The Jackie (and Jill) Robinson Effect: Why Do Congresswomen Outperform Congressmen?

Anzia, Sarah F.; Berry, Christopher R.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1013443

Cited by 93 publications

(145 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…1 Indeed in some early groundbreaking research, Thomas found that "women legislators [embraced] priorities dealing with issues of women, and children and the family, [while men did] not share this priority list" ( [30], p. 7). Additional research has observed that women are more likely to be supportive of legislation involving women's issues [31][32][33] as well as to serve on health and human services committees and to retain these positions as they rise in seniority rather than to migrate to committees on appropriations, finance or rules as men are inclined to do [7,8,10,30,34,35].…”

Section: Descriptive and Substantive Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influence of Women Legislators on State Health Care Spending for the Poor

Courtemanche

Green

2017

Social Sciences

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Abstract:In the realm of representational politics, research exploring the relationship between descriptive representation and substantive representation is conflicted with some scholars finding policy outcomes influenced by the presence of women in office and others displaying a complicated or null relationship. We enter the discussion by investigating the effect of increased representation of women across state legislatures on state health care spending for poor children, the disabled, and elders, issues which disproportionately affect women. Using a 50-state dataset spanning from 1999 to 2009 we find that spending is indeed more generous when the number of women representatives is substantial, regardless of party. This generosity, however, is conditional upon the presence of considerable aggregate need. The findings suggest that contextual factors must be considered when exploring the influence of women on policy outcomes.

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Section: Descriptive and Substantive Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influence of Women Legislators on State Health Care Spending for the Poor

Courtemanche

Green

2017

Social Sciences

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“…This gender gap in the incumbent effect is sizable: about 6-7 percentage points on an average unconditional female reelection probability of 56 percent. 9 7 In the legislative context, Anzia and Berry (2011) test for higher unobserved skills of Congresswomen by comparing how much they secure in Federal discretionary spending. 8 Gagliarducci and Paserman (2011) find that municipalities in Italy that are headed by female mayors have a higher probability of early termination of the legislature.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does gender matter for political leadership? The case of U.S. mayors

Ferreira

Gyourko

2014

Journal of Public Economics

224

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What are the consequences of electing a female leader for policy and political outcomes? We answer this question in the context of U.S. cities, where women's participation in mayoral elections increased from negligible numbers in 1970 to about one-third of the elections in the 2000's. A novel data set of U.S. mayoral elections from 1950 to 2005 was used, and a regression discontinuity design was employed to deal with the endogeneity of female candidacy to city characteristics. In contrast to most research on the influence of female leadership, we find no effect of gender of the mayor on policy outcomes related to the size of local government, the composition of municipal spending and employment, or crime rates. These results hold both in the short and the long run. While female mayors do not implement different policies, they do appear to have higher unobserved political skills, as they have at least a 5 percentage point higher incumbent effect than a comparable male. But we find no evidence of political spillovers: exogenously electing a female mayor does not change the long run political success of other female mayoral candidates in the same city or of female candidates in local congressional elections. ABSTRACTWhat are the consequences of electing a female leader for policy and political outcomes? We answer this question in the context of U.S. cities, where women's participation in mayoral elections increased from negligible numbers in 1970 to about one-third of the elections in the 2000's. We use a novel data set of U.S. mayoral elections from 1950 to 2005, and apply a regression discontinuity design to deal with the endogeneity of female candidacy to city characteristics. In contrast to most research on the influence of female leadership, we find no effect of gender of the mayor on policy outcomes related to the size of local government, the composition of municipal spending and employment, or crime rates. While female mayors do not implement different policies, they do appear to have higher unobserved political skills, as they have a 6-7 percentage point higher incumbent effect than a comparable male. But we find no evidence of political spillovers: exogenously electing a female mayor does not change the long run political success of other female mayoral candidates in the same city or of female candidates in local congressional elections.

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“…Empirically, Fulton takes the critical step of introducing a measure of candidate quality into models of vote share, thus addressing a potential source of omitted variable bias that emerges if the pool of female candidates is on average more electable than the pool of male candidates. Given that women may face a more trying route to the nomination (Lawless and Pearson, 2008;Anzia and Berry, 2011), it is sensible to expect such bias and indeed Fulton shows that once candidate quality is controlled for using her measure, a three percentage point gender penalty emerges. Without this control, no female disadvantage is statistically apparent.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating the gender penalty in House of Representative elections using a regression discontinuity design

Anastasopoulos

2016

Electoral Studies

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Available online xxx a b s t r a c tWhile the number of female candidates running for office in U.S. House of Representative elections has increased considerably since the 1980s, women continue to account for about only 20% of House members. Whether this gap in female representation can be explained by a gender penalty female candidates face as the result of discrimination on the part of voters or campaign donors remains uncertain. In this paper, I estimate the gender penalty in U.S. House of Representative general elections using a regression discontinuity design (RDD). Using this RDD, I am able to assess whether chance nomination of female candidates to run in the general election affected the amount of campaign funds raised, general election vote share and probability of victory in House elections between 1982 and 2012. I find no evidence of a gender penalty using these measures. These results suggest that the deficit of female representation in the House is more likely the result of barriers to entering politics as opposed to overt gender discrimination by voters and campaign donors.

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The Jackie (and Jill) Robinson Effect: Why Do Congresswomen Outperform Congressmen?

Cited by 93 publications

References 59 publications

The Influence of Women Legislators on State Health Care Spending for the Poor

The Influence of Women Legislators on State Health Care Spending for the Poor

Does gender matter for political leadership? The case of U.S. mayors

Estimating the gender penalty in House of Representative elections using a regression discontinuity design

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