AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION ELECTIONS ......Rosenfeld, Department of Sociology, CB# 3210, ^^^^^ forthcoming; Roos 1997). University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill NC the Schlesinger

AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION ELECTIONS,1975 TO 1996:

EXPLORING EXPLANATIONS FOR "EEMINIZATION"*

Rachel A. RosenfeldUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

David Cunningham Kathryn SchmidtUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Since 1972, the proportion of women in American Sociological Associationgovernance positions has increased. Woman candidates for ASA offices andthe ASA Council have been overrepresented and generally have had higherodds of winning than male candidates. We examine three possible factorsbehind these trends: the general impact of the women's movement, the influ-ence of Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS), and elite dilution. Liberal-attitudes fostered by the women's movement appear to have raised voter will-ingness to select woman candidates. SWS members were overrepresentedamong candidates, and SWS membership (for women) and support for itsgoals increased chances of being elected. High voting rates of SWS memberscould have swayed elections, as well. Contrary to elite dilution arguments,woman and man candidates differed little from each other or over time inproductivity, honors, or experience, although women were elected earlier intheir careers than were men and were less often employed in the most presti-gious graduate departments. In analysis using measures of all three factorstogether, gender affected election success, with marginal effects for produc-tivity; effects of SWS membership and professional location were not statis-tically significant.

The American Sociological Society (later the goals of the ASA were " . . . serving so-renamed the American Sociological As- ciologists in their work; advancing sociologysociation [ASA]) was founded in 1905 as a as a science and profession; promoting thescholarly organization. In its first year, it had contributions and use of sociology to soci-115 members. It has grown in both function ety" (Levine 1994). Over time, the member-and membership since then. In 1996, the As- ship has become more diverse. Perhaps mostsociation had almost 13,200 members. Re- striking has been the rising proportion ofcently, the ASA Executive Officer stated that woman members, reflecting women's in-

, . , , J „ , , . creased share of advanced sociology degreesAddress correspondence to Rachel A. /u„,^„„„ f„,^^,„„„• D inm\

Rosenfeld, Department of Sociology, CB# 3210, ^^^^^^^ forthcoming; Roos 1997).University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill NC the Schlesinger Library for access to SWS news-27599-3210 ([email protected]). We letters; and Jill Bouma, Tonya Smith, and Artthank Glen Elder, Joan Huber, and Richard Alderson for help with data collection. This re-Simpson for discussions on the past and present search was done in part while the first author wascharacter of sociology and the ASA; David a Visiting Fellow in the Sociology Program ofCharnock, Shirley Harkess, Margaret Harrelson, the Research School of Social Sciences at theFelice Levine, Neil Smelser, Aage S0rensen, Australian National University and a Fellow atChristine Williams, the past and present/15/f edi- the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioraltors, and anonymous reviewers for comments; Sciences in Stanford, CA. She is grateful for fi-Barbara Tomaskovic-Devey, Richard Simpson, nancial support provided by the National Scienceand Ida Simpson for use of their newsletter col- Foundation (#SES-9022192). Kathryn Schmidtlections; Carla Howery for ASA documents; acknowledges the support of a National ScienceMary French for SWS membership information; Foundation Graduate Fellowship.

746 American Sociological Review, 1997, Vol. 62 (October:746-759)

"FEMINIZATION" OF ASA ELECTIONS, 1975 TO 1996 747

Women also have heightened their leader-ship in the ASA. While there were a fewwoman officers. Council members, and com-mittee members before the 1970s (Roby1992), women are now overrepresented inASA governance relative to their share of themembership. In 1990-1991, for example,women comprised 53 percent of officers andelected committee members and 50 percentof appointed committees, whereas they wereabout 40 percent of the membership as awhole (Howery 1992; Roos 1997). The pro-portion of women has generally been higherin elected than appointed positions (Harkessforthcoming). In the past few years, this in-crease in the representation of women hasbecome more noticeable because it has in-volved the top offices: In both 1994 and1996, the entire slate of nominated officerswas comprised of women.

What does this "feminization" of ASAgovernance mean? What precisely have thetrends been? To what extent do the changesin the gender composition of ASA leader-ship reflect changes in the nature of thisprofessional organization and in Americanvalues? Are the election winners more likelyto have membership in and backing fromSociologists for Women in Society (SWS)?Do the women running and elected differfrom men in their professional stature? Weexplore the patterns of women's versusmen's representation in ASA leadership us-ing data on all candidates for ASA officesand the ASA Council in the 1975 through1996 elections.'

ASA ELECTION PROCEDURES

The elected officers of the ASA are the presi-dent, vice president, and secretary; all are ex-officio members of the Council, along withthe president-elect, the vice president-elect.

