When withdrawing from the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, Hillary Clinton remarked that the glass ceiling had “18 million cracks in it, and the light is shining through like never before.” While Clinton was seeking the highest elected office, hundreds of women were running for governor, Congress, and state and local offices. David E. Campbell and Christina Wolbrecht’s book, See Jane Run: How Women Politicians Matter for Young People, explores how Clinton and other women candidates serve as role models for adolescents, changing their views on women’s political leadership and democracy as well as increasing political engagement. See Jane Run makes a significant contribution to our understanding of political socialization, representation, and political engagement among young people in the United States.

Campbell and Wolbrecht offer a compelling theory on how women candidates serve as role models who shape the attitudes and behavior of both girls and boys. They argue that women candidates challenge existing gender stereotypes about women’s ability to lead and their place in the political system. Adolescents living in communities with women candidates revised their views on women in politics, the quality of democracy, and their plans for future participation. Campbell and Wolbrecht expect that not all women candidates will shape attitudes and behaviors in this way. Instead, they argue that novel, viable women candidates are most likely to produce these role-model effects. Compared to other candidates and officeholders, women candidates who are not incumbents but who win or come close to winning garner attention and interest, making them visible role models. However, they worry such women candidates will have different effects on girls’ and boys’ political attitudes and behaviors. In particular, they theorize that boys may see women candidates as threats to traditional masculinity and to men’s dominance in the political system.

Two original panel studies serve as the primary data for testing their theoretical argument. The first survey is a three-wave panel of adolescents aged 15–18, with two waves bracketing the 2016 presidential election and a final wave two years later. The second survey interviewed adolescents aged 14–18 before and after the 2020 election. Both surveys also included interviews with one parent of each adolescent respondent. Quality data on political socialization can be difficult to obtain because it requires complex designs that are costly and time-consuming to implement. Existing surveys of adolescents often contain a limited number of questions about politics. These two surveys constitute a rich source of data that provides strong evidence in support of Campbell and Wolbrecht’s theory. Moreover, these surveys will serve as an important resource for other political socialization scholars.

Campbell and Wolbrecht find compelling evidence that women candidates act as role models. They begin by examining how women candidates shape boys’ and girls’ views toward women’s leadership capacity. Not surprisingly, gender and party work together to structure girls’ and boys’ attitudes. Democratic girls hold the most supportive view of women’s leadership abilities when there are no women candidates; as a result, their attitudes do not change much when women run. Republican girls and boys hold the least supportive views. When women candidates are present in their communities, Republican girls report considerably more supportive attitudes toward women’s leadership, closing the gap between their views and those of Democratic girls. Democratic boys’ and Republican boys’ attitudes exhibit movement, but the results are less consistent.

Not all candidates will win, raising the question of how losses by women candidates influence role model effects. Campbell and Wolbrecht report that Democratic girls’ and boys’ views of the political system’s responsiveness declined after the 2016 election and attribute this effect to the loss of Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump. In response to the Trump presidency, a record number of women candidates ran and won elected office. Campbell and Wolbrecht find that Democratic girls became more positive toward government responsiveness when one of these candidates ran in their community. Adolescents’ views of government and democracy are therefore shaped not only by the larger political environment but also by who is running in their local contexts.

Hillary Clinton’s candidacies for the Democratic nomination in 2008 and then for the presidency in 2016 represented critical moments in the history of women in American politics. Campbell and Wolbrecht illustrate how these moments and others over the past 50 years increased girls’ political engagement, especially among Democratic girls. Focusing on the 2020 election, they demonstrate that the increase in political efficacy among Democratic girls was accompanied by increased expectations that they will vote and run for elected office in the future. Republican boys’ political ambition and voting expectation also increased in response to women candidates. Importantly, these changes in political engagement are not accompanied by changes in political efficacy. This suggests that Republican boys may view women candidates not as role models but as a threat to traditional ideas of masculinity and politics. Unlike the finding that the mere presence of women candidates shapes adolescents’ views of women’s leadership potential and government responsiveness, adolescents must be aware of the number of women candidates in their community to observe changes in political engagement.

Campbell and Wolbrecht’s primary analysis, however, is limited in its ability to examine how a candidate’s gender intersects with race to shape role model effects. They address this limitation by drawing on the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey, which contains larger samples of non-white respondents. They find that Black girls are more likely to participate in politics and express higher levels of political ambition when Black women are candidates, but not when the woman candidate is of a different race. They find no significant effects of women candidates, whether of the same or another race, on Hispanic girls’ engagement with politics. For boys, the presence of women candidates of another race decreases Black and Hispanic boys’ desire to run for office. Additionally, women candidates of a different race reduce white boys’ level of political participation.

The majority of women candidates in the observational data are Democrats; thus, Campbell and Wolbrecht turn to experimental data to parse out the influence of Republican women candidates. Not surprisingly, partisanship matters. Republican girls see government as more responsive, have higher levels of political efficacy, and are more likely to engage in politics when exposed to women candidates. Republican women candidates have a limited effect on Democratic girls, but they do increase their perceptions of the government’s responsiveness and their ambitions to run for elected office. Democratic and Republican boys shift their views of women’s leadership and perceptions of government responsiveness when exposed to Republican women candidates, but not to Democratic women candidates.

Campbell and Wolbrecht argue that the mixed findings in previous research on the influence of women candidates stem from scholars looking in the wrong place. This research has focused on adults whose attitudes and behaviors are more resistant to change. They find little evidence that women candidates shape adults’ attitudes and behavior, using data from both the Cooperative Elections Surveys and from the parents in their surveys. Unlike adults, however, adolescents’ attitudes are more malleable. Moreover, evidence suggests that these changes are not fleeting but have an enduring effect, shaping attitudes and behavior as adolescents transition into adulthood.

See Jane Run has important implications for increasing women’s representation in elected office. Research identifies a variety of obstacles women candidates encounter, including perceptions of their own abilities and qualifications, perceptions of their capabilities among voters and party officials, and voters’ expectations. Campbell and Wolbrecht’s work suggests that when women candidates run and serve as role models, they help change these perceptions of women’s leadership ability among younger generations. As younger generations enter the electorate, we should expect that more women will see themselves as qualified, reducing the current obstacles faced by women candidates.

Campbell and Wolbrecht’s work also implies that as women candidates become less novel, role model effects will be constrained in the future. While we are clearly not at this point, especially when it comes to candidates from the Republican Party, it is unclear if increased role models will help women reach parity. We should also consider too how geography may constrain role model effects. Campbell and Wolbrecht conceptualize representation dyadically, meaning the role model effects are produced when an individual lives in a location where there is a visible and viable women candidate. Women candidates do not emerge randomly; instead, demographic and political characteristics shape when and where women candidates emerge for elected office. If women candidates must be from the same geographic location as the respondent for role model effects to occur, then the uneven geography of where women candidates emerge may constrain the overall impact of role model effects.

Overall, See Jane Runs significantly advances our understanding of how the representation of diverse identities in government matters. This book will have an important role in shaping our thinking about political socialization, representation, and gender and politics.