Are Women Less Effective at Passing Bills? Exploring the Direct and
Indirect Effects of Gender
Under Review
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Are women as effective as men in gaining approval for their legislation? What are the institutional pathways through which gender affects bill approval? I argue that gender does not have a direct effect on a legislator’s ability to gain legislative approval. Instead, women are marginalized in their access to influential institutional positions which may have consequences for bill approval. I examine these relationships between gender, institutional positions, and bill approval using a novel non-parametric application of causal mediation analysis and random forests on bill data from the Argentine Chamber of Deputies. I do not find a direct effect of gender on bill approval or strong evidence of an indirect effect through the institutional pathways measured. This paper makes important methodological and substantive contributions to understanding the direct and indirect relationships between gender and legislative outcomes.
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Institutional Security and Women’s Representation in Argentina
with Leslie Schwindt-Bayer
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A long standing assumption in the literature on women’s representation is that, once in positions of institutional power, descriptive representatives will legislate on behalf of their group’s substantive interests. While the literature finds support for the notion that female representatives will prioritize women’s substantive interests in their legislative behavior, considerable variation across women within countries exists. In this paper, we explore one factor that may explain why some women place greater emphasis on women’s issues than others. Specifically, we examine how variation in a female legislator’s sense of future institutional security—measured by her tenure in the legislature and her margin of victory in the previous election—might condition her likelihood of legislating on women’s substantive interests. We argue that female legislators with more institutional security should be more likely to deviate from the party platform and act individually on behalf of women’s substantive interests, whereas female legislators with less secure electoral futures will adhere to the party platform to bolster their chances of reelection, even to the detriment of legislating on women’s substantive interests. We test this using data on bills initiated by female legislators in Argentina from 1983-2007. The findings should help us understand better why some women are more likely to focus on women’s substantive interests in political office than others, a question often overlooked in existing studies of women’s representation.
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Women’s Representation in Latin America: A Review Essay
with Leslie Schwindt-Bayer
Under Review
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This essay reviews five contemporary works on gender representation in Latin America. In the context of the increasing number of women entering arenas of representation in Latin America, this essay reviews the new questions that these works bring to light regarding women's representation in Latin America: What explains the increase in women's representation? What effects have these trends had on policymaking in Latin America? The literature reviewed provides new insights into our understanding of women's representation in Latin America by moving beyond the current literature to answer these questions. This essay demonstrates how these five works contribute to our understanding of women's representation in Latin America and move this field of research forward.
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The Odd Couple: Vote Seeking Behavior
in Closed-List Proportional Representation System
with Agustín Vallejo
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What explains variation in personal vote-seeking behavior in closed-list proportional representation systems? We argue that legislators in smaller districts will benefit from name recognition and cultivating a personal reputation with voters by targeting legislation towards their electoral districts as well as traveling back to their electoral districts to conduct constituency service. For legislators in larger districts, we argue that personal reputation is less important for their electoral success and we should see less personal vote-seeking behavior from these legislators. We investigate these relationships using data on bills introduced in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies as well as travel expenditures legislators use to return to their electoral districts. Argentina employs a closed-list proportional representation system, providing an optimal case study to investigate these questions.
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