Do women participate in and influence meetings equally with men? Does gender shape how a meeting is run and whose voices are heard? The Silent Sex shows how the gender composition and rules of a deliberative body dramatically affect who speaks, how the group interacts, the kinds of issues the group takes up, whose voices prevail, and what the group ultimately decides. It argues that efforts to improve the representation of women will fall short unless they address institutional rules that impede women's voices. Using groundbreaking experimental research supplemented with analysis of school boards, Christopher Karpowitz and Tali Mendelberg demonstrate how the effects of rules depend on women's numbers, so that small numbers are not fatal with a consensus process, but consensus is not always beneficial when there are large numbers of women. Men and women enter deliberative settings facing different expectations about their influence and authority. Karpowitz and Mendelberg reveal how the wrong institutional rules can exacerbate women's deficit of authority while the right rules can close it, and, in the process, establish more cooperative norms of group behavior and more generous policies for the disadvantaged. Rules and numbers have far-reaching implications for the representation of women and their interests. Bringing clarity and insight to one of today's most contentious debates, The Silent Sex provides important new findings on ways to bring women's voices into the conversation on matters of common concern.

Prizes

Winner of American Political Science Association: Political Psychology Section Robert E. Lane Award 2015,Joint winner of American Political Science Association Experimental Research Section: Best Book Award 2015

Co-Winners of the 2015 Best Book Award, Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association Winner of the 2015 Robert E. Lane Award, Political Psychology Section of the American Political Science Association Winner of the 2015 David O. Sears Book Award, International Society of Political Psychology "This book examines the extent of the contributions by men and women to public discussions about subjects of common concern. Karpowitz and Mendelberg find evidence of a significant difference in contributions--with men contributing more--and show how gender composition and rules dramatically affect what a group ultimately decides."--Choice

Christopher F. Karpowitz is associate professor of political science and associate director of the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University. Tali Mendelberg is professor of politics at Princeton University. She is the author of The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality (Princeton).