The Politics of Perception: How Beliefs About Women's Inclusion Shape Democratic Legitimacy in the US

In 1992, Dianne Feinstein, noting the number of women in the Senate, declared that, "two percent may be good enough for milk, but it is not good enough for the United States Senate." At the heart of Feinstein's quote was a simple message: women's inclusion in politics matters.Despite the power of this message, scholars continue to debate whether and how women's inclusion in politics shapes public views of political institutions, but with no clear consensus. In The Politics of Perception, Katelyn E. Stauffer tackles one of the central debates in research on women and politics--to what extent does the presence of women in office shape citizens' confidence in government and their views on democratic legitimacy?Stauffer unpacks the contradictions of previous research and develops a framework that allows us to gain a better understanding of when, how, and which citizens link the concepts of women's inclusion and democratic legitimacy.Applying this framework to survey data on a variety of po