While women remain underrepresented in politics, the increased number of women running for office in recent election cycles offers a welcome opportunity to assess and update research on women's political candidacy. Good Reasons to Run provides a comprehensive understanding of the complexities of women's political candidacy from an impressive collection of rising and established gender scholars. The edited volume has a strong intersectional focus that lays bare how the barriers for women candidates are significantly higher for women of color, and it further considers how the experiences of running for office as a Republican woman are distinct from those of running as a Democrat. It also includes a much-needed comparative perspective on efforts to boost women's political representation beyond the United States.

The volume is divided into five parts that consider different aspects of women's candidacy. Part I takes up the question of which women run for office and how factors such as women's race, political party affiliation, and participation in candidate training programs inform their willingness to run. Chapter 1, by Karen O'Connor and Alixandra Yanus, examines elite political ambition and finds gender gaps in connectedness and interest in running for office among presidential electors but equal interest in holding appointed office. Chapter 2, by Rachel Bernhard and colleagues, surveys alumnae from Emerge America's candidate training programs and finds that program participants who are married white women with older children and not the family's primary income earner are most likely to run for office. In Chapter 3, Malliga Och discusses how women who run for office as Republicans are less likely than Democratic women to rely on gendered networks of campaign finance and candidate training. In Chapter 4, Jamil Scott and colleagues examine how women of color present themselves to and engage with voters with a case study on voting rights activist Stacey Abrams and her 2018 gubernatorial bid in Georgia.

Part II investigates how women's strengths as problem-solvers and policy innovators enhance their candidacy and officeholding. In Chapter 5, Sue Thomas and Catherine Wineinger detail how the gender gap in political ambition vanishes when women see officeholding as a way to fix social problems and improve their communities. In Chapters 6 and 7, Rebecca Deen and Beth Anne Shelton, and Cecilia Hyunjung Mo and Georgia Anderson-Nilsson, consider the value of public service—on citizen advisory boards and as educators with Teach for America, respectively—on future decisions to run for office.

Part III assesses the barriers that conspire to suppress women's political candidacy. Chapter 8, by Heather Ondercin, shows how geographic location informs where women emerge as candidates, while Chapter 9, by Alejandra Gimenez Aldridge and colleagues, demonstrates the importance of supportive messages from state party leaders in recruiting women to serve in party organizations. In Chapter 10, Nadia Brown and Pearl Dowe again consider the role of political parties but in this instance to demonstrate how parties, especially the Democratic Party, overlook Black women as prospective candidates. They show that women's candidate training programs can fill the void left by parties’ recruiting failures. In Chapter 11, Chris Bonneau and Kristin Kanthak explore the sharp uptick in (mostly Democratic) women's political candidacy and find that policy considerations, not increased political ambition, fueled women's decisions to run.

Part IV evaluates the work of nonprofit organizations in training and helping women run for office. In Chapter 12, Rebecca Kreitzer and Tracy Osborn share results from a census of U.S. women's campaign groups and find that while most groups are nonpartisan, their expectation of a pro-choice policy stance from women participants directs their training to women who run as Democrats. In Chapters 13 and 14, Kelly Dittmar and Kira Sanbonmatsu, and Monica Schneider and Jennie Sweet Cushman, each evaluate the nonpartisan Ready to Run training program and find that this program is particularly helpful in providing networking and peer mentoring opportunities for women and educating them about the political and electoral process, respectively. Chapter 15, by Jennifer Piscopo, provides a comparative analysis of candidate training programs and their value in drawing attention to explicitly including women in the political process in countries where women have fewer opportunities to self-select as candidates.

Part V considers the importance of money to women's campaigns. In Chapter 16, Michele Swers and Danielle Thomsen detail the importance of gender to Democratic candidates and donors and corresponding lack of importance for Republican candidates and donors. Chapter 17, by Martha Johnson, explores the benefit of directing resources to support women's campaign training in Benin. And, in Chapter 18, Jaclyn Kettler shows how women donors are more likely to direct contributions to women candidates, particularly those running in open seats.

Good Reasons to Run will be of tremendous interest and value to anyone wishing to better understand women's political candidacy and the challenges and opportunities they will encounter in future election cycles. As a collective work, this volume embraces an array of diverse methodological approaches that are useful for graduate courses on campaigns and elections or gender and politics. Further, the writing and explanation of research is accessible for undergraduate versions of these courses.

This book was published after the 2018 election that ushered in the largest, most diverse class of Democratic women members of Congress but before the 2020 election that marked two milestones: the election of Democratic senator Kamala Harris as vice president of the United States, and the election of the largest, most diverse class of Republican women members of Congress. Good Reasons to Run encourages scholars to move forward with the next round of research in this area, including the matters of whether Republican women candidates and officeholders can sustain the momentum they enjoyed in 2020, how women of color engage with voters and parties to expand their numbers, and the role played by women's candidate training groups and campaign finance networks to prepare more women to run for office and help fund their campaigns. The volume contributes meaningfully to our understanding of political candidacy and gender and demonstrates the value of asking relevant questions about the factors that give women a good reason to run for office.