' The histories of racial and ethnic minoritieswithin sociology and the ASA are also important,and we include the race and ethnicity of the can-didates where possible. We focus, however, ongender rather than race/ethnicity because of therelatively small number of African American andother minority candidates. Further, racial and eth-nic dynamics within the ASA and sociology gen-erally seem different from those of gender, al-though minority men and women also have in-

past president, and past vice president. Thesecretary-elect serves as a nonvoting mem-ber. Presidents and vice presidents serve forone year, and secretaries for three. In addi-tion, there are 12 elected Council members-at-large, with 4 beginning their terms eachyear. Candidates for ASA offices and theCouncil can appear on the ballot in twoways. The first is through nomination by theCommittee on Nominations, itself electedfrom a slate of candidates nominated by theCouncil members-at-large. The Committeeon Nominations does not select a particularslate, however. Instead, the Committee pre-pares a confidential, ranked list of manymore candidates than are needed to run for aparticular slot and presents this list to thesecretary. The secretary then contacts nomi-nees to see whether they are willing to run,maintaining the order and confidentiality ofthe list. A number of candidates usually de-cline to run. Since 1974, a second route tocandidacy is by petition: To add a candidatefor president or vice president, at least 100eligible voters must sign a petition; 50 sig-natures are required to add candidates forother positions {ASA Constitution and By-Laws 1991). The number of candidates addedto the ballot this way fluctuates over elec-tions, leading to variation in the total num-ber of candidates.^

Both nomination processes and members'voting patterns can affect the gender compo-sition of ASA offices and the Council. Weexamine three factors that potentially influ-ence the characteristics of ASA candidatesand winners: (1) external sociopoliticalforces, in particular the women's movementand subsequent changes in gender attitudes;(2) political activism and bloc voting withinthe ASA, especially by SWS (Roby 1992;

creased their representation on the ASA Counciland in other aspects of the association (Blackwell1992; Conyers 1992; Roby 1992; Roos 1997;Sewell 1992). In fact, minority racial/ethnicgroup members, too, were overrepresented inASA governance by 1991: 14.4 percent of the to-tal ASA membership was racial or ethnic minor-ity compared with 26.3 percent of elected offic-ers and Council members and 21.4 percent ofelected committee members (Howery 1992).

^ The ASA Constitution and By-Laws also pro-vide for write-in votes, but no write-in campaignstook place in the ASA elections we studied.

748 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

Wilkinson 1992); and (3) organizationalchange in the ASA itself, including "elite di-lution" and what Simpson and Simpson(1994) describe as the organization's trans-formation from a disciplinary to professionalassociation.

EXTERNAL POLITICAL EORCES,FEMINIST ACTIVISM, ANDORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

The U.S. Women's Movement andGender Attitudes

One explanation for women's advances inASA governance is that ASA members havebeen influenced by the contemporarywomen's movement. The ongoing and newactivities and successes of the women'smovement were highly visible in the late1960s and early 1970s. Favorable publicopinion toward women holding positions ofauthority jumped significantly in the early1970s and has sustained additional increasessince then (Rosenfeld and Ward 1996). Po-litically, sociologists tend to be to the left ofeven other academics (Huber 1995) and maybe especially responsive to movement de-mands for the inclusion of women and mi-nority men, particularly during times whenopportunities for sociologists are expanding,as in the 1960s and early 1970s (Huber1995; Roby 1992; Sewell 1992). Duringthose years, the ASA urged sociology de-partments to support federal affirmative ac-tion goals required at most universities(Roos and Jones 1993), reinforcing such re-sponsiveness. Sensitivity to issues of inclu-sion of women and minorities continueswithin the ASA and among many sociolo-gists and may lead individual ASA membersto vote for candidates from previouslyunderrepresented groups. To the extent thatwomen are overrepresented as candidatesand being a woman increases the chance ofbeing elected (net of other factors), we mightbe observing a general effect of tbe socialand cultural changes that have been part ofthe civil rights and women's movements. IfASA members follow attitudinal trends ofthe general population, women's election ad-vantage should increase somewhat over time,with perhaps the largest increases occurringearly in the period we study.

Sociologists for Women in Society

To adequately understand the effects of thewomen's movement on ASA elections, welook beyond the opinions of individual mem-bers to tbe influence of a social movementorganization—Sociologists for Women inSociety. In 1969, the ASA Women's Caucuspresented resolutions addressing biasesagainst women in sociology departments andthe discipline as a whole. SWS was foundedin 1971 (Roby 1992). It is not an officialASA group, but it has acted botb within andoutside the ASA to advance the causes ofwomen in sociology and in society. Gener-ally, the ASA responded positively to theWomen's Caucus and SWS (Roby 1992).The 1970-1971 Council established a num-ber of committees to consider the needs ofwomen and minorities, including the Com-mittee on tbe Status of Women in the Profes-sion (Sewell 1992:58).

