May 09, 2023

The revised deadline to become an inaugural Ruth B. Mandel Dissertation Research Award recipient is almost here: applications to join the first cohort of Mandel awardees must be received by Monday, May 15th! Created to honor our founding co-director, early leader, and consistent champion, Ruth Mandel, and made possible through the generosity of her family, Mandel Awards support dissertation research on women, gender, and U.S. politics. Eligible recipients include advanced doctoral students from any relevant discipline at U.S.-based institutions who have successfully defended their dissertation proposal. We encourage applications from scholars who are traditionally underrepresented in the academy and welcome applications for research that analyzes gender in addition to or in conjunction with other categories such as race/ethnicity, class, immigration status, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

CAWP will support up to four graduate students annually through our Ruth B. Mandel Dissertation Research Awards, and each recipient will receive $2,000 in funding. Learn more about the Mandel Awards, and the extraordinary life of Ruth Mandel, here.

Our colleagues at Eagleton’s Center for Youth Political Participation have released new research on the representation of young people in the 118th Congress. Among their findings:

U.S. Senate

• 3 senators are millennials.
• 1 senator was a Young Elected Leader aged 35 or younger.
• This sole Young Elected Leader in the Senate is a man.
• The median age of senators is 65 years.
• The youngest senator was born in 1987.
• The oldest senator was born in 1933.

U.S. House

• 52 representatives are millennials.
• 13 Representatives are Young Elected Leaders aged 35 or younger.
• Of 13 Young Elected Leaders, 6 are women and 7 are men.
• The median age of representatives is 57.5 years.
• The youngest representative was born in 1997.
• The oldest representative was born in 1936.

Read the full report on the Center for Youth Political Participation website. 

New research released yesterday from our friends at Vote Mama Foundation uncovers new insights on the ways in which the U.S. Congress is falling short in representing America’s population. In Politics of Parenthood: Representation in the 118th Congress, the team at Vote Mama shows that while about 17.8% of the adult population of the United States are moms with minor children, just 6.8% of members of Congress are mothers to children under 18. Furthermore, while moms of young children are underrepresented, dads of minors are overrepresented at more than one and a half times the rate in the population: 24.2% of all members of Congress are dads of minor children and 15.1% of American adults are fathers to children under 18. Astonishingly, 11 congressmen welcomed newborns in the last year alone, but only 11 women have ever given birth while serving in Congress.

Find out more and read the full report here.