Political scientists who study women and politics have long recognized that the number of women serving in higher political office will increase only if there are more qualified women to run for these positions. Substantial gains by women candidates at the local level, it is argued, will pump the political pipeline, providing more women with political experience to run for higher offices. Yet, is school board office in reality part of the political pipeline for most citizens who seek it? Or, is school board service viewed more along the lines of community service? This question has important gender implications. As women are more likely to serve at the school board level than in any other level of government, whether or not they see school board service as the first step in a longer political career has serious consequences for the political pipeline argument. Is service on the school board more likely to be viewed as a stepping stone by women, perhaps because it is more accessible to them than other offices, than by men? Or do women view school board service as a separate track altogether? At the heart of this issue is political ambition and whether men and women run for political office for different reasons.

The data for this study come from a cross-sectional, national survey of school board candidates drawn from a random sample of school districts that I conducted in 1998 (N=671; 55% response rate). I find that among the respondents to the national survey, 38% were women, which is close to the national average of women currently serving on school boards. In many ways, women and men candidates are similar in terms of their socioeconomic backgrounds. Women school board candidates (23%), however, are almost twice as likely as men candidates (12%) to come from a professional education background, which is consistent with previous studies on the background of school board members. Of all survey respondents, 62% won their races. When broken down by gender, women candidates won 65% of their races, compared with 61% of men—a difference that is not statistically significant. Moreover, when additional controls are introduced in a logistic regression analysis, gender remains insignificant (instead, incumbency is the major explanatory variable in predicting the success of school board candidates). However, women candidates do fare better in at-large elections than men, which is not surprising given that previous research indicates that there is a tendency for women to be elected in “at-large” or multi-member district elections at both the municipal and state legislative level.

Although women are just as likely as men to win when they decide to become school board candidates, men and women appear to weigh different factors in their decision to run for school board. Women are more likely than men to rely on the encouragement of family and friends before they seek out a school board position, which suggests that family obligations weigh heavier on the minds of women candidates. Indeed, women are more likely than men to say that having children in the schools is what prompted their decision to run for school board in the first place.

This study finds that other important gender dimensions exist when it comes to political ambition. Men are significantly more likely than women to say that they run for school board with the hope of both gaining political experience as well as affecting local education policy. Women, meanwhile, are more likely to indicate that the social reasons, such as working with likeminded individuals on a school board, are what propelled their decision to become school board candidates. In some ways, these findings run counter to other work on political ambition and higher political office, in which the “ambition gap” appears to be closing between men and women and that women are even more likely than men to say that issues are what matter in their decisions to become engaged in politics.

Of course, the findings from this study might demonstrate that school board elections are a unique case when compared to other sorts of elections. While men are more likely than women to say that gaining political experience for a run for higher office was important in their decision to become a school board candidate, the fact remains that relatively few men or women feel that this reason was important. Both men and women are more likely to indicate that social and community reasons are what prompted their candidacies. Although men may be more ready than women to use school boards as the first step in their political pipeline, the chances of candidates of either sex doing so are slim. Those individuals who wish to recruit well qualified women (or men) to run for higher political office may wish to do so from other arenas besides school boards.