U. report finds women donate less to political campaigns, women candidates receive less than men

A recent report by the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) found that men disproportionately donate more money to state political campaigns than women.

"We (found) that women are underrepresented in the money contributed to state candidates, with men out-giving women 2 to 1," said Kira Sanbonmatsu, a professor in the Department of Political Science and the author of the report.

For this report, the CAWP collaborated with OpenSecrets, an organization that tracks campaign contributions. CAWP compared data from OpenSecrets with their own candidate gender data to form the study's findings, Sanbonmatsu said.

Women are more likely to donate to Democrats than Republicans, but women in both parties are more likely to donate to women candidates, according to the study.

"Women are usually more interested in electing more women to office," Sanbonmatsu said.

The report concludes that women candidates and elected officials have more trouble fundraising, relying more on small donations than male candidates.

Sanbonmatsu joined a webinar panel discussing the report titled "The Donor Gap: A Conversation on Campaign Contributions and Raising Women’s Political Voices" on Thursday.

She was joined by Larissa Martinez, a Republican strategist and president of the Women's Public Leadership Network, and Kimberly Peeler-Allen, a Democratic strategist and visiting practitioner at CAWP.

Martinez and Peeler-Allen agreed during the panel event that the results of the report were unsurprising.

"We know that people are electable when we elect them, when we support them, regardless of what their gender is," Martinez said. "But we know that the ability to compete, especially with money, with early dollars, can be a barrier to whether somebody is even seen or treated as electable."

Women candidates are often perceived as less electable than men, which contributes to the gap in donations, Peeler-Allen said.

"It goes down to the fact that the majority of our leadership in this country continues to be male, and our concept of what leadership looks like is still very male-focused," she said.

Martinez acknowledged that women Democratic voters are more likely to donate early to women running for office. She speculated that female Republican voters do not want to be perceived as supporting a candidate due to their gender.

"I'm not saying people on the Left don't want to get to know their candidates, but I think there is kind of this immediate need and cultural understanding of that early money a little bit more so than on the Right," she said.

The report pointed out that white women tend to receive more contributions than minority women running for office.

Sanbonmatsu said more women would run for office if they had access to greater contributions, especially from women voters. She also said that through campaign contributions, women students at Rutgers can have their voices heard outside of elections.

"Students don’t always think about contributing to candidates when they think about ways to participate politically, but giving is an important form of political voice," she said.