This dissertation seeks to explain the puzzle in the state politics literature which expects females to benefit from the enactment of term limits, but initial research finds the number of female in office decreases after the implementation of term limits. Examining this puzzle involves three separate stand-alone chapters which explore female candidate emergence (1), success rates (2), and women-friendly state legislative districts (3). The goal of the dissertation is to reconcile the puzzle while adding insight into how female candidates behave at the state-level. Overall, I find that term limits increases female descriptive representation by increasing the likelihood a female candidate will run and win an election.

Hillary Clinton faced gendered discrimination by news media sources during her presidential campaign in 2008. However, there is almost no research concerning the ways Clinton was portrayed on political blogs. Because blogs typically attract consumers who have similar ideologies, this paper explores if Clinton faced more gender bias on conservative blogs than liberal blogs, utilizing two well-established political blogs. Specifically it looks at three biases that exist in traditional sources of news media: appearance-based discrimination, an emphasis on domesticity, and analyses of femininity. This paper found that, in general, bloggers on a conservative website presented more instances of gender bias and bloggers on the liberal website presented fewer. The analysis indicates that while gendered stereotypes existed throughout the blogosphere during the Democratic Primaries, they were more pronounced on conservative websites.

Slovak Republic is a country where women are still underrepresented in the public life. Only recently, after the Parliamentary elections in June 2010, a woman became Prime Minister of Slovak Republic. Slovak and international media appreciated Slovakia for being a first country in central-eastern Europe to have a female leader of the country (Zsilleova 2010). This fact doesn`t change, that women are almost absent from high posts in Parliament, Government, public life, media or high managerial posts. Women in Slovakia still have a long way to the equality. This study focuses on the way female candidate for President Iveta Radičová is represented in the media during 2009 campaign. The research compares her coverage with male candidate`s coverage. The coverage of personal traits of candidates was gender biased and media mentioned female candidate`s gender very often, meanwhile they didn`t mention male candidates gender except in few occasions. However, there was no gender bias in the coverage of candidates` viability, the issues discussed, and the tone of coverage. Even thought male candidate was favored in amount and prominence of coverage, he was covered in more negative way, which can turn his advantage into disadvantage.