It Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don't Run for Office

It Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don't Run for Office. By Jennifer L. Lawless and Richard L. Fox. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. 2005. 203 pp. $65.00 cloth, $22.99 paper. Why do so few women occupy elected offices in the United States? One reason, perhaps the most important one, is that fewer women than men are politically ambitious. That is the major conclusion to emerge from the innovative research conducted by Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox. This finding alone is bound to make It Takes a Candidate a must-read, must-cite book for all scholars studying gender and politics.