Anti-abortion Policymaking and Women’s Representation

Abstract

To what extent and under what conditions do women in elective office lead the way on conservative women’s interests? The few existing studies find that, contrary to most research on women’s descriptive and substantive representation, legislative activity on conservative women’s issues in the United States is driven primarily by Republican men. This article takes a new look at the heart of conservative policymaking by analyzing the sponsorship of anti-abortion bills in twenty-one state houses, from 1997 to 2012. We find that conservative Republican women stand at the forefront of anti-abortion policy leadership in state legislatures. However, their distinctive leadership is highly constrained; it is most likely to emerge in policy contexts that use women-centered issue frames and within competitive partisan environments. These complex interactions between gender, ideology, issue framing, and partisanship call for new theories and concepts of women’s representation as not only gendered, but also deeply embedded in the strategic interplay of polarized, partisan politics.

COVID-19 and Abortion: Making Structural Violence Visible

“…Antiabortion rhetoric is intimately tied to anti-LGBTQI discourse, part of a broader antifeminist and antigender ideology. 73,74 These are also linked to conservative 75 and authoritarian regimes, 76 as witnessed in India 77 and Poland. 78 Recent reports detail funding flows from antiabortion conservative groups in the United States to far-right groups in Europe.…”

The Heterogeneous Impacts of the Ratification of CEDAW on the Adoption of Violence Against Women Laws

“…In addition, the influences of the two women-related variables, the percentage of women in parliaments, and women's participation in civil society organizations in country  , are parceled out. Some previous studies on gender and politics have argued that the improved women's descriptive representation in legislative branches tends to lead countries to adopt policies to protect women's rights (Betz, Fortunato, & O'BRIEN 2021;Reingold 2008;Reingold, Kreitzer, Osborn, & Swers 2021;Woo 2021), while other studies have emphasized the importance of women's civil society participation in policy changes for women (Hasunuma 2019;O'Hara & Clement 2018). Therefore, rather than disregarding this literature, this study controls the two women-related factors.…”

Electoral Incentives, Critical Actors, and the Substantive Representation of Women in Parliament

“…In light of the arguments made in the first and third paper, making claims about traditional gender roles could be a promising strategy for female MPs or candidates in very rural and conservative electoral districts to win additional votes from conservative (male) voters. Reingold et al (2020) take a first step in this direction and find that conservative Republican women in the US Congress are more likely to initiate and support anti-abortion policies in contexts of highly polarized and competitive partisan environments.…”

“…This perspective would largely exclude the action of MPs who promote socially conservative policies (e.g. anti-abortion policies), but nevertheless claim to act in the interests of women (Reingold et al 2020;Campbell and Childs 2015).…”

“…In particular, not all women are feminists who support the extension of women's rights and gender equality. More recently, scholars have begun to analyze the behavior of these conservative women more closely, and have started to examine why some female MPs promote rather traditional gender roles in their parliamentary activities (Celis and Childs 2012;Wineinger and Nugent 2020;Reingold et al 2020). In line with the finding that female MPs act as rational, vote-seeking actors, further studies should therefore examine the political and institutional conditions under which female politicians explicitly decide to represent anti-feminists standpoints.…”