Much work on the impact of women’s representation as candidates and officeholders analyzes their influence on policy, processes, and public engagement. Fewer analyses focus on the institutional effects of candidate and officeholder behavior, evaluating how men and women perform gender as institutional actors in ways that replicate or disrupt prevailing norms of gender, candidacy, or officeholding. In this project, I contend that representational and institutional effects of women’s political integration are mediated by political professionals, both campaign and legislative staff employed by political principles. More specifically, I examine gender disparities among political professionals and gender differences in the ways in which they understand and navigate the gendered institutions of campaigns and government. Drawing from Chappell (2006) and using a feminist institutionalist approach, I hypothesize that female political professionals have the potential to act as gender equity entrepreneurs with the access, awareness, attentiveness, and incentive to alter gender power dynamics in both campaign and legislative settings. In theory-building, I will first survey existing literature in the U.S. and comparative contexts to identify the role and influence of political professionals. I will then conduct interviews with female campaign practitioners (political consultants and campaign managers) from congressional and statewide contests and female legislative staff (U.S. Congress) to investigate their experience in and impact on political institutions. These interviews will inform my theoretical framework and development of two survey instruments (for campaign practitioners and legislative staff) used to identify gender differences in institutional priorities and influence of political professionals. Due to the dearth of existing research and data on political professionals, this phase of exploratory research and theory-building is necessary for and foundational to a broader research agenda on the influence of political professionals on institutional function and change, especially as it relates to gender.
