Gender Turnover and Roll Call Voting in the US Senate

2006

This paper presents a longitudinal quantitative analysis concerning the effects of partisanship on election outcomes in open-seat races for the United States House of Representatives from 1996-2004, placing an emphasis on gender by specifically analyzing Congressional races where females were running against male candidates. A discussion of the scholarly literature on women in American electoral politics includes female political representation at multiple levels of governance, state political culture within the two party system, women's political engagement as compared to men's, political identity, social and psychological barriers to entering electoral politics that are unique to women, the candidate "eligibility pool", the differences between women's and nen's legislative agenda, professionalism identity and the form of the electoral system. The quantitative methodology is outlined, followed by a series of statistical regression analysis and a discussion of emergent findings. The study suggests that republican females are more competitive against men of the opposing party than Democratic women, but they are nominated less frequently and their success rates are not nearly as high as the Republican male. The Republican woman seems to be at the greatest disadvantage, because Republican males are the most competitive candidate to challenge a Democratic male or a Democratic female. Amongst Democrats, the Democratic female is advantaged because she out-competes Republican females in same-sex races, especially is she outspends her opponent. Additionally, the Democratic female is receiving her party’s nomination more frequently.

Norteamérica, 2020

In 2019, a historical record number of women shaped the U.S. Congress. In addition to the increase in female participation, there is also a wider ethnic, racial, cultural and class diversity among these congress members. In this political universe, two highly contrasting profiles stand out: on the one hand, the women of the establishment led by Nancy Pelosi; on the other, the challenging "Squad" headed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Based on an analysis of social networks , press coverage, and legislative performance, in this investigation both styles of political representation are contrasted. The main result of this research is that in relation to the patterns of proposing laws, voting and fundraising there are no differences between the "Squad" and the women of the establishment. The main divergences reside in their public discourse, in the ideological platform to which they ascribe and in the style of leadership they exercise.

2000

2010

Abstract Women are greatly underrepresented in elected office. A large literature on the subject has considerably advanced our understanding of this phenomenon, but many questions remain unanswered. Using original aggregate and individual-level data, the authors explore the interplay of candidate gender, partisanship, incumbency, and campaign spending in a multimember preferential voting system. This setting allows unparalleled exploration of the heterogeneous nature of voter decision making.

Southeastern Political Review, 1996

Previous studies of the impact of gender upon legislatures have shown conflictingfindings regarding the backgrounds, quali3cations and types of men and women serving as legislators. Women appear to have narrowed the gap in terms of some of these background variables but still face significant obstacles. This study examines the impact of major institutional factors upon the roles of men and women. Survey and interview methodology compare two important aspects of institutionalization: The U.S. type legislature is compared with a major parliamentary system (Australia), and professionalized legislators are compared with the non-professionalized. The study finds that women have achieved parity with men in regard to education and employment history, regardless of the type of system. However, there are significant differences in incumbency, with women being relatively recent entrants into the Australian system. Moreover; women in Australian parliaments encounter more problems regarding child-care and marital responsibilities than their U.S. counterparts.

2010

Objective. This study examines whether women's electoral fortunes in Australia have improved in line with changing social norms over the past century. We use new strategies to explore whether female candidates face discrimination by the voting public, or by political parties' preselection systems. Methods. Using data from all elections to the House of Representatives between 1903 and 2004, we examine the relationship between candidates' gender and their share of the vote.

According to the Center for American Women and Politics, 1,749 women are serving in state legislatures in 2012, making up 23.7% of legislators across the country. The impact of women in elected office has received much scholarly attention with analysis of the different priorities and legislative styles of women, but little research exists on the effects of women's caucuses in the 50 states. My dissertation identifies opportunity structures and legislator motivations that facilitate the creation of women's legislative caucuses. The project employs case studies to test hypotheses about caucus creation, original quantitative and qualitative research on the existence of women's caucuses throughout the states, and a quantitative analysis of key variables and their relationships with women's caucuses. I argue that women's gendered identity influences the goals and structures of their organizing efforts within gendered political institutions. Beyond the traditional purp...

The paper investigates how parliamentary efforts to represent the interests of female electorates influence the legislators' re-election chances. Taiwan is chosen as the case study and, for empirical analysis, I utilise an original bill co-sponsorship dataset that consists of roughly 400,000 cosponsors for all bills submitted between 1992 and 2016. The findings, based on regression analyses, show that making more legislative effort on women's issuesby prioritising them over other issuesresults in electoral losses, and this negative effect is more pronounced among female legislators. The paper contributes to the gender politics literature by theorising and testing a hitherto underexplored relationship between two representational processes: how the substantive representation women by female legislators affects their descriptive representation. It also contributes to legislative and electoral studies by demonstrating that legislators' policy-vote trade-offs are policysensitive and gendered, thus calling for a more nuanced approach to be taken in future research.

Public Opinion Quarterly, 1985

THE EMERGENCE both of a gender gap in the last two elections and of the National Organization for Women as a potent political force has led to increased pressure on both the Democrats and Republicans to run women for major elective office. Indeed, as the nomination of Geraldine Ferraro attests, both major parties are discussing various strategies, including nominating women, to secure the votes of women. Despite this, there is relatively little empirical research which documents (1) the relationship between the voting behavior of men and women and the gender of political candidates, and (2) more generally, the performance of women as office-seekers. We attempt to begin to rectify this situation by focusing specifically on these two matters. Our results will have important implications both for partisan strategies to deal with the gender gap and for the efficacy of women running for political office. Previous Literature During the last decade, the considerable attention focused on women and politics can be grouped into three broad areas: (1) how public Abstract This paper analyzes voting in five 1982 elections in which women ran as major party candidates for high-level offices: Governor in Vermont and Iowa; and U.S. Senator in Missouri, New York, and New Jersey. Results indicate that the sex of the candidate generally has little impact on voting and that solid women candidates can attract cross-over votes, while weaker ones can lose them. The implications of these results are discussed in the concluding section.

2021

This thesis examines differences in productivity levels from members of the 93rd to 115th United States House of Representatives with respect to majority-party status and gender. Using data from the Center of Effective Lawmaking, the study conducts a basic regression model using productivity as a function of whether or not the individual is a majority party member and their gender. Although the traditional measure of legislator success is legislative effectiveness, these measures take into account institutional differences. Productivity is measured by the amount of bills an individual legislator introduces and is dependent on the individual, not institutional approval that favors male legislators. Consistent with expectations, the regression models find strong patterns that majority-party status is, on average, predictive of productivity. However, within majority-party membership, there is no different in productivity between gender. These results could set a new standard for how we...