Heather L. Ondercin
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Contact Information: 202 Pond Building University Park, PA 16802 E-Mail: hlo114@psu.edu |
I am a graduate student in the department of the Department of Political Science and Women's Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. My research interest focus on political behavior, specifically women's political behavior. I am concerned with how women's and men's political behavior has changed over time and what has caused these changes. Additionally, I am interested in issues of women’s representation in government and the integration of feminist theory into the empirical study of women and politics.
Current Research Projects
Dissertation: The Changing Social Definitions of Men and Women and Their Effect On the Partisan Gender Gap, 1953-2003.
This project develops a theory and empirical measures of the social definition of gender to explain changes in the partisan attachments of men and women and the resulting partisan gender gap. The meaning society ascribes to men and women -- the social definition of gender -- is constantly evolving as a result of political, economic, and social changes – both those that result from slow demographic trends and those that occur as a result of individual events. These changes in the social definition of gender result in men and women developing new needs from government, producing partisan realignments based on pre-existing differences in the political parties. I examine the causes and consequences of the social definition of gender using Gallup survey data to measure partisanship between 1953 and 2003, and public opinion data and content analysis of news periodicals to capture the social definition of gender. Hypotheses are tested using time series methods.
Committee: Suzanna De Boef (Chair), Susan Welch, Lee Ann Banaszak, Jennifer Mittlestadt.
Electing Women as a Political Innovation with Susan Welch
Focusing on congressional races in the 1990s, we explore a variety of hypotheses to explain why, over time, some districts are more likely to have women candidates and to elect women than are others. Viewing the election of women as a political innovation, we examine the increase in women members in light of factors thought to promote political innovation. Our findings indicate that the prior experience of electing a woman member of Congress strongly predicts the presence of women candidates and women’s success in that district, even when taking into account open seat effects. Women officeholders open the door for further women’s successes. As in prior studies, open seats are highly related to women’s primary candidacies and women’s successes. Additionally, of constituency demographics that re linked to innovation, Southern and California locale and the Democratic propensity of the districts are consistently related to women’s candidacies and successes.
Context Matters: The Influence of State and Campaign Factors on the Gender Gap in Senate Elections, 1988-2000with Jeffery Bernstein Accepted in Politics and Gender.
We present an empirical analysis of the aggregate gender gap in elections to the United States Senate from 1988 until 2000. Studying the gender gap in this way allows us to look at multiple elections across time and across different electoral contexts to determine when significant electoral gender gaps arise and when they do not. This contrasts with more traditional approaches that focus either on a single presidential election or on a single year’s House or Senate elections. We demonstrate that electoral gender gaps arise from campaign-level factors (such as candidate sex, the presence of an incumbent, and the issues raised in the campaign), state-level factors (demographics and politics of the states), and the complex interaction of these factors.
Gender Jeopardy: Differences in Men's and Women's level of political knowledge with Daniel Jones-White.
This paper demonstrates significant differences in men's and women's understanding of their political world. Though differences between men's and women's political knowledge appear quantitatively small, our analysis of the participatory effects of political knowledge from 1984 to 2000 reveals that sex differences in political knowledge translate into significant differences in levels of expressive, or public, political participation. Specifically we find that sex difference in political knowledge have only a minimal effect on the most common political act, voting. However, sex differences in political knowledge significantly depress women's engagement in other forms of political participation, such as attending meetings, working for campaigns and wearing political buttons. Consequently, we argue that women, as a group, appear to be hindered in the ability to effectively participate in politics.
Published Works
Women Candidates with Susan Welch in Women and Elective Office: Past, Present
and Future 2nd Ed. Edited by Sue Thomas and Clyde Wilcox. Oxford University Press. 2005.
Contributing author to the Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods. 2003. Michael Lewis-Beck, Alan Bryman, and Tim Futing Liao, eds.
Article Title, “External Validity,” Level B.
Article Title, “Efficiency,” Level C.
Article Title, “Residual,” Level C.
Article Title, “Unbiased,” Level C.
Teaching
PL SC 001 Introduction to American Politics Summer 2005
PL SC/WM ST 428 Women and Politics Summer 2006
Professional Links
Department of Political Science, at Penn State
Women's Studies Graduate Student Organization
American
Political Science Association
Midwest Political Science Association
Center for American Women and Politics
Personal Links