Under the Microscope: Gender and Accountability in the US Congress

Abstract

We study how officeholder gender affects issue accountability and examine whether constituents evaluate women and men legislators differently on the basis of their policy records. Data from 2008 through 2018 show that constituents’ approval ratings and vote choices in US House elections are more responsive to the policy records of women legislators than of men legislators. These patterns are concentrated among politically aware constituents, but we find no evidence that the results are driven disproportionately by either women or men constituents or by issues that are gendered in stereotypical ways. Additional analyses suggest that while constituents penalize women and men legislators at similar rates for policy incongruence, women legislators are rewarded more than men as they are increasingly aligned with their constituents. Our results show that accountability standards are applied differently across legislator gender and suggest a link between the quality of policy representation and the gender composition of American legislatures.

Making Issues Matter: Local Media and Policy-Based Evaluations of Politicians

“…Second, we consider major roll calls which touch on high profile votes on the Affordable Care Act or the Iraq War. Such topics may be salient enough that people resist the tendency to adopt the positions of their representatives and instead use these issues as a means with which to evaluate the politicians that represent them (Kaslovsky and Rogowski 2022, Ansolabehere and Kuriwaki 2022, Mummolo et al 2021. Third, our study does not consider presidential elections, the focus of much previous work that finds people are willing to abandon their own positions for those of their preferred candidate (Lenz 2012, Barber andPope 2019).…”

Explaining Citizen Hostility against Women Political Leaders: A Survey Experiment in the United States and Sweden

“…The emphasis on women politicians' roles as nurturers implies that they should welcome citizens' complaints. Expectations on women's nurturing and caring traits and representation styles possibly explain citizens' propensity to direct more issue requests to women representatives than men (Butler, Naurin, and Öhberg 2022) and the higher standard of substantive representation to which women representatives are held (Kaslovsky and Rogowski 2021). 5 Women's stereotypically nurturing leadership style leads citizens to expect a distinct form of representation from women politicians: one that emphasizes citizens' inclusion in decision-making and care for citizens' perspectives.…”

Gendered Self-Promotion: Differences in How Voters Evaluate Women and Men Who Highlight Their Legislative Accomplishments

“…It is thought that women’s higher rates of productivity are motivated, in part, by the need to overcome gender-based biases believed to exist in the electorate (Anzia and Berry 2011), prevent re-election challengers (Branton et al 2018), and stave off a sense of “gendered vulnerability” (Lazarus and Steigerwalt 2018). Women’s high levels of legislative productivity get an electoral boost from voters as long as there is a high level of policy congruence between the legislator’s votes and the preferences of the voters in their district (Kaslovsky and Rogoswki 2022). Research suggests that women frequently disseminate messages about their accomplishments (Fridkin and Kenney 2015; Dolan and Kropf 2004; Lazarus and Steigerwalt 2018), but this research does not test voter responses to such messages.…”