The SWS has paid special attention toASA elections. The organization regularlyreminds its members to vote (e.g., Kronen-feld 1986), which could effectively promotecertain candidates, especially as overallASA voter participation has declined. Theproportion of eligible ASA members votingwent from more than half in 1970 to lessthan one-third in the 1990s (Simpson andSimpson 1994). In tbe 1995 election, only3,200 of the 10,732 eligible members (29.8percent) returned their ballots (FootnotesJuly/August 1996:1). Part of this drop maybe due to changes in tbe pool of eligiblevoters, such as the inclusion of students in1992. SWS members, however, have a highvoting rate. D'Antonio and Tuch (1991)showed tbat while under half of non-SWSmembers voted in the 1985 and 1986 elec-tions, the SWS voting rates were 75 percentand 67 percent. The SWS has around 1,000members (Harkess forthcoming). If all SWSmembers were also eligible ASA members,they would comprise about 9 percent ofthose eligible to vote. But if we generalizefrom D'Antonio and Tuch's results and as-sume tbat about 70 percent of SWS mem-bers still vote, tbey could represent overone-fifth of the 1995 ASA voters ([.70 x1,000] / 3,200). Although these numbers arerough, tbey illustrate tbat SWS memberscould have a significant impact on election


outcomes if they tend to vote for the samecandidates.

To help elect ASA representatives favor-able to SWS's goals, SWS also collects can-didate information beyond that provided bythe ASA. In 1972, it began surveying thosestanding for election about their feminist ac-tivities and attitudes. Survey results havebeen printed either in the SWS newsletter oras a separate document sent to SWS mem-bers. From 1977 to 1982, SWS endorsed can-didates based on whether their candidate'smemberships, actions, research, and pro-posed activities within the ASA showed thatthey were active feminists. SWS membershipseems to have been a primary considerationamong these criteria (SWS Newsletter Octo-ber 1979:9). Endorsement was presented as atactic to avoid splitting SWS votes (SWSNewsletter April 1979:1). In 1983, SWS re-turned to providing only candidates' re-sponses to its survey after members expressedconcerns about the SWS endorsement pro-cess at annual meetings and in the newsletter.SWS now has an active e-mail listserver,which can transmit information about elec-tions and other relevant matters quickly.

We investigate some of the ways thatSWS activities, rather than just general ASAmembership attitudes, may have affectedcandidates and outcomes in 1975-1996elections. If SWS members were overrepre-sented among those running for and electedto ASA offices and the Council, and if SWSsurvey responses and endorsement affectedwho won (controlling for other factors) thenwe could conclude that SWS activities werepartly behind women's gains in ASA gover-nance. If we do not find such effects, how-ever, this does not mean SWS was withoutinfluence, as we do not measure voting,committee activity, or willingness to run forelection.

Organizational Change and Elite Dilution

Sewell (1992) argued that one reason womenwere excluded from participation in ASAleadership before the 1970s was that

. . , the control of an all-white male powerstructure , . . informally set "universalistic"professional standards for office holding thatwere difficult for women and minority sociolo-

gists to meet, given the conditions existing inthe universities and colleges in which theywere employed, (P, 57)

Part of SWS's mission was to question thosecriteria. Another part was to facilitatewomen's progress in achieving better jobsand greater research resources. Specific leg-islation and attitude change stimulated by thewomen's movement nationally also broad-ened women's opportunities within academe(Roos and Jones 1993).

Women have increased their relative repre-sentation among sociology graduate studentsand faculty. They are still underrepresented,however, in the higher faculty ranks, espe-cially at the most prestigious institutions: In1993-1994, women comprised 23 percent ofassociate and full professors in sociologygraduate departments (Roos 1997; also seeHarkess forthcoming). Thus, we might expectto find that woman candidates, officers, andCouncil members have held Ph.D.s for ashorter time than the men with whom theycompete because the pool of "distinguished"women is younger, on average, than the poolof "distinguished" men. Further, because theyhave had shorter careers, woman candidatesas a group might show less "distinction" bythe usual measures. They also might havefaced more constraints in career choices andopportunities, even after federal pressures inthe early 1970s for affirmative action in uni-versities (Roos and Jones 1993).

Simpson and Simpson (1994) found thatthe proportion of ASA officers holding jobsin the top 10 U.S. sociology departments hasdecreased over time, a development theyviewed as part of a general broadening of theASA's functions and of "elite dilution." By"elite dilution," Simpson and Simpson meanthat as the ASA shifted from a scholarly or-ganization to a professional society, criteriafor leadership changed—from scholarlyachievements to other characteristics, such asproviding representation for various sub-groups in sociology. Their figures showedthat since the 1950s the ASA has shifted fromspending the majority of its budget and Coun-cil discussion time on furthering sociologicalresearch and graduate training to spendingmuch more time and money on sociologicalpractice, undergraduate teaching, and repre-sentation of minorities, as well as organiza-


tional maintenance (Simpson and Simpson1994). Because of this diminishing focus onthe discipline, they argued, faculty fromPh.D.-granting departments had less controlof the association. At the same time, the ASAwas gaining new members who were not atgraduate training institutions. The increas-ingly diverse group of eligible voters mightalso use election criteria other than scholarlydistinction. To the extent that there is "elitedilution" or changes in voting criteria beyondjust that of gender, there should be a declinein credentials among both men and womencandidates (and thus election winners aswell). However, if male candidates' creden-tials have remained relatively constant whilethose of female candidates have been signifi-cantly lower, then elite dilution could belinked to the growing presence of women inthe organization.

