Since the 1980s, we have witnessed how the gender gap grows and
shrinks in various elections; we address how the context in which the
election takes place influences the size of the divide. Studying the
gender gap in Senate elections allows us to look at multiple elections
across time and space to determine when significant electoral gender gaps
arise and when they do not. This contrasts with more traditional
approaches that focus either on a single presidential election or on a
single year's House or Senate elections. We demonstrate that
electoral gender gaps arise from campaign-level factors (such as candidate
sex, the presence of an incumbent, and the issues raised in the campaign),
state-level factors (demographics and politics of the states), and the
complex interaction of these factors.We
would like to thank the many people who gave us helpful feedback and
comments on earlier drafts of this paper, particularly Suzanna De Boef,
Susan Welch, Eric Plutzer, the Gender and Politics Working Group at Penn
State University, Margaret Conway, the editors of this journal, and our
anonymous reviewers. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the
2001 Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science
Association.