Does the Presence or Absence of Elections Remove Gender Differences in Ambition for Public Service?

Abstract

Perhaps because scholars of political ambition have focused almost entirely on electoral ambition, the presence of elections has been thought to play a major role in shaping who expresses interest in public service. In this article, we examine whether the presence or absence of elections changes women’s political ambition. Using surveys of law students, federal bureaucrats, and the general public, we find the relationship between gender and ambition for elected office is similar to the relationship between gender and ambition for bureaucratic and judicial service. We show that, although women are deterred from public service by the elections that act as gateways to those opportunities, the effects of elections on gendered political ambition duplicate the effects of other components of public service. Rather than unique, elections are duplicative in their effects, reinforcing the relationship between gender and ambition rather than fundamentally changing who expresses ambition for public service.

Full text

LETTER
Does the Presence or Absence of Elections Remove
Gender Differences in Ambition for Public Service?
Hans J.G. Hassell1, Gary E. Hollibaugh Jr2and Matthew R. Miles3
1Department of Political Science, Florida State University, 600 W. College Ave., Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA, 2University of
Pittsburgh, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, 230 S. Bouquet Street, 3802 Wesley W. Posvar Hall,
Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA and 3Brigham Young University Idaho, Department of History, Geography, and Political Science,
525 S. Center Street, Rexburg, ID 83460, USA
Corresponding author: Hans J.G. Hassell; Email: hans.hassell@fsu.edu
(Received 1 November 2023; revised 2 April 2024; accepted 16 September 2024)
Abstract
Perhaps because scholars of political ambition have focused almost entirely on electoral ambition, the
presence of elections has been thought to play a major role in shaping who expresses interest in public
service. In this article, we examine whether the presence or absence of elections changes women’s political
ambition. Using surveys of law students, federal bureaucrats, and the general public, we find the
relationship between gender and ambition for elected office is similar to the relationship between gender
and ambition for bureaucratic and judicial service. We show that, although women are deterred from
public service by the elections that act as gateways to those opportunities, the effects of elections on
gendered political ambition duplicate the effects of other components of public service. Rather than
unique, elections are duplicative in their effects, reinforcing the relationship between gender and ambition
rather than fundamentally changing who expresses ambition for public service.
Keywords: Gender and Political Ambition; Electoral vs. Non-Electoral Ambition; Public Service Careers
Women are underrepresented at all levels of government (Center for American Women and Politics
2023), which affects representation (Gerrity et al. 2007), the behaviour of public officials (Dodson
2006), and citizens’responses to government (Campbell and Wolbrecht 2006; Stauffer 2021). While
other barriers for women to be elected office exist (for example, voter biases [Karpowitz et al. 2024]
and elite support [Barber, Butler, and Preece 2016]), one key barrier to representational equality is
gender differences in ambition (Fox and Lawless 2014; Fulton et al. 2006;Preece2016).
Recent studies have highlighted elections as reducing ambition among women (for example,
Kanthak and Woon 2015; Koltveit 2022; Preece and Stoddard 2015), suggesting the gender
distribution of office seekers might be fundamentally different without elections. However, studies
asserting elections’critical role in shaping ambition do not distinguish whether elections change
or merely reinforce gender differences in ambition.1Indeed, there are reasons to doubt elections
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original article is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University
Press must be obtained prior to any commercial use.
1We are not arguing elections have no effect on ambition (see Kanthak and Woon 2015, Preece and Stoddard 2015).
Instead, we argue removing elections would not change who runs because elections deterrent effect for women duplicates the
effects of other components of public service. Kanthak and Woon (2015, p. 610) explicitly recognize this possibility, stating ‘we
claim only that election aversion is a distinct contributing factor [deterring women from office-seeking], not that it is unique’.
They do not, however, test this possibility.
British Journal of Political Science (2025), 55, e6, 1–10
doi:10.1017/S0007123424000449
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123424000449 Published online by Cambridge University Press

are unique in deterring women. Women are underrepresented in non-elected political positions
such as the bureaucracy (Bishu and Headley 2020) and the judiciary (American Bar Association
2023).2Yet, with few exceptions, scholarship on gendered ambition has focused on candidate
emergence and ambition for elected office (for example, Crowder-Meyer 2020; Fox and Lawless
2005), largely ignoring ambition for other forms of public service (see Ammassari et al. [2022],
Badas and Stauffer [2023], Bauer and Darkwah [2019], and Koltveit [2022] for exceptions).