DATA

We limited our analysis to elections for ASAofficers and Council members because theseare the most central positions for ASA gov-ernance. From 1975 to 1996, 326 candidatesran for these posts. We counted repeat con-tenders each time they ran. We started withthe mid-1970s, after the sharp increase inwomen's participation in the early 1970s andafter reorganization of the composition of theCouncil (as Roby 1992 discusses).

Most of our data came from the SWSNewsletter (later Network News), ASA Foot-notes, and SWS and ASA election supple-ments. We worked from complete sets of theSWS newletters and Footnotes; some of theelection supplements were missing, and wetried to find that information from othersources.

Candidates' SWS membership, activities,and endorsement data came from the SWSnewsletters, election supplements, and the1994-1995 SWS membership list. The mainsource of career characteristics was candi-date biographies appearing in the 1975-1996 ASA Footnotes or election supplements;we filled in some missing data from variouseditions of the ASA Guide to Graduate De-partments and the ASA Membership Direc-tory. Participation in the ASA and its sectionswas taken from candidates' biographies. Weused Webster and Massey (1992) to rank

U.S. departments of sociology, where mostcandidates were employed.^

For each candidate we counted the numberof articles published in the five years beforean election from on-line Sociofile (for 1974-1996) and from hard copy Sociological Ab-stracts (for 1971-1973). Most of these ar-ticles were refereed. We did not count bookchapters or transcribed discussions, for ex-ample. The on-line Library of Congress cata-log provided the number of books ever pub-lished before candidacy; we counted eachedition or translation as a separate book.

We also used information from Footnotesto identify candidates who were winners ofASA-sponsored honors, all of which wereinstituted after 1972: Career of DistinguishedScholarship (1979), Distinguished Contribu-tion to Scholarship (1979, later DistinguishedScholarly Publication), the Common WealthAward (1979, for outstanding public service).Distinguished Contribution to Teaching(1981), Distinguished Career in Practice(1986), the Dubois-Johnson-Frazier award(1973, for outstanding sociological contribu-tion in the tradition of these men), and theJessie Bernard award (1977, for scholarlycontribution more fully including women'sroles in society). Because these awards wererelatively new, we coded separately whethera candidate won an award after running in aparticular election, as well as before running.The prestige of candidates who were electedbefore the 1980s would be underestimatedotherwise, given that they had fewer opportu-nities to receive these honors.

RESULTS

Gender over Time

Nearly twice as many men as women ran foroffice or Council from 1975 to 1996 (214men versus 112 women), but the women who

' The 1996 National Academy of Sciencesrankings were released while we were finishingthis research. Although the NAS figures are per-haps better for studying the recent past, theWebster-Massey rankings reflect relative depart-mental prestige over the longer period we studyhere. They also are highly correlated with earlierrankings, such as those by Roose and Anderson(1970) and Jones, Lindzey, and Coggeshall(1982).


100

80-

Election winners

Candidates for ASA office/Council

' • ! Disproportionate wins for women

• • H Disproportionate losses for women

1975 1995

Figure 1. Annual Percentages of ASA Office/Council Candidates and Election Winners Wiio WereWomen: ASA Elections, 1975 to 1996

ran were much more likely to win (60 per-cent compared with 34 percent).'' As Figure1 shows, there is only a slight upward trendin the percentage of candidates running foroffices or the Council who were women;1994 and 1996 were outliers. Comparing thepercentage of ASA membership that waswomen (in Table 1) with the percentages ofwoman candidates (indicated by the solidline in Figure 1) shows that women havebeen a disproportionate number of electioncontestants many times before the 1990s.

Likewise, the probability of a woman can-didates' being elected has gone up and down,with perhaps a weak increase, over time asone can see by comparing the percentages ofcandidates who were women with the per-centages of winners who were women in Fig-ure 1. (The shaded area above the solid lineshows disproportionate wins for women andthe shaded area below shows disproportion-ate losses). Using a bivariate logistic regres-sion to examine this trend by five-year inter-

•* In contrast, while racial/ethnic minorities—male or female—were overrepresented amongcandidates (22 percent overall compared with 14percent of the membership in 1991 [Howery1992]), they were less likely than were whites to

vals (plus the seven years of the 1990s), wefound that women were as likely as men towin elections in the last half of the 1970s, butsince then they have had an advantage, al-though not a strictly increasing one. The oddsratios are: .96 for 1975-1979, 4.82 for 1980-1984, 4.24 for 1985-1989, and 4.71 for1990-1996.5 In other words, in the 1980s and1990s, women's chances of being electedrather than losing were nearly five times thoseof men's. The jump between the 1970s andlater mirrors the dramatic increase in favor-able public attitudes, with a lag of severalyears.

Of course, the chance of any particularwoman's winning an election depends on thenumber of women competing. Council can-didates do not run directly against one an-other; as there are multiple seats, more thanone candidate wins. For this reason and be-cause there could have been different trendsin voting for Council versus offices, we dis-

' Odds ratios give women's probability of win-ning versus losing relative to men's probabilityof winning versus losing. An odds ratio of 1 indi-cates that women's chatices of being elected werethe same as men's, while ratios larger than 1show that women had a greater chance of win-ning.


