(Page 2 of 23) - Gendered Ambition? Career Choices of Staff Members in the U.S. House of Representatives authored by Jensen, Jennifer.

Approximately 4,200 people work in representatives’ Washington, D.C. personal offices

of the House of Representatives (Ornstein et al. 2002). About 50 percent of them are women, a
percentage that has constant held since 1990 (Beverly 2000). This increase far surpasses the
increasing numbers of women members of Congress, who have gained significant power but still
represent a small minority of elected representatives (Rosenthal 2003). Women staff members
work alongside both male and female representatives in Congress to influence the activities of
Congress and the types of legislation passed, both with respect to women's issues and other
concerns. Despite some significant works on political staff members and various representation
issue in Congress, however, the role of women staff members in Congress has not been fully
explored. In particular, women's ambitions as unelected political actors have received scant
attention.

In this paper, I present a theory of gendered political ambition, arguing that women have

high levels of political ambition, but that they are moderated by both external and internal
constraints on this ambition that do not affect men. Thus in practice, upward mobility is limited
for women. I apply this theory to staff members working in the Washington, D.C. personal
nearly 600 than 450 staff members in the House of Representatives, I seek to determine whether
women's career observations and goals differ from their male counterparts. I present a series of
t-tests that demonstrate the significant differences I find. Next, I seek to determine the factors
that influence women's career goals. Using ordered Probit analysis, I investigate the effect of
both personal and professional characteristics on women's political ambitions. Political ambition
is a difficult thing to measure, and one of the strengths of this analysis is that I use multiple
measures of ambition to test the robustness of the factors considered. My theory and a
preliminary test works to broaden the discipline's knowledge about political ambition and
women as political actors.

Learning how women and men staff members evaluate their jobs and future plans can

provide significant benefits for the professional administration of the House of Representatives.
Neither political scientists nor congressional actors themselves have systematic data about staff
members' career goals and attitudes, and these career issues have a significant effect on staff
members. Understanding employment satisfaction of House staff members provides the public
administration benefit of informing House administrators as they craft employment policy. As I
will demonstrate, gender plays a very important role in employment satisfaction and career
choices. This study aims to help us discover how gender influences the career choices of
politically ambitious men and women as they proceed in political careers in Congress or political
careers elsewhere.

The Literature of Political Ambition and Political Staff

The seminal work on political ambition is Schlesinger's Ambition and Politics (1966; see

also 1965). Considerable research on political ambition is fruitful, but tends not to examine
gender (Ehrenhalt 1991; Fowler and McClure 1989; Williams and Lascher 1993). A growing
body of work on political ambition examines women's ambition specifically (Bledsoe and
Herring 1990; Burt-Way and Kelly 1992; Kelly and Boutilier 1992; Sapiro 1982, 1983; Thomas
and Welch 1991).