Author: Mia Dalton Major: Political Science
My research is a political science study on the motivational factors of Latinas seeking elected office at the local level. My grandmother inspired this project as a proud Latina. I decided to look into this specific topic because there is a very limited amount of research that currently exists solely about Latinas in politics. Much of the current literature emphasizes that Latinas must overcome the machismo cultural expectations and their intersectionality as a female and minority. However, I found one researcher that emphasized Latina intersectional identity as a benefit because they can appeal to a wider variety of voters, and another who mentioned that Latinas are more likely to admit to wanting to run for office than women of other races/ethnicities. This led to my curiosity about what motivates Latinas to run for elected office and if they were willing to admit it was their own decision. I focused on the local level positions–i.e., county, municipal, and school board offices–because they are extremely underrepresented, yet the most Latinas in elected offices are in these positions. Additionally, they are extremely important to the overall function of government, yet we focus heavily on the national officials.
My research mentor, Professor Medina of the Latino Studies program, really helped me narrow my focus when starting my research into what I wanted to study. I had taken his Latino Politics class which launched my interest into Latina representation as we discussed how few Latinas are in elected politics. When creating my research plan, I initially wanted to travel around Texas (the state with the most Latina elected officials) and conduct interviews. However, the coronavirus interrupted these plans. Dr. Medina was quick to recommend we instead conduct an online survey emailed to potential candidates and zoom interviews. This method was actually beneficial in that I was able to add a quantitative aspect to my study and cut travel costs. I used the interviews to bring a narrative to the quantitative data that I pulled out of the survey. I devised three questions to test self-motivation factors in the survey, which were key to my study. They asked questions about who was the most significant influencer in their decision to run, select all those who influenced the candidate, and how significant was their longstanding desire to run in their decision to pursue elected office.
The results surprised me in some ways; I found that conservative and republican Latinas were more likely to be self-motivated to run than liberal or democratic candidates, and those from Hispanic majority counties were less likely to be self-motivated in their decision to run than those from split or majority white majorities. Some results were as expected; those whose parents were more involved politically in their youth were more likely to be self-motivated than those whose parents were not involved, and those with previous political experience of their own were more likely to be self-motivated. Additionally, I found many other areas of interest for further studies ranging from the ability of social media campaigns to revolutionize grassroots campaigns for Latina mothers to the effect of age on expectations of experience and ability to perform by voters. My research was just a first study to launch further research on the topic. I hope this to be the base of a tree where many different paths grow out of it for research on Latinas in politics.
The interviews I conducted impacted me as my candidates were so candid about their experiences and were just as excited to hear about why this was important to me. It was incredibly rewarding to see my research come together to represent these incredible women and greatly impacted my personal connection to my heritage and identity as Latina.
I am graduating in December 2020, and will be attending law school in the fall of 2021. I plan on continuing to work on increasing awareness of the possibilities for women in politics and may even pursue an elected position myself as a county/municipal attorney or judge. I am hoping to continue to work on my research next semester through an internship.