In this work, we test whether the presence or absence of elections changes women’s ambition
for public service by examining the relationship between gender and interest in high-profile
elected and non-elected positions in government. Using samples of federal employees, law
students, and the general public, we find gender differences in ambition for elected office are
similar to those for influential unelected offices.
However, because these positions in public service vary beyond merely the presence or absence
of elections, we also separate public service into its various components and examine whether
gender predicts aversion to the electoral process and other aspects of public service. We find
gender has a similar relationship with the (un)attractiveness of elections as it does with the (un)
attractiveness of other components of public service. Consistent with work on gendered political
socialization (Bos et al. 2022; Fox and Lawless 2014, Preece 2016), our work indicates women are
deterred by multiple components of public service. Rather than unique, elections are duplicative in
dissuading women from public service.
Political Ambition and Electoral Politics
Even if elections deter women from running, adding or removing elections may have no effect on
who is interested in public service because those deterred by electoral procedures might also be
deterred by other components of public service. Yet previous work does not provide a definitive
answer. The two previous attempts to answer this question, of which we are aware, examine
gender differences in ambition for elected and appointed positions among young party activists in
Norway (Koltveit 2022) and in Australia, Italy, and Spain (Ammassari et al. 2022). Yet, because
the appointed positions studied (party workers or advisors) are lower profile and operate behind
the scenes, differences in ambition could be the result of elections or position salience. Indeed,
Koltveit (2022) finds significant negative effects of gender on ambition for the most salient
appointed position (state secretary) while finding no gender effects for less salient appointed
positions (advisors and hired party staff). Moreover, there are gender gaps in ambition for
clerkships (unelected positions) within the US court system (Badas and Stauffer 2023).3
Moreover, previous work has not examined whether aspects deterring women from elected
office might also discourage non-elected public service. From a young age, women are socialized to
see political leadership positions as a ‘man’s world’(Bos et al. 2022). Generally, agentic values of
being ‘competitive’or ‘outgoing’(generally viewed as more masculine traits) are more congruent
with the ethos of politics (Conroy and Green 2020). In this vein, women generally are disinclined
towards public speaking (De Paola et al. 2021) and less inclined towards leadership roles (Alan
et al. 2020; Ertac and Gurdal 2012), which are key components of public service.
2Women are also underrepresented among congressional staff (Ritchie and You 2021) and in campaigns (Chewning et al.
2024; Enos and Hersh 2015). This work, however, focuses on institutional barriers or gatekeepers rather than on gender
differences in ambition.
3Bauer and Darkwah (2019) interview Ghanaian women to suggest electoral politics deters women. However, many
deterrents are not unique to electoral processes.
2 Hans JG Hassell et al.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123424000449 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Ambition for Public Service
To examine the effects of the presence or absence of elections, we rely on a general population
sample and two samples of political elites.4In addition, we use two different methodological
approaches. In the first approach, we examine ambition by gender for elected and unelected
positions with similar leadership responsibilities and of similar public salience. In the second
approach, we break public service into its various components to examine whether respondents
have the same affinity or averseness towards both the electoral and the non-electoral components
of public service. Below we first detail the different samples before analyzing the results from the
two different approaches.
Sample #1: Law Students
The first sample is a survey of students enrolled at eight different law schools.5Links to the survey
were distributed to students by administrators and faculty at each school, along with brief
explanations. We intentionally identified a diverse set of public and private law schools and
focused on law schools where we had personal connections to current students, former students,
faculty, or administrators to increase the likelihood of being able to distribute the survey.
The sample of law students was recruited during the spring of 2022. While not representative of
all law students, the law schools include both public and private law schools and are diverse in
their ideological leanings and reputational rankings.6Though we do not know the total number of
students invited to participate, we received 522 responses overall.7
We survey law school students for two important reasons. First, law students are individuals for
whom public service is realistically feasible as a law degree opens opportunities in the bureaucracy,
the judiciary, and, potentially, elected office. Second, their training exposes them to the demands
of these various positions.
