July 18, 2023

CAWP is pleased to announce the four recipients of our 2023 Ruth B. Mandel Dissertation Research Awards. The inaugural group of awardees are PhD candidates from across the country doing important work that expands our understanding of women’s role in American politics. The awardees (pictured above clockwise from top left) and their dissertation projects are:

Karra McCray Gibson (Brown University)

The New Congressional Black Caucus: Differentiating Divisions within the CBC

Michelle Irving (Rutgers University)

The Mominees’ Dilemma: The Raced-Gendered Experience of Moms Running for Office

Rana B. McReynolds (University of California, Davis)

Intersectional Stereotyping and Voter Bias: The Impact of Mammy, Jezebel, and Sapphire Stereotypes on Black Women Candidates

Crystal Robertson (University of California, Los Angeles)

Marginality in the Movement: The Effect of Intersectionality on Activist Strategies

The Ruth B. Mandel Dissertation Research Awards were established in honor of our founding director, Ruth B. Mandel, whose leadership was critical in building CAWP into a national center with multi-faceted research, education, public service, and information programs, helping to define and build the field. The Mandel Awards support dissertation research on women, gender, and U.S. politics and are $2,000 each in value.

“The exciting range of research being supported by this fellowship would certainly make my mother proud,” said Dr. Maud S. Mandel, Ruth Mandel’s daughter and the president of Williams College. “She cared deeply about nurturing talent among young scholars and practitioners, and it is exciting to see her commitments live on in this next generation.”

Learn more about the Ruth B. Mandel Dissertation Research Awards here, the 2023 recipients and their projects here, and the remarkable life of Ruth Mandel here.

Earlier this month, Higher Heights Leadership Fund and CAWP released the latest version of the report, Black Women in American Politics 2023. For nearly a decade, these reports have shown representational gains across all levels of office, including in the federal executive, and achieved milestones as candidates and officeholders within states and nationwide. But the underrepresentation of Black women persists, and our organizations remain committed to documenting, analyzing, and addressing disparities in both political presence and power.

The report illustrates:

• A record number of Black women serve in congressional, statewide elective executive, and state legislative offices in 2023, with important gains made and milestones achieved over the past decade. Since 2020, Black women have ascended to the vice presidency and the U.S. Supreme Court.
• Despite being 7.7% of the population, Black women are less than 6% of officeholders in Congress, statewide elective executive offices, and state legislatures. They are eight of the mayors in the nation’s 100 most populous cities.
• A record number of Black women ran for the U.S. House, U.S. Senate, and statewide elective executive offices – including governor – in 2022, and a record number of Black women were nominees for the U.S. Senate, statewide executive offices, and governor. These candidacies translated into record-level officeholding at multiple levels, but no Black women serve in the U.S. Senate today and no Black woman has ever served as governor.
• Between 2022 and 2023, Black women’s state legislative representation remained nearly equal – achieving a new high but by just three seats – though a record number of Black women currently lead state legislative chambers.
• Black women won big-city mayoral elections in Los Angeles, California and North Las Vegas, Nevada in 2022, and a Black woman is poised to be elected mayor of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in November 2023.

Read the full report here.

Rosalyn Cooperman, professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington, provided analysis for the CAWP blog following the Virginia primaries. In her piece, “The Fight for Partisan Control of Virginia’s State Legislature Continues and Democratic Women are on the Front Line,” Cooperman writes about partisan differences in women nominees for Virginia’s legislative elections and how the abortion issue remains an important driver for engagement. “An impressive number of Democratic women candidates – many of whom are Black women – recorded wins in party-friendly districts in both chambers and boosted their chances of winning seats come November,” she writes, contrasting with the experience of GOP women, “Republican women candidates will likely increase their numbers in the state Senate but not in the House of Delegates. Their smaller numbers overall suggest a limited presence in their party’s caucus – and its legislative agenda – in the 2024 General Assembly.”

Read the full piece on the CAWP blog.