 21 are Republican women.In reality,before 1990 s,women in Congress were equally like to be Republicans or Democrats.However,since then,the number of Democratic women in Congress has increased dramatically,while the growth of Republican women has been sluggish,which made the partisan gap keep increasing over the past 3 decades.In recent years,the growing partisan gap has attracted the attention of some scholars who have explained it from the perspective of ideology,campaign fund-raising and the candidate pool,but few have turned specifically to an analysis of the impact of party culture.This thesis aims to explain the partisan gap in the number of American congresswomen from the perspective of party culture.Research on party culture suggests that the Democratic and Republican parties are very different entities with distinctive party cultures.The Democratic Party has a pluralistic party culture in which Democrats value diversity and group identity,and tend to hear and respond to group-based demands.The Republican Party has a unitary party culture in which Republicans prioritize party loyalty and conservative ideology purity,and refuse group-based demands.The main body of this paper includes three chapters which compare the recruitment efforts of female candidates by the national Democratic and Republican parties,the financial support for female candidates from liberal and conservative women’s PACs and the support for women candidates of Democratic and Republican voters,respectively.The Democratic Party culture holds consequences of the national Democratic Party’s numerous and sustained women recruitment efforts,theliberal women’s PACs’ robust financial support and the supportive Democratic voters,while the Republican Party culture holds consequences of the National Republican Party’s deficient and unsustainable women recruitment efforts,the conservative women’s PACs’ weak financial support and the unfriendly Republican voters.Therefore,Democratic women have been more successful at obtaining congressional seats than Republican women.This paper then concludes that the distinctive party cultures of the two parties are the deeper reason of the partisan gap.The Democratic Party culture fosters the increase of Democratic congresswomen,while the Republican Party culture inhibits the increase of Republican congresswomen. |