Sample #2: Federal Bureaucrats
The second sample is of federal government employees. Like law students, bureaucrats are aware
of the demands of public service. In particular, these individuals have extensive knowledge about
bureaucratic public service, arguably the type of public service in our analysis least familiar to most
people. We also use this sample because it is an elite sample with a wider age range as young adults
exhibit particularly high levels of political ambition. Government employees also have the
education and income to make public service a plausible endeavour (Fox and Lawless 2005).
The sample of bureaucrats comes from the second wave of the American Government
Employee Survey (AGES), fielded in January/February of 2019. The primary purpose of the survey
was to gauge the effect of the government shutdown on federal employees participating in a prior
4All research involving human subjects was approved by the authors’IRB ([IRB Information Redacted]). All respondents
voluntarily gave their informed consent to participate. Further information on compliance with ethical practices concerning
human participants is in the online appendix.
5The law students in our sample attended Brigham Young University J. Reuben Clark Law School, Capital University Law
School, Florida State University Law School, Regent University School of Law, University of Maine School of Law, University
of Oregon School of Law, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and Washburn University School of Law.
6While our sample of law students is diverse, because two of these schools are religious-based institutions (Brigham Young
University and Regents University), we might be concerned that students at these schools might adopt more traditional gender
roles which might influence the results. To address these concerns, we reran the models iteratively removing one school from
the analysis. We also reran models excluding Brigham Young University and Regent University students. None of these results
differ substantially from what we present here.
7The total enrolment of the law schools is around 2,600 students suggesting a response rate of at least 20%. Of the 522
respondents, 75.1% completed the entire survey. The sample is diverse on party identification (39.3% Democrat, 35.7%
Republican, and 25.0% Independent), ideology (48.0% liberal and 32.4% conservative), and gender (42.2% female). More
information is available in the appendix.
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survey wave (n =3,053 in the initial wave). Recontacting original participants and inviting them to
answer additional questions related to the federal shutdown resulted in 2,084 responses.8
Sample #3: Nationally Representative Sample
Lastly, we also use a general population sample. Because law students and bureaucrats likely
understand better the responsibilities of public service in non-elected positions, electoral
components might be less influential in their considerations of public service. For this reason, we
also use a nationally representative sample of US adults.
Survey Sampling International (SSI) recruited 1,777 subjects to participate in an online study in
September 2019. The sample is comparable to other nationally representative samples and
estimates from the American Community Survey (see the appendix for more information).
Measures
In all samples, the ambition instrument was the same with the exception of the question about
ambition in the federal bureaucracy for the bureaucratic sample. We asked respondents, ‘How
would you characterize your interest in _____ in the future?’Respondents indicated their interest
in serving in elected office, the judiciary, and the state and federal bureaucracy. Our judicial
ambition measure used the words ‘becoming a judge or a justice’in the blank, the measure of
federal (state) bureaucracy ambition used the phrase ‘running or overseeing federal (state or local)
agencies’, and the measure of electoral ambition used ‘holding elected office’. For each question,
respondents could indicate they (1) had ‘absolutely no interest’; (2) were ‘open to the possibility’;
or (3) were ‘actively working toward’.
Because bureaucrats were already serving in the federal bureaucracy, we asked about
progressive ambition –as opposed to nascent ambition –within federal agencies specifically
asking their interest ‘in moving up the ranks in federal agencies’.
Figure 1shows overall levels of ambition for each sample and area of public service. In line with
previous surveys of the general public, nascent ambition for elected office among the public is low.
We also find low levels of nascent ambition for other leadership positions in public service in the
Figure 1. Proportion Expressing Electoral Ambition by Sample.
Note: Bars are the proportion of respondents in each survey who indicated ambition.
Sources: Law Student Survey 2022. American Government Employees Survey (2019). SSI 2019 National Survey.
8The overall response rate was 68%. Of the 2,084 respondents, 88.4% completed the entire survey. More information is
available in the appendix.
4 Hans JG Hassell et al.
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judiciary and the bureaucracy. Law students and federal bureaucrats, who have put themselves in
positions where public service is possible, harbour greater ambitions for public service. Further
discussion of these differences is available in the online appendix.