Table 1

Year

1975

1976

1977

1978

1979

1980

1981

1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

. Percentages of ASA Members, Council Candidates, andWere Women: ASA Elections, 1975 to 1996

PercentWoman ASA

Members"

15"C

C

c

c

c

c

33c

34C

c

35C

40C

c

41

38C

43c

Number of casesMean

Number ofCandidates''

12

10

12

12

8

9

10

11

9

8

8

8

8

8

8

9

10

8

10

8

8

8

202

PercentWoman

Candidates'"

33.3

40.0

25.0

33.3

25.0

33.3

30.0

27.3

44.4

25.0

50.0

37.5

50.0

12.5

12.5

44.4

30.0

50.0

50.0

62.5

25.0

50.0

7236.0

Council Election Winners Who

PercentWomanWinners'"

50.0

50.0

.0

25.0

25.0

75.0

75.0

25.0

50.0

50.0

75.0

50.0

50.0

25.0

25.0

100.0

50.0

75.0

75.0

75.0

50.0

50.0

4551.1

Percent WomanWinners/Percent

Woman Candidates

1.50*

1.25*

.00

.75

1.00

2.25*

2.50*

.92

1.13*

2.00*

1.50*

1.33*

1.00

2.00*

2.00*

2.25*

1.67*

1.50*

1.50*

1.20*

2.00*

1.00

1.47

» Harkess (forthcoming, chap. 3); Howery (1992); Roos (1997, table 8).^ Data from 1972." Data not available.''ASA Footnotes (various issues) and candidates' biographical sketches.* Women overrepresented among winners of Council seats relative to their representation among Council

candidates.

aggregate the two types of elections. Table 1shows that women have been overrepre-sented among winners of Council seats rela-tive to their representation among the Coun-cil candidates in most of the last 22 years,although there is not a statistically significantincrease in overrepresentation across electionyears. In 1981, for example, women were30.0 percent of the Council candidates(roughly their representation in the ASA as awhole), but 75.0 percent of those elected—aratio of 2.50 (75/30).

Since 1975, 23 of the races for president,vice president, and secretary have had onlymale candidates; 7 have had only women (ofwhich 5 were in the 1990s).* Of the 21 races

* Ail candidates nominated for office in 1994were women, but petitions added one woman andone man to the slate for president and one man tothe slate for vice president. The woman petitioncandidate won the presidential election, and awoman nominee became vice president. Despitediscussion about an antifeminist backlash at thattime, there were no petitions to add other candi-


in which women have competed for officeagainst men, women have won over 70 per-cent of the time—and they have won allmixed-sex races since 1987 (see Table 2). Inthese contests between male and female can-didates, however, women ran for presidentonly eight times; women have won all four ofthese races since t98t. One must keep inmind that in its entire history the ASA hashad only seven woman presidents: one in theearly post-war era (Dorothy Swaine Thomas),one in the t970s (Mirra Komarovsky), threein the 1980s (Alice Rossi, Matilda WhiteRiley, and Joan Huber), and two in the 1990s(Maureen Hallinan and Jill Quadagno).Women have gained access to this top posi-tion more slowly than to other ASA offices orto Council seats. If trends continue, however,we may see an increasing number of womanASA presidents in the future.

Thus, we provide some evidence here thatthe women's movement and the larger socialcontext of which it has been a part providedan initial and ongoing (though not necessar-ily increasing) impetus for the "feminiza-tion" of the ASA.

Sociologists for Women in Society

From the 1977 through the 1982 ASA elec-tion, SWS endorsed 4t of 98 candidates forASA offices and Council. There was almostno difference in chance of being elected byendorsement. Women, however, were morelikely than men to both win elections and beendorsed by SWS. Among women, SWS en-dorsement did not seem to affect electionsuccess (see Table 3). The men endorsed bySWS were actually less likely to win (27.8percent versus 37.7 percent). In general,then, SWS endorsement did not positivelyinfluence election outcomes.

Although we do not have a complete setof SWS survey results, it seems that surveyresponses did make a difference in ASAelections. Most candidates returned the sur-vey: Only t2 out of. 128 candidates in the

dates after the announcement of nominations forofficers including only men in 1995 and onlywomen in 1996 (for a discussion of this and otherelections, see Harkess forthcoming). Most peti-tion candidates (39 out of 47) and all officer peti-tion candidates (except in 1975 and 1994) havebeen men.

Table 2. Candidates for ASA OfTice and ElectionWinners, by Sex: Mixed-Sex Races forOffice, ASA Elections, 1975 to 1996

Year

1975

1976

1978

1979

1980

1981

1982

1984

1985

1987

1988

1989

1991

1992

1993

1994

Office

PresidentVice president

President

Vice president

President


President

Vice president


Vice president

President

Vice presidentSecretary

Vice president

Vice president

Vice president

Vice president


Numberof WomenRunning

12"

1

1

1

11

1

2

11

1

11

1

1

1

1

32

Numberof Men

Running

21

2

1"

2

11

1

2

11

1

1

1"1

1

1

1"

1

1I

Sex ofWinner

MF

M

F

M

MF

F

M

FF

M

F

FF

F

F

F

F

FF

Sources: ASA Footnotes (various issues) and can-didates' biographical sketches.

