Seven research projects received funding through the 2014 Carrie Chapman Catt Prize for Research on Women and Politics.
A selection committee of 12 faculty members blind-reviewed 60 proposals submitted by 81 researchers from 28 states and nine countries. The committee chose three projects as winners of the Catt Prize and four projects for honorable mention awards. Each of the winning prize proposals will receive $1,500. Honorable mention awards will receive $750 each.
Prize winners for 2014 are:
Erin C. Cassese, associate professor of political science at West Virginia University, Morgantown, W.Va., and Mirya R. Holman, assistant professor of political science at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Fla., for “Not a Team Player? Communal Challenges to Female Candidates.” The study will use a survey-based experiment to evaluate the effects of gender stereotypes on the evaluations of women candidates when they are attacked on agentic vs. communal grounds. The award will be used for participant recruitment and travel expenses to the Southern Political Science Association’s annual meeting.
Tarah Williams, Kylee Britzman and Paul Testa, Ph.D. candidates in political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Ill., for “The Potential to Persuade: The Gendered Effects of Informal Political Discussions.” The study examines the perception of women’s persuasive abilities in political discussions and whether that differs from actual persuasive success. The award will be used to field a pretest and a replication experiment using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.
Christina Xydias, assistant professor of political science at Clarkson University, Potsdam, N.Y., for “The Conservative Woman: A Comparative Study of Germany and the United States.” The study will examine contributions of conservative women in advancing women’s rights and interests in broader political contexts. The award will be used to travel to Berlin for interviews with women in conservative German political parties.
Recipients of honorable mention awards are:
Nichole M. Bauer, visiting assistant professor of political science at Davidson College, Davidson, N.C., for “Strategic Gender Stereotyping in Congressional Campaigns.” The study will examine the campaign conditions that lead female candidates to rely on feminine or masculine stereotypes in their campaign messages. The award will be used for data acquisition and to hire research assistants to code campaign ads.
Noaquia Callahan, Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, for “Divided Duty: African American Feminist Transnational Activism and the Lure of the Imperial Gaze, 1888-1922.” The study will examine how African American women used international women’s organizations to challenge racism, sexism and imperial feminism through an examination of the career of Mary Church Terrell. The award will be used to travel to the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in Boulder, Colo.
Ashley Farmer, postdoctoral fellow in history at Duke University, Durham, N.C., for “What You’ve Got is a Revolution: Black Women’s Theorizing of Black Power Politics.” The study will examine the impact of African American women on gender and political ideology in the black power movement. The award will be used for travel expenses to visit archives at the Schomburg Center for Black Culture in New York City and the Charles E. Young Special Collection Library at the University of California-Los Angeles.
Kendall Funk, Ph.D. candidate in political science at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, for “Elected on a Ledge: Women Mayors and the Glass Cliff in Brazil.” The study will examine the glass cliff theory in the context of women running for mayor of municipalities in Brazil. The award will be used for travel expenses to visit mayors in each of the five regions of Brazil.
The annual research prize has been funded since 1994 by the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics. Members of the 2014 Catt Prize Selection Committee are David Andersen, Tessa Ditonto, Kelly Shaw, Amy Erica Smith, Alex Tuckness and Robert Urbatsch, all with the department of political science; Amy Bix, department of history; Abby Dubisar, English department; Jan Boyles, Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication; Kelly Winfrey and Dianne Bystrom, both with the Catt Center; and Christopher Larimer, department of political science at the University of Northern Iowa. The committee was assisted by Sue Cloud, communications specialist at the Catt Center.