Elections and the Types of Individuals Who Express Ambition for Public Service
While there is some variation across samples in the extent to which gender correlates with
ambition (as might be expected given self-selection into becoming law students or federal
bureaucrats), we are interested in whether there are gender differences in ambition across different
areas of public service within samples. Figure 2shows the effects of gender on political ambition
for different types of public service for federal bureaucrats; Figure 3shows analogous effects for
law students; and Figure 4shows effects for the general population. For ease of interpretation, we
present results from Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression models with the dependent variable
coded 1–3, but results are nearly identical when we use ordered logistic regression models. All
models include controls for age, race, education, political ideology, party identification, political
knowledge, and political interest, and, in models using the sample of law students, whether the law
school was public or private.9Full results and alternative ordered logistic model results are in the
appendix.
The results from all three samples suggest elections do not fundamentally change the negative
relationship between gender and public service ambition. In the bureaucratic sample (Figure 2),
women are less likely to express ambition for elected office. They are also less likely to express
ambition for judicial service or for the bureaucracy. For law students (Figure 3) women are less
likely to express ambition for all types of public service as the coefficient on gender is consistently
negative, although the effects for federal bureaucratic leadership are not significant. Although
gender effects on ambition for state and federal agencies are smaller, the effect of gender on
ambition for judicial office is not significantly different than that for elected office. For the general
population (Figure 4) we find consistently sized gender gaps in ambition for all forms of public
service. Because some states have judicial elections, we also reran models using the general
population sample excluding individuals living in states where there are judicial elections, which
Figure 2. Effects of Gender on Ambition Among Bureaucratic Sample.
9Age and education are not included as controls in the law student sample because they were not asked. Political knowledge
questions were not asked in the AGES survey. Political interest is only available in the general population survey.
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are very similar to what we present in Figure 2. In short, across all three samples, women are
consistently less likely to express ambition for all types of public service regardless of whether the
means to entry includes elections.
Gender and Different Components of Public Service
While our previous analysis indicates gender does not differentially affect ambition for different
positions in public service (both those with and without elections), there are other differences in
these positions beyond the electoral components that could confound our analysis, potentially
mitigating the effect of eliminating the electoral component. As such, we break public service into
various components to examine whether electoral components of public service generate similar
Figure 3. Effects of Gender on Ambition Among Law Student Sample.
Figure 4. Effects of Gender on Ambition Among General Population Sample.
6 Hans JG Hassell et al.
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responses from women as other aspects of public service. This allows us to check whether the
effects of elections duplicate the effects of other aspects of public service.
The logical yet untested explanation for the similarity in gender effects on ambition for elected
and unelected positions is that women perceive the desirability of various elements of public
service similarly.10 For example, individuals who are willing to engage in the glad-handing
essential to political campaigns might also be more attracted to legislative and policy negotiations.
Thus, individuals attracted (averse) to electoral components of public service might also be
attracted (averse) to other aspects of public service.
To examine this possibility, we separate public service into various components and examine
how gender affects the attractiveness of those various components. Utilizing data from 211
interviews about what aspects of public service are attractive or unappealing derived from a
snowball sample of the personal contacts of undergraduate students at a Western US university,
we generated a list of twelve items considered appealing or unappealing about public service.11
We included these twelve items in the 2019 SSI survey and asked respondents to identify
whether each aspect of public service would make them less likely, neither/neutral, or more likely
to run for office. To group these items into larger components of public service, we conducted
exploratory factor analysis with Promax rotation. Table 1shows the items with their loadings.
The results suggest interest in public office lines up along three dimensions. The first of those
components relates to aspects of personal life and includes the lack of privacy, public scrutiny,
difficulty on family/friends, and schedule/travelling. The second is directly related to electoral
concerns and includes competition, fundraising, and voter persuasion. The third component
relates to the job responsibilities of public service such as talking about solutions and decision
making. These constructs are also internally consistent (Cronbach’s alpha of 0.84 for the personal
life components, 0.81 for the electoral components, and 0.70 for the job responsibility
components).
In the surveys of both the general population and of law students, respondents indicated
whether each item would (1) make them less likely to run, (2) neither/neutral, or (3) more likely to
run (3). Using these responses, we create an additive index consisting of items for each
component. We added the rating of each of the items for each factor and divided it by the number
of items. Each of these variables is scaled 1–3, with higher scores indicating a higher likelihood of
seeking public office.
