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Cathy Wineinger is an assistant professor of political science at Western Washington University. She previously worked on Capitol Hill as a 2019-2020 American Political Science Association (APSA) Congressional Fellow and was a visiting scholar at the APSA Centennial Center in Washington, DC. Her first book, Gendering the GOP: Intraparty Politics and Republican Women’s Representation in Congress was published in 2022 by Oxford University Press.

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Cathy earned her PhD in political science at Rutgers University, where she was also a graduate research assistant at the Center for American Women and Politics and a seminar fellow at the Institute for Research on Women. She holds a BA in political science from the University of San Diego, where she was a  McNair Scholar  and played on the NCAA Division I softball team. 

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Cathy teaches courses in American  politics, with an emphasis on identity politics and political institutions. Her research has been supported by the New Perspectives in Studies of American Governance program, the Center for Effective Lawmaking, the William A. Steiger Fund for Legislative Studies, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, the APSA Fund for Latino Scholarship, and the Dirksen Congressional Center. She is also the recipient of the 2016 Carrie Chapman Catt Prize for Research on Women and Politics and the 2016 WPSA Betty Nesvold Women and Politics Best Paper Award. Her dissertation, on which her book is based, was selected as a co-winner of the 2020 Best Dissertation Award by APSA's Women, Gender, and Politics Research Section.

 

Originally from California, Cathy currently lives in Bellingham, WA with her husband, Dan; their daughter, Ellie; their dog, Molly; and their cat, Mittens. She is also a vegetarian, a yoga teacher, and a rookie roller derby jammer.