Women’s lack of representation in the House is not down to discrimination from voters or campaign donors.

The number of women winning seats in US House of Representative elections has increased dramatically in recent years. And yet women currently hold only 19 percent of House seats, a figure which has remained relatively constant since 2002. Some argue that unique barriers to entering politics can explain this lack of female representation while others attribute it to a “gender penalty” imposed on female candidates by voters and campaign donors. In an analysis of primaries for House seats between 1982 and 2012, L. Jason Anastasopoulos finds no evidence that voters and campaign contributors engage in overt gender discrimination against female candidates. He argues that that current low levels of female representation are likely to be better explained by unique barriers to entering politics that women face.