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Introduction
Term limits are one of the most significant institutional changes to take place since the modernization of state legislatures (Kurtz, Cain, and Niemi 2007). And since the implementation of term limits, a puzzle in the literature emerges. Conventional wisdom suggests open seats help women gain descriptive representation since women fare as well as men in elections. Term limits provide more open seats, which suggests females have more opportunities to enter into office (Burrell 1994; Darcy, Welch, and Clark 1994; Fox 2000; Seltzer, Newman, and Leighton 1997). Yet studies conducted after the implementation of term limits find the greater number of open seats have negative consequences for female descriptive representation (Bernstein and Chadha 2003; Carroll and Jenkins 2001).
This article seeks to bridge the puzzling finding that more open seats, created by term limits, results in fewer women in office, but focuses on the candidate emergence stage. Theoretically speaking, term limits are only beneficial to women if women actually run for office. Normatively speaking, understanding how term limits help or hinder female candidate emergence is important to study for furthering descriptive representation. Theories on descriptive representation claim the makeup of legislative bodies should reflect the demographics of the public. Politicians better represent their constituents if they resemble the populace with regard to gender, race, social, and economic status. Scholars theorize the importance of descriptive representation and its implications for society because females bring different issues, experiences, and viewpoints to the political table. Increasing the percentage of women in political positions leads to more favorable policies for women (Osborn 2012; Schwindt-Bayer and Mishler 2005; Swers 2002).
In the United States, female descriptive representation has been, and continues to be, much lower than male descriptive representation at all levels of government. Currently, at the state level, female representation ranges from a low of 12 percent in Louisiana to a high of 41 percent in Colorado. The average percentage of females in all fifty state legislatures is only 24.2 percent (Center for American Women and Politics [CAWP] 2014; National Conference of State Legislatures [NCSL] 2014). Not only is the current percentage low, but the percentage of women in state legislative branches has become rather stagnant since the 1990s (Norrander and Wilcox 2012). Given that a large amount of...