Noie: In races for ASA offices from 1975 to 1996,23 races had only male candidates, 7 had only fe-male candidates (1976 vice president; 1979 vicepresident; 1990 vice president; 1991 secretary; 1994secretary; 1996 president, vice president), and 21had both male and female candidates.

" A candidate was a racial or ethnic minority.

elections for which we had SWS informa-tion did not respond. None of the eight menfailing to respond were elected, and onlyone of the four women. We rated responsesas "feminist" or "egalitarian-but-not-femi-nist/other" on their expressed degree of en-thusiasm for general feminist and specificSWS goals. An example of the second typeof response would be "I treat everyonealike," and of the former "Women havecome a long way, but we still need to beconcerned about diversity on other than a


simple gender dimension," plus statementsabout academic, organizational, and com-munity activities on behalf of women. Typeof response to the SWS survey was corre-lated with being elected: Almost all of thewomen gave feminist responses, and 61.8percent of them won their races. Forty-onepercent of men who gave the feminist re-sponses won, compared with only 29.2 per-cent of the men offering other replies.

SWS membership had an effect on electionsuccess, in and of itself. We conservativelyidentified about 36 percent of the candidatesas SWS members (probably a low estimatebecause of missing SWS supplements forsome elections), a disproportionate represen-tation. Of all candidates who were SWSmembers, 56.9 percent were elected, in con-trast with about one-third of the other candi-dates (see Table 3). "Founding mothers"—those who helped found the SWS—were es-pecially likely to be voted in: Almost three-quarters of those we could identify wereelected. Only women, though, seemed tobenefit from SWS membership. Among malecandidates, about 34 percent of both SWSmembers and nonmembers won their elec-tions. Further, over time there does not seemto be an increasing likelihood of SWS mem-bership leading to election (results notshown).

We do not have measures of all of SWS'sinfluences on ASA leadership. But amongthe indicators we present here, there is mixedand conditional evidence that the SWS hashad an impact on the numbers of womenelected to ASA offices and Council.

Professional Prestige and Service

There are no explicitly stated criteria forASA office and Council, aside from ASAmembership requirements. To the extent thatthe president, especially, represents the dis-cipline to government agencies and thebroader society, one could argue that he orshe should be a "distinguished" scholar orpractitioner. On the other hand, one could ar-gue that the ability to represent the member-ship as a whole and to do the tasks associ-ated with these positions are the most impor-tant qualifications.

Measures of "distinction" in science, in-cluding social science, are problematic (Cole

Table 3. Percentages of Candidates Elected toASA Office and Council by SWS En-dorsement, SWS Survey Response, andSWS Membership: ASA Elections, 1975to 1996

Variable

SWS Endorsement

Total:Endorsed

Not endorsed

Women:Endorsed

Not endorsed

Men:Endorsed

Not endorsed

SWS Survey Response

Total:No response

Non-feminist response

Feminist response

Women:No response


Feminist response

Men:No response


Feminist response

5^5 MembershipTotal:

Status not known

Not a member

Member

Women:Status not known

Not a member

Member

Men:Status not known

Not a member

Member

PercentElected

39.0

38.6

47.8

50.0

27.8

37.7

8.3

28.0

51.6

25.0

.0

61.8

.0

29.2

40.9

33.3

36.0

56.9

36.4

50.0

68.0

32.4

34.3

34.2

Numberof Cases

41

57

23

4

18

53

12

25

91

4

1

47

8

24

44

96

114

116

22

12

78

74

102

38

Sources: SWS Newsletter/Network News (variousissues), SWS election survey responses, SWS 1994-1995 membership list, ASA Footnotes (various is-sues), and candidates' biographical sketches.


1979). Further, as Simpson (1988:202)points out, ". . . election success depends onvisibility and that. . . visibility may be ob-tained in various ways," including throughprevious organizational involvement. Suchinvolvement might also provide necessarypreparation for leadership.

Woman candidates have had shorter ca-reers than the male candidates—a median of18 years as compared with 24 years sincegaining their doctorates (see Table 4). De-spite this discrepancy in career ages, therewere surprisingly few gender differences onvarious measures of "distinction." Productiv-ity is often seen as a necessary, if not suffi-cient, criterion for academic success. Bookspossibly have a stronger and more lastingimpact on the discipline than any one jour-nal article, but in some departments and sub-fields cumulative research presented in ref-ereed articles is what counts (Clemens et al.1995). Generally, the woman candidates westudied had published fewer books over theircareers than the men, but they had publishedthe same number of books per year and thesame median number of articles during theprevious five years.^

In terms of other indications of profes-sional distinction, the woman and man can-didates were about the same: They were rep-resented equally on editorial boards of majorsociology journals and held almost the samenumber of ASA awards, with women havinga slight edge (largely due to the Jessie Ber-nard award, which women are much morelikely to win than men). Woman candidatesalso had been as active in ASA sections andregional sociology organizations as men (al-though they were less likely to have beenpresidents of such organizations, similar toASA patterns; see Simpson 1988).

