Most Women Have to Be Asked to Run for Office. Not Kirsten Gillibrand.

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From a distance, it looked as though Kirsten Gillibrand—who at 42 is now the youngest U.S. senator—had come from nowhere to beat the competition. When Governor David Patterson appointed her to fill Hillary Clinton’s seat, she’d served just one full term in the U.S. House. But her rise was far from accidental. Even when she was toiling as a dime-a-dozen Manhattan attorney, Gillibrand was plotting her own ascent. “She had her eye on the prize, she knew what she wanted, and she got it,” says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “It’s not the classic women’s story.”

The Tracy Flick type, it turns out, is a rarity among female politicians. Indeed, while Gillibrand taps into her maternal side on the campaign trail—talking about the challenges of raising two small boys and pushing for legislation to remove possible carcinogens from baby shampoo—her path into public service looks a lot more like one typically taken by men. Walsh calls it a gendered “self-starter gap”: Women are still more likely to wait to be recruited to enter politics, while the majority of men decide on their own to get on the ballot, according to a recent Rutgers survey of state legislators.

Even well-known female politicians claim they stumbled into public life much the way grunts ended up in Vietnam: They were drafted. In each case there is a critical moment—a stranger whispers in their ear, or a friend convinces them they are needed. Nancy Pelosi, for example, says she only ran after her then-dying predecessor, Sala Burton, begged her to. Sarah Palin’s political career started when she was recruited as a twentysomething to try for a seat on the Wasilla City Council. Even Hillary Clinton says that the turning point in her decision to run for the U.S. Senate came when a young woman whispered “Dare to compete, Mrs. Clinton, dare to compete,” into her ear at a public event honoring girls’ participation in sports.

These are just stories the women tell, of course, but the fact that they choose to present themselves this way is revealing. Partly, it’s a defense against the Tracy Flick attack. “Women get the ‘who does she think she is’ response a lot more than men do,” says Jennifer Lawless, a professor of political science at Brown University. “That socialization figures into how they recall [their decision to run].” Still, it’s far from just an act: As Walsh points out, a majority of female politicians have not strategically plotted their journey to the statehouse or U.S. Congress. “The typical story is, ‘I was living my life, saw a problem, and realized I’d better run for local office to fix it,’” she says.

Gillibrand didn’t need any prodding. “Most women have to be asked to run,” the freshman senator says. “I knew that I didn’t just have to ask [for the opportunity] but also to have a plan to win.” Gillibrand says she knew as an elementary school student (I rechecked my notes) that she wanted to be in public life; watching her grandmother coordinate an army of female campaign volunteers in Albany had inspired her. Shortly out of law school, Gillibrand attempted to land a job in the U.S. Attorney’s office, long a breeding ground for politicos. She was rejected, so instead she combined 80-hour weeks at her firm with fundraising and volunteering for New York Democratic candidates.

That path—mixing a well-paying private sector job with powerhouse behind-the-scenes activism—is a typical combination, says Susan Platt, founder of the Farm Team, an organization that promotes female participation in Virginia politics. But mostly, it’s men, not women, who do it. “Men have traditionally held the higher paying jobs,” Platt explains. “And that means they have the money to write the big checks, and they know other people who can, too.”