Gender and Legislative Leadership: The Impact of Chair Identity on Bill Advancement Out of Committee Open Access
Schocket, Sophie (Spring 2025)
Abstract
Within American legislatures, race and gender identities have been shown to play a role in how legislators navigate and access these spaces, including the types of bills they sponsor and the types of bills that ultimately become law. This study investigates patterns of bill advancement at the state legislature committee level, addressing the question of whether diversity in committee leadership impacts the likelihood of advancement out of committee for women's issue bills and bills sponsored by women. With a sample of 13 committees across three jurisdictions, the study tests three sets of hypotheses, first for women's issue bills, then bills sponsored by women, then women's issue bills sponsored by women. To ensure that the analysis captures the compounding effects of race and gender oppression, separate models examine each of these types of bills first along the single axis of gender of the committee chair, then through an intersectional lens of both race and gender. While the results do not indicate significant differences along the single axis of gender, the study does find that women's issue bills and bills regardless of topic sponsored by women of color were much more likely to advance from committees chaired by women of color compared to those chaired by white women. The strong connection between having a woman of color in the chair position and advancement rates for these bills shows that the increased institutional access afforded by the chair position can help to advance the interests of groups as a whole, depending on the group in question. Ultimately, the study reinforces the importance of intersectionality in research on gender and politics, as it suggests that institutional access white women are able to gain from having a white woman in a chair position does not extend to women of color when it comes to advancing their legislation out of committee.
Table of Contents
Introduction ……………………………………...……………………………………………… 1
Literature Review…………………...…………...……………………………………………….. 2
Theory and Hypotheses …………………………………………………………………………. 7
Data and Methods ………………………………..…………….…………………………….… 12
Findings ………………………………….…..…………………………………………….…… 20
Discussion and Conclusions………………………….………………………………...…..…… 29
Works Cited …………………………………………………………………..………………… 34
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Gender and Legislative Leadership: The Impact of Chair Identity on Bill Advancement Out of Committee () | 2025-04-08 22:24:46 -0400 |
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