Where women and men differed noticeablywas in their institutional locations and prior

' A few men were extreme outliers in the num-ber of articles published, which increased men'smean on articles published. The mean and medianwere about the same for books published by men(and women). Women's name changes, as well assomewhat shorter careers, could affect their mea-sured productivity, especially in terms of books(given that we count articles only for the preced-ing five years). Based on the women we were ableto trace who had changed their names, we expectsuch effects to be minimal.

general ASA positions. Only one-third of thewoman candidates worked at universitieswith graduate departments rated among thetop 20 by Webster and Massey (1992), com-pared with over one-half of the men.^ Otherdepartmental ratings lead to a similar con-trast. These results reflect the underrepre-sentation of women in leading graduate de-partments. To the extent that institutionalprestige adheres to the individual, womancandidates for ASA offices and Council wereless prestigious. The women on the ballot alsowere less likely to have previously served onthe Council or as an ASA officer, which areroutes to further ASA leadership roles. Givenwomen's successes in the last two decades,we would expect this discrepancy to decreaseamong candidates in the future.

The "elite dilution" argument, however, isabout changes over time, specifically, the de-clining "quality" of candidates. While therehave been some differences between thewomen and men who have run for ASA of-fices and Council seats, recent increases inthe number of woman candidates have notcontributed to a general decline in quality. Ifanything, both woman and man candidateshave become more qualified over time, asmeasured by productivity, honors, and expe-rience (see Table 4).' One notable exception

* Only a few candidates were not members ofa sociology department. When they were not, weassigned them the ranking of the sociology gradu-ate department at their university. Eighty-sevenpercent of the candidates were in universities withrated departments. The seven percent completelyoutside academia tended to be in prestigious re-search settings, such as NIMH and RAND.

' Some of these increases could reflect expan-sion in the number of honors and journals avail-able. We cannot easily control for that, but evenif the absolute increases represented relative sta-bility, this would contradict the assumption of de-clining quality. One could debate whether the in-creasing proportion of candidates who were of-ficers or Council members of the ASA or its sec-tions supports the continuing-quality or the elite-dilution argument. On the one hand, previous par-ticipation shows commitment to and experiencewithin the organization that is part of preparationfor good leadership. On the other hand, it couldindicate the increasing importance of ASA poli-tics rather than or in addition to academic schol-arship for nomination and election to ASA officeor Council.


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'FEMINIZATION" OF ASA ELECTIONS, 1975 TO 1996 757

is with respect to university location: Thegap between women and men has widenedover time, and the proportion of woman can-didates in top-20 departments was lower inthe 1990s than in the late 1970s, although itwas slightly higher than in the last half of the1980s. Even here, however, the percentage ofcandidates in top-20 departments for womenand men combined is about the same in theearliest and latest periods—44 to 45 percent.

Table 5. Logit Coefficients from the Regressionof Election to ASA Office or Council onSex, SWS Membership, and CareerVariables: ASA Elections, 1975 to 1996

Multivariate Logistic Regression Models

While we have broken down some of our re-sults by year or sex, many of the factors wehave discussed as affecting election areintercorrelated. For example, women weremore likely to win elections, but they alsowere more likely to be SWS members and tohave fewer books published than were men.Table 5 presents the results of a logistic re-gression model that includes variables repre-senting all three of the forces that we havesuggested may affect ASA elections—gen-eral gender preferences, SWS influence, andcandidates' credentials.'"

Being a woman had the largest impact onwinning an election to ASA office or theCouncil, with a marginal effect of the num-ber of articles published (using a one-tailedtest at the /? < .10 level). These results arerobust across different model specifications.SWS membership net of other factors, in-cluding sex, had no influence on electionsuccess. When we estimated this model sepa-rately by gender, we found a positive effectof published articles for women and a mar-ginal positive effect of published books formen (results not shown).

In terms of election outcomes, then, gen-der politics of a general sort and, to a muchsmaller extent, academic distinction (as indi-cated by publication) both played a part." It

"* Because we have the universe of candidatesfrom 1975 through 1996, we do not need to usesignificance tests. One could, however, think of1975-1996 as only one possible sample of elec-tion years and candidates. Therefore we do usesignificance tests to guide our interpretation of re-sults in logit models.

" Consistent with our earlier description, wefound that even net of our other variables, racial/ethnic minority group members had odds of win-ning more than 50 percent lower than those for

Variables

Constant

Sex (1 = female)

SWS member (1 = yes)

Career age

Coefficient

-1.30*'(-54)

1.53"(-39)

-.04(-36)

.01(-02)

Number of articles published .05in the 5 years before election (.04)

Number of books published

In top-20 department(Webster/Massey)

Chi-square

.03(-02)

-.14(-30)

28.

