Going the Distance: The Impact of Commute on Gender Diversity in Public Service

Problem definition: Women have been shown to prefer jobs with a better work-life balance across many fields. Given that serving as a state political representative requires a significant amount of travel between one’s home district and the state capitol, this suggests that long commute distances may reduce the number of women seeking political office in the United States. At the same time, state political positions vary in their degree of flexibility (e.g., full-time versus part-time) and commensurate compensation, which could make them more or less desirable to women. We analyze the extent to which longer commute distances deter female political participation and whether this effect varies according to the degree of flexibility and commensurate compensation provided by the position. Furthermore, we investigate policies that can lower the barrier to entry for women in politics. Methodology/results: Leveraging differences in distance to the state capitol among state legislative districts, we show that districts located further from the state capitol in states with full-time legislatures have a lower percentage of female candidates, whereas in states with part-time legislatures, the opposite is true. The effect in hybrid states, that is, those state legislatures with a workload between part-time and full-time, appears to be slightly negative or neutral. We then conduct two conjoint survey experiments administered to a pool of college students and past political candidates to understand how policies allowing for paid parental leave, remote work/proxy voting, or daycare benefits in political positions could help to close the gender gap in politics. We find that paid parental leave might motivate women at the beginning of their political careers with longer commutes to run for office while a remote work/proxy voting policy could help to sustain the political careers of these types of women. Managerial implications: For organizers and policymakers seeking to encourage more women to run for office, our work shows that commute distance is a barrier for would-be candidates in states with full-time legislatures and that making paid parental leave and remote work/proxy voting available may help.