Welcome!

I am a Professor of Political Science and the C. Robert and Margaret Hanley Family Director of the Washington Program at the University of Notre Dame, where I teach and write about American politics, political parties, gender and politics, and American political development. I am currently writing a book with David E. Campbell about women as political role models for adolescents, and am working on a new project with Mirya Holman and Lakshmi Iyer on the causes and consequences of the appointment of women to local boards and commissions.

My recent work, in collaboration with J. Kevin Corder, focused on women voters since suffrage. Our book, A Century of Votes for Women (Cambridge 2020), offers an unprecedented account of how women voted–and how politicians, journalists, and scholars understood women voters–across the 10 decades since the 19th Amendment was ratified. Our earlier book, Counting Women’s Ballots (Cambridge 2016), used new data and innovative methods to analyze how women voted in the first five presidential elections following enfranchisement. You can find more about our work, as well as press, events, and reviews, here.

I am the author of The Politics of Women’s Rights (Princeton 2000), which describes and explains the polarization of the major American parties on women’s rights issues, such as abortion and the ERA, as well as articles on such topics as the representation of women and partisan education policy.

Susan Franceshet and I are the co-editors of Politics & Gender from July 2019 through June 2022. You can find me on Twitter @C_Wolbrecht.