OddsRatio

4.64

.97

1.01

1.05

1.03

.87

94"

Note: Numbers in parentheses are standard errors."p < .01 (one-tailed test)

is not surprising that factors other than gen-der have had such a small role. As seen inTable 4, the men and women standing forelection were relatively similar in many re-spects, and the candidates formed a highlyselected group of sociologists. Gender is onedistinctive characteristic, and apparently it isindeed used as a criterion by voters.

CONCLUSIONS

Starting in the early 1970s, women have in-creased their participation in almost all as-pects of the American Sociological Associa-tion. They currently constitute more thanhalf of the ASA officers and Council mem-majority status candidates. In contrast withwomen, overrepresentation of minorities in ASAgovernance comes from disproportionate nomina-tions alone, rather than from both higher levelsof nominations and of election. Further, sectioninvolvement increased the chances of winning,and previous office or Council service decreasedchances (net of sex, SWS membership, book pub-lication, and being in a top-20 department).


bers. In this paper, we focused on the pro-cess of ASA elections to understand themeaning of this change in representation.For officer and Council races, most of therise in women's election success occurred inthe 1970s and early 1980s, with women gen-erally remaining overrepresented as candi-dates and winners since then. Overall, ouranalysis supports the idea that, at least interms of elections, "feminization" has beenmore than merely a reflection of organiza-tional change or internal social movementactivity. Trends in candidate credentials overtime, at least in terms of our admittedlycrude measures, do not support Simpson andSimpson's (1994) fear of "elite dilution"—acontinuing movement away from distin-guished leadership. SWS, as the most highlyorganized group concerned with ASA elec-tions, certainly has had an impact beyondwhat we were able to observe. But generalchanges in attitudes and opportunities seemto be the exogenous factors behind women'selection success.

What are the implications of women's ad-vances into ASA leadership roles? Roos(1997) notes that much of the discussion ofsociology's "decline" followed women'srapid increases in the field. Contrary to pre-dictions of further decline, however, sociol-ogy seems to be rebounding at a time whenwomen still hold a disproportionate numberof ASA offices and Council memberships(although not of the most prestigious aca-demic positions).

We hope our study of data from the last 20-plus years of ASA elections, by upholding orcorrecting some of our beliefs aboutwomen's successes, will allow clearer think-ing and debate about the purpose and natureof ASA leadership. There are many aspectsof this leadership, of course, that we have notexamined. We have not looked at whetherwomen's presence, especially feministwomen's presence, has had perceptible con-sequences in terms of Council policies anddecisions, representation in other parts of theorganization, interactions with the ExecutiveOffice, or the strength of various subdisci-plines. One might, for example, look at theassociations between the gender, profes-sional credentials, and organizational partici-pation of Council members-at-large and ofthe Committee on Nominations, and between

these characteristics of Committee on Nomi-nations members and of candidates nomi-nated. Aside from voting behavior and anec-dotes, we really do not know much about thegender attitudes of much of the ASA mem-bership. Groups other than women and ra-cial/ethnic minorities have organized to in-fluence the nature of the American Socio-logical Association and U.S. sociology gen-erally, but we need to know more about howthey went about this and how successful theyhave been. We also know little about how theroutes to ASA leadership and types of incum-bents' activities have changed over.time. Fi-nally, we must compare the ASA with otherprofessional organizations, with and withoutstrong women's caucuses, to understandwhat is unique and what is shared in theASA's history. These are issues of interest tosociologists both as practitioners and asmembers of their discipline. Recent concernsabout the nature of sociology and how it isorganized, as well as similar concerns amongthose in other disciplines, have already ledto a start on this research agenda.

Rachel A. Rosenfetd is Lara G. Hoggard Profes-sor of Sociology and a Fellow of the CarolinaPopulation Center at the University of NorthCarolina at Chapel Hill. She is author of FarmWomen: Work, Farm, and Family in the UnitedStates (University of North Carolina Press,1985). and with Jean O'Barr and ElizabethMinnich is editor o/Reconstructing the Academy(University of Chicago Press, 1988). Her re-search interests include work-family links in ad-vanced industrialized societies, job-shifting in theearly life course, and the contemporary U.S.women's movement. In collaboration with HeikeTrappe, she is examining gender inequality inearly adult life in the former East Germany, theformer West Germany, and the United States.

David Cunningham is a Ph.D. candidate at theUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Hiscurrent research addresses the role of socialcapital in the reproduction of inequality. He isalso interested in developing a model that ex-plains variation in the responses of governmentsto protest groups.

Kathryn Schmidt is a Ph.D. candidate at the Uni-versity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her on-going research examines the contexts withinwhich workers disclose personal information tocoworkers and employers. Her other research in-terests include contingent work and theoreticalperspectives on work and gender issues.


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Documents

AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION ELECTIONS ......Rosenfeld, Department of Sociology, CB# 3210, ^^^^^ forthcoming; Roos 1997). University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill NC the Schlesinger