Are Women Legislators Less Effective? Evidence from the U.S. House in the 103rd-105th Congress

Abstract

Vega and Firestone 1995). But little attention has been paid to the most simple of questions: Are women as effective as men when it comes to legislating? 1 We attempt to answer that question.The work undertaken on women in legislatures implies two competing hypotheses. The first is that female lawmakers are not as effective as their male counterparts. This hypothesis is based primarily upon the fundamental notion that women members of Congress are different. As we noted above, research has revealed women "to be a continuing liberal influence in Congress" (Burrell 1994: 158), repeatedly voting and taking positions to the left of men and, hence, median legislators. There is also evidence that women have d i ff e rent leadership styles (Jewell and Whicker 1994;Rosenthal 1998) and make sense of issues (Kathlene 1995) differently. As former Representative Barbara Jordan put it in 1991, "Women have a capacity for understanding and compassion which a man structurally does not have" (Witt, Paget, and Matthews 1994: 266). Kathlene (1995), in an analysis of the Colorado state legislature, finds that women legislators conceptualize problems differently than do their male colleagues, something that results in unique policy prescriptions. In a similar vein, Dodson and Carroll (1991) argue that women are more likely than men to bring citizens into the policy process-they want to open the system up to public scrutiny and grant access to groups that represent marginalized segments of society. Research has suggested that these gender differences are socially-constructed (Gilligan 1982). 2 If legislatures are gendered institutions, as, for example, Kenney (1996), Rosenthal (1998) and Thomas (1997) argue, women lawmakers will be ineffectual because their unique skills are not particularly well-suited to their environment. An institution created by men will reward individuals who possess quintessentially "male" qualities such as competitiveness and individualism. These "skills" are very different from the female approach to lawmaking which, the literature has argued, is more integrative, collaborative, and consensual (Rosenthal 1998; Kathlene 1995). A We compare the ability of female and male members of the House of Representatives to turn policy preferences into law-something we label "legislative effectiveness." The existing literature on women in American legislatures is opaque, with some scholars suggesting women are less effective than their male colleagues and others arguing they are just as effective. Utilizing data from the 103rd-105th Congresses-specifically, data on bill and amendment sponsorship and Stein and Bickers' data on the distribution of federal domestic spending-we argue women House members are not demonstrably less effective than their male counterparts. Legislative effectiveness is the product of seniority, preferences, and membership in important House institutions. NOTE: We would like to thank Janet Box-Steffensmeier for sharing "hitrate" data with us, and we would like to thank Noelle Norton for her c...

Women's authority in political decision-making groups

“…Consistent with these hypotheses, Volden et al (2013) find that women are more successful than men at pushing bills they sponsor through the process when they are in the minority party, but comparatively less successful when their party holds the majority. Jeydel and Taylor's (2003) study of the 103rd through 105th Congresses uncovers a similar pattern. Both of these studies highlight the importance of attending to the larger decision-making context when trying to understand women's authority and influence.…”

When Are Women More Effective Lawmakers Than Men?

“…To make this argument more concrete, we limit our study to the institution of majority and minority parties in Congress and to one purported behavioral difference between men and women in legislatures: their tendency to engage in consensus building and collaboration. 1 In motivating our analysis, we draw upon a substantial literature showing significant differences between the political approaches employed by male and female lawmakers, with women being more collaborative and consensual, and men being more individualistic and competitive (e.g., Duerst-Lahti 2002a;Jeydel and Taylor 2003;Rinehart 1991;Rosenthal 1998;Thomas 1994). 2 For ex-1 In so doing, we wish neither to suggest parties as the only relevant differentiating institution nor to argue that the scope of collaborative effort is the most important gender difference.…”

“…, and some equally effective (e.g., Jeydel and Taylor 2003), both within Congress and across U.S. state legislatures (e.g., Bratton and Haynie 1999;Saint-Germain 1989). We argue that such conflicting evidence can be resolved by uniting two disparate literatures on legislative politics.…”

Gender and vote revelation strategy in the United States Congress

“…These differences are both statistically significant (p-values 0.02 and 0.01, respectively) and substantively large, suggesting there are appreciable differences in strategies. 5 Previous researchers have noted that once other explanations are accounted for such as party, ideology, and constituency characteristics, the impact of being a female no longer remains significant for voting decisions on women's issues or for getting an authored bill through Congress (Jeydel & Taylor, 2003;Swers, 1998). It could be that some other explanation better accounts for differences in the Senate, or that the relationship I find in the House is spurious and some other observable characteristic of women better explains the tendency to reveal more votes.…”