Table 1. Attractiveness of Public Office Loadings
Personal Life
Components
Electoral
Components
Job Responsibility
Components
Lack of privacy 0.81 0.10 0.15
Public scrutiny 0.77 0.01 0.10
The conflict 0.77 0.07 0.03
Difficult on family/friends 0.75 0.11 0.13
The schedule/travelling 0.61 0.03 0.22
The publicity 0.12 0.81 0.11
Fundraising 0.06 0.80 0.09
Trying to persuade people to vote for
you
0.05 0.71 0.16
The competition 0.05 0.60 0.27
Talking about solutions 0.19 0.06 0.86
Having to make important decisions 0.38 0.24 0.76
Meeting new people 0.12 0.35 0.63
10An alternative is that elections do not affect gender differences in ambition, which is unlikely given previous work
(Kanthak and Woon 2015, Preece and Stoddard 2015).
11Most respondents (∼90%) were from Oregon, Washington, Utah, Idaho, and Nevada; and close to 50% were female.
These interviews also included questions about how elected officials ought to behave and their interest in public service.
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Figures 5and 6show the effect of gender on the attractiveness of the components of public
service for the general population and the law student population, respectively.12 As before, full
models are available in the online appendix.13
Figure 5. Gender’s Effect on the Attractiveness of Aspects of Public Office (General Population Sample).
Figure 6. Gender’s Effect on the Attractiveness of Aspects of Public Office (General Population Sample) (Law Student
Sample).
12Unfortunately, the conceptualization of this component of the project occurred after the survey of bureaucrats was
already in the field, and these questions were not asked of bureaucrats.
13To make sure the results were not driven by a single item, we also reran models iteratively removing a single item from the
indices. Those results are the same and gender consistently has a negative effect for all three factors regardless of inclusion or
exclusion of any particular item.
8 Hans JG Hassell et al.
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The results in Figures 5and 6show the negative relationship between gender and the electoral
components of public service is not unique. For both samples, gender is negatively correlated with
the attractiveness of each component of public service. Women’s aversion to elections duplicates
aversion to the personal life and job responsibility aspects of public service.
Conclusion
Although elections may seem like a prominent component that by themselves, if eliminated, might
increase women’s ambition for public office, our results suggest this is not the case. Removing
elections as a method for selecting public servants does not appear to fundamentally change
women’s ambition for public service because elections appear to duplicate the negative effects of
other aspects of public service on ambition for public service among women.
Our findings instead are consistent with existing research on gendered socialization into
political leadership positions (Bos et al. 2022; Fox and Lawless 2014, Preece 2016). Although
women may be averse to competition, the same experiences and socialization that leads them to
avoid competition also affect how they perceive themselves as fitting into the political realm and
their comfort in engaging in the various responsibilities of public service. While elections are a
deterrent to women’s political ambitions, so too are other components of public service in the
public sphere. Rather than unique in their influence on ambition across genders, elections
reinforce the attractiveness, or the lack thereof, of other components of public service to women.
Increasing ambition for public service among women thus requires larger changes and cannot be
achieved by merely eliminating elections as pathways to public service.
Supplementary material. The supplementary material for this article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1017/
S0007123424000449.
Data availability statement. Replication data for this article can be found in Harvard Dataverse at https://doi.org/10.7910/
DVN/3BXMON.
Acknowledgements. The manuscript benefited from valuable feedback provided by colleagues during its development. We
thank Meredith Conroy, Laura Dean, and Katey Stauffer for their insightful comments on the manuscript. We also thank
Sarah Bertschy, Andrea Boyack, Jennifer Espinola, Corrie Evans, Haider Hamoudi, Elissa Karim, Kathryn King, Jake Linford,
Brad Lingo, Parker Luke, Scheherazade Mason, and Dane Thorley for their assistance in distributing the law student survey.
All errors remain our own.
Author contributions. Authors are listed in alphabetical order. The authors contributed equally to this manuscript. All
authors share first authorship.
Financial support. None.
Competing interests. None.
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Cite this article: Hassell HJG, Hollibaugh GE, Jr, and Miles MR (2025) Does the Presence or Absence of Elections Remove
Gender Differences in Ambition for Public Service? British Journal of Political Science.https://doi.org/10.1017/
S0007123424000449
10 Hans JG Hassell et al.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123424000449 Published online by Cambridge University Press