The Partisan Gap by Laurel Elder

Author:Laurel Elder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: NYU Press

Democratic Party Culture and the Recruitment of Women to Congress

Jo Freeman’s foundational work on political party culture in the United States characterized the Democratic Party as having an open and decentralized culture, where power flows upward, and where group identities and group-based activism are viewed as legitimate and valuable.10 She argued that the decentralized nature of the Democratic Party culture made it particularly open to demands from previously marginalized groups, including women and racial and ethnic minority groups. In their more recent analysis of party culture, Grossman and Hopkins explicitly build on Freeman’s analysis of party culture and argue that the Democratic Party is best understood “as a coalition of social groups seeking concrete government action” as opposed to the Republican Party, which is structured around ideology and more specifically conservatism.11 In other words, the Democratic Party views activists making group-based demands and groups vying to shape party policy as the norm, rather than as an act of disloyalty toward the party or the party’s liberal ideology. Cooperman and Crowder-Meyer further reaffirm this characterization of the Democratic Party culture, arguing that “the Democratic Party is essentially organized to hear and respond to group-based demands.”12

The distinctively decentralized and open culture of the Democratic Party has a number of implications for the recruitment of women. Most important, it has allowed feminists and groups demanding increased representation for women to gain a strong foothold within the party’s organizational structure. As Freeman describes it, it is not so much that feminists were welcomed by the Democratic Party, but rather that feminists marched in, made demands, and became a legitimate force in shaping party policies.13 In this way, activists demanding women’s representation became part of the fabric of the Democratic Party and were able to further pursue the goal of increased women’s representation from within the party. Finally, the open structure of the Democratic Party has enabled it to partner productively with an extended network of groups, most prominently EMILY’s List, that are single-mindedly focused on electing more Democratic women to office. This chapter now turns to discuss each of the ways Democratic Party culture has impacted the recruitment of women.

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