DOI: 10.3886/icpsr36826.v2
title: The Gender and Multicultural Leadership Project: The Future of Governance, United States, 2006-2007
title: Version 2

description: The Gender and Multicultural Leadership Project (GMCL) is a national study of America's political leadership in the 21st century, with a focus on race, ethnicity, and gender. The project specifically addresses African American, Latina/o, Native American, and Asian American elected officials in U.S. politics. The 2000 U.S. Census points to a need to understand the role of gender and race/ethnicity in today's elected leaders and how this increasingly diversified leadership is becoming incorporated into the governing structures of a nation projected to be "majority-minority" within the next fifty years.
Key components of the GMCL Project include a national database of more than 10,000 elected officials of color, by race and gender; an annotated bibliography and analytical framework on the intersection of gender, race/ethnicity, class; and an interactive project website.
description: The Gender and Multicultural Leadership Project goals include: (1) to provide baseline data on multicultural leadership in the 21st century, (2) provide comparisons within/across groups by race/ethnicity and gender, (3) identify prospects for coalition and/or competition, (4) examine empirically the category of "women of color", and (5) expand scholarship, especially in the area of intersectionality and political representation.
Key components of the GMCL Project include a national database of more than 10,000 elected officials of color, by race and gender; an annotated bibliography and analytical framework on the intersection of gender, race/ethnicity, class; and an interactive project website.
description: The GMCL research team constructed a national database of 10,000 elected officials of color at the federal, state, and local levels.
The first step was to consult the most current directories provided by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, NALEO (National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials), and the UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) Asian American Studies Center. American Indian elected officials at the level of state legislature and one congressional seat identified from the National Conference of State Legislators and other sources were also added.
The second step was to verify the directory information for accuracy, recode the information to make it consistent across groups, to link contextual (e.g., demographic) data from the U.S. Census and other sources.
The database includes, for the most part, officials who were in office in 2006. Once the database was complete, it was used to conduct the Survey of Elected Officials of Color.
description: None
description: Response Rates: The telephone interview response rate was 72 percent.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Public-Use Version
DS2: Restricted-Use Version
description: Non-white elected officials holding positions at the state and local levels of government.
description: computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI)African American is used interchangeably with Black, and Hispanic is used interchangeably with Latino. The Asian category includes native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders. Researchers used the term American Indian rather than Native American. The American Indian category also includes Alaskan natives. For reference to all non-white groups in this study, sometimes the term "elected officials of color is used." There is awareness of the scholarly argument that "white" is itself a "color" in a social and political sense. This study respects the differences in scholarly opinion on this issue. For the study's purposes, references to people of color do not include non-Hispanic whites.The total number of elected officials of color in the United States is greater than the approximately 10,000 elected officials in the database. For example, there are more than 9,000 Black and 5,000 Hispanic/Latino elected officials, according to the most recent rosters of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies (JCPES) and National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO). The difference is due to the fact that the GMCL database does not include judicial or law enforcement positions; party officials; statewide, county, municipal and school board officials in addition to those listed above; county and municipal officials who serve on a variety of boards and commissions such as water, utility, and so on; non-voting members of Congress; and, finally, elected officials from Puerto Rico or territories such as Guam and American Samoa.The data file included in this collection represents a database of over 10,000 elected officials in the United States. Over 1,300 of these officials took part in a telephone interview, and the data file also includes their responses to this interview.Additional information on the Gender and Multicultural Leadership Project can be found on the GMCL Website.