Marginalization and Mobilization: The Roots of Female Legislators’ Collaborative Advantage in the States

Abstract

Scholars have argued that female legislators are more prone to collaborate than their male counterparts. Though collaboration may be more or less evident in particular situations, we seek to more clearly establish the mechanism behind women’s collaborative activity using the framework of marginalization. In this paper, we use cosponsorship data from 74 state legislative chambers from 2011–2014 to analyze collaborative patterns and mobilizing institutions. We find female legislators are more collaborative than men, and that their collaborative advantage strengthens in chambers where women are systematically excluded from leadership positions. The advantage also extends to bipartisan collaboration, but only in less polarized settings with women’s caucuses. Furthermore, our findings imply that as women are integrated into leadership collaboration will actually decline, especially within their own party. We believe these results are important for understanding both the roots of collaborative behavior among female legislators and consequences of chambers that marginalize women from leadership positions.

Distinctive Voices: Political Speech, Rhetoric, and the Substantive Representation of Women in European Parliaments

“…These countries are a good selection because, first, they include varying levels of descriptive representation by women in politics: within the OECD, Ireland has notoriously low levels of women in parliament (never above 20%), while Sweden is one of the Western countries closest to parity, currently at around 44% of women MPs. This variation is important as previous research has shown that women in parliament are more likely to cosponsor legislation with other women, specifically when there are few women elected (Barnes 2016; Holman, Mahoney, and Hurler 2022; Swift and VanderMolen 2021). Therefore, we would expect speeches to be more distinct in situations in which few women are in parliament.…”

The Second Sex in the Second District: The Policy Effects of Electing Women to County Government

“…Another context that may condition women’s capacity to impact policy outputs is the gender composition of the board. Evidence suggests that women excel at collaborative policymaking (Bratton and Rouse 2011; Swift and Vandermolen 2021). Women policymakers are also adept at utilizing networking opportunities to help them overcome gendered institutions and other biases (Holman and Mahoney 2018; Wojcik and Mullenax 2017; Holman, Mahoney and Hurler 2021).…”

Let’s Work Together: Bill Success via Women’s Cosponsorship in U.S. State Legislatures

“…Access to leadership positions in state legislatures is important because formal and informal powers allow leaders to influence the behavior of their colleagues in pursuit of their goals—whether that be to adopt a particular policy, achieve an institutional objective, or unite as a party (Swift and VanderMolen 2021). Among these powers are committee appointments, agenda setting, staff resources, and campaign resources (Jewell and Whicker 1994).…”

“…We argue that cosponsorship, which is generally associated with higher bill quality and increased bill success (Barnes 2016; Eatough, Preece, and Barber 2020; Gutmann and Thompson 2012; Kirkland 2011), represents a key measure of women’s collaboration with each other. Because of their exclusion from traditional forms of power in political bodies (Barnes 2016; Jenkins 2007; Senk 2020) and gendered socialization patterns (Schneider and Bos 2019), women legislators’ rate of collaboration is often higher than men’s rate of collaboration (Allen and Childs 2019; Barnes 2016; Bjarnegård 2013; Holman and Mahoney 2018; Swift and VanderMolen 2021). Gender norms incentivize women legislators to work collaboratively not only for bill success but to adhere to social expectations that pressure women to be good team players and share credit for accomplishments (Bauer, Yong, and Krupnikov 2017; Schneider and Bos 2019).…”