Five research projects received funding through the 2015 Carrie Chapman Catt Prize for Research on Women and Politics."We received 69 proposals from researchers in a variety of academic disciplines, which made the task of the selection committee difficult," said Dianne Bystrom, director of Iowa State’s Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics, which sponsors the annual awards.
The selection committee, composed of 11 faculty members, blind-reviewed the proposals and chose three projects as winners of the Catt Prize and two projects for honorable mention awards. Each of the winning prize proposals will receive $2,000. Honorable mention awards will receive $1,000 each.
Prize winners for 2015 are:
Tiffany D. Barnes, assistant professor of political science at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, and Constanza F. Schibber, Ph.D. candidate in political science at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, for “The Successes of Female Representatives: Causes and Consequences of a Gendered Distribution of Legislative Power.” The study will examine how access to positions of power within legislative bodies influences the legislative success of female representatives. The award will be used to acquire and code a dataset, gather biographical information and committee appointments of legislators, and organize the data to make it publicly available.
Christina Ladam, Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Colorado, Boulder; Jason Windett, assistant professor in political science at Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri; and Jeffrey J. Harden, assistant professor of political science at the University of Colorado, Boulder; for “Does the Election of Female Governors Influence Women’s Political Ambition?” The study examines the impact of the election of a woman to a state executive position on the political ambition of other women in that state. The award will be used to create a website to make the data publicly available, including state-level maps for every census decade.
Jennifer Rosen, visiting assistant professor of sociology at Pepperdine University, Malibu, California, for “Gender Quotas for Women in National Politics: A Comparative Analysis Across Development Thresholds.” The study will examine the complexity of the variables related to gender quota legislation and how they relate to promoting more balanced women’s political representation. The award will be used to hire an undergraduate research assistant and to help defray travel costs to the Women’s Leadership Symposium at Oxford University in December 2016.
Recipients of honorable mention awards are:
Joel Hanel, Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Mississippi, Oxford, for “Assessing the Impact of Female Casualties on Support for Military Conflict.” The study will examine how the gender of combat casualties influences American opinions on war and the role of women in the military. The award will be used to run a survey experiment on a national sample of participants in the United States.
Ashley Tallevi, Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, for “Making the Political Personal: Health Insurance, the Submerged State, and Women’s Political Engagement.” The study will examine how the degree of transparency of government involvement in Medicaid and long-term contraceptive coverage influences the political attitudes and behavior of their target populations, which are predominantly women. The award will be used to offset the cost of administering a survey experiment.
The annual research prize has been funded since 1994 by the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics. Members of the 2015 Catt Prize Selection Committee are Iowa State faculty members David Andersen, Tessa Ditonto, Jonathan Hassid, Mark Nieman, David Peterson, Mack Shelley and Robert Urbatsch, all with the Department of Political Science; Amy Bix, Department of History; Kelly Winfrey, Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication; and Bystrom; and Andrew Green, professor of political science at Central College in Pella, Iowa, and a lecturer at Iowa State. The committee was assisted by Sue Cloud, communications specialist at the Catt Center.