are women more liberal than men in the u. s. congress?

Are Women More Liberal than Men in the U. S. Congress?Author(s): Susan WelchSource: Legislative Studies Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Feb., 1985), pp. 125-134Published by: Comparative Legislative Research CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/440119 .

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SUSAN WELCH University of Nebraska

Are Women More Liberal Than Men In the U.S. Congress?

While researchers have been aware of a "gender gap" among the public, the existence of a gender gap among policy makers has been little explored. This analysis examines liberal voting patterns in the House of Representatives during four congresses for differences between voting of male and female members. Women do consistently vote in a more liberal direction than men, but the differences have decreased over time and are negligible among Norther Democrats. Several reasons for the changing voting patterns of women are discussed.

Does it make a difference whether women or men are elected to office? Some would argue that it is important to have women in office just to have greater descriptive representation: to reflect in elective bodies the fact that women are more than a majority of the population. Others assert that female representation will make a substantive difference in policy outcomes. In recent years, women have been more liberal than men, and women policy makers often show special sensitivity to women's issues. However, we really have little evidence about whether the behavior of men and women policy makers does differ over a range of issues. In this essay we will examine the extent of these differences in one group of policy makers, members of the House of Representatives.

The Behavior of Women Policy Makers: Past Research and Present Expectations

Previous Studies of the Behavior of Women Public Officials

Although much research has been done on the recruitment, personal characteristics, and attitudes of women public officials, previous work on their behavior is quite limited. There have been many more investigations of gender differences in mass political behavior. These have shown that men's and women's attitudes toward the political system and their patterns of political participation are converging in most respects (Welch, 1977; Baxter and Lansing, 1980) at the same time that policy opinion differences

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, X, 1, February 1985 125



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are increasing (Baxter and Lansing, 1980). Whether the greater liberalism of the "woman in the street" compared to the "man in the street" is reflected in public officials is the question at issue here.

Two studies of female judges are partially contradictory. Kritzer and Uhlman (1977) concluded that female and male judges are similar in their behavior; Gruhl, Spohn, and Welch (1981) found that while male and female judges do not differ in their treatment of male defendants, women judges treated women defendants less paternalistically than did male judges, thus treating males and females more equally.

The two studies of gender differences in congressional behavior examined different aspects of voting. Gehlen (1977) examined party unity, bipartisan support, and presidential support in the 91st Congress (1969-1970) and found almost no differences in the voting behavior of male and female members. Leader (1977) analyzed voting in the 92d to 94th Congresses (1971-1974) and found that women were somewhat more liberal than men. ADA and feminist ratings were used to show that these gender differences obtained among Southern Democrats and Republicans but not among Nor- thern Democrats.

We believe further examinations of gender differences in congressional voting are in order for several reasons. The two previous studies dealt with only one or two congresses and focused on different kinds of behavior. A longitudinal study examining the same dimensions of voting in several congresses would allow us to see whether previous results are anomolous and whether there have been temporal changes in the voting patterns of men and women.

Expectations

We will examine liberalism in congressional voting. While we believe that other aspects of a voting record are also important, the overall direction of policy stance seems crucial in evaluating whether women behave differently from men when elected to office. Differences in background, recruitment, and attitudes between the sexes are interesting and important, but ultimately we want to ask the "so what" question: are policy directions likely to be different as more women are elected to office?

Based on a variety of previous research, we expect that women will indeed be more liberal in their voting, for three reasons.

First, female members of the House may be elected dispropor- tionately from more liberal constituencies (Darcy and Schramm, 1977; Welch, et al., 1982). For example, women candidates for both Congress and state legislatures are more likely to be elected from urban than from rural

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areas. This may predispose them to be more liberal, especially on domestic issues. If so, female liberalism could be an artifact of constituency characteristics, not of sex per se.

Second, women in general have been found to be somewhat more liberal than men on various issues, including legalization of marijuana, amnesty for Vietnam deserters, capital punishment, gun control, school busing, and foreign policy (Cook, 1979; Diamond, 1977; Erikson and Luttbeg, 1973; Lee, 1976; Baxter and Lansing, 1980). Recently this gender gap has widened as women give more liberal responses on a variety of issues. Women are also more likely to favor Democrats over Republicans.

This greater liberalism is found on both domestic and foreign policy issues, perhaps for different reasons. Women may identify with the "underdog" to a somewhat greater extent than men. Because they are in a minority position, they may have more "liberal" sentiments on domestic social-welfare issues. Women are thought to be more "dovish" or liberal on foreign policy because of a concern for children and family. Further, what might be crudely called "macho-posturing" seems less necessary for women and less appealing to them. Using armed force and spending for the military may not have the same appeal for women as men. For example, in the MX debate, one male MX opponent derided those voting in favor of MX as believing "real men don't control weapons, they build them." To whatever extent this kind of attitude is important for some males, it seems less important for women.

Third, women may feel freer to swim against the tide because, owing to their minority status, they are not playing the careerist game to the same extent as men.1 How many female members of the House, for example, are voting with an eye toward positioning themselves for a try for the presidency or even the governorship or Senate? How many women members seriously believe they have a chance to be party leaders in Congress? Our answer is "relatively few." Of course, women, like men, are concerned with reelection, but few seem to have realistic hopes of higher office. This lack of opportunity can be a liberating experience, enabling one to venture outside mainstream positions. In the 1970s, the mainstream was reasonably conservative and women more liberal, but presumably women could be unorthodox to the right in more liberal times.

Each of these rationales lead us to slightly different expectations about trends in liberal voting. If voting by members of Congress simply follows public trends, we could expect that male and female voting in the House would diverge increasingly over the course of the 1970s, as did public attitudes. Women then seemed to become even more liberal than men were. If, however, the limitations on their political careers most influenced women's voting in Congress, then we might expect some slight convergence of male

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and female voting. The number of women members of the House has grown (from 15 in 1972 to 21 in 1982), though not substantially. Further, women have made substantial inroads at other levels of government, leading to a feeling, at least, that opportunities for women are improving. This greater opportunity, then, might be a pressure for greater conformity of female members to the more conservative male norms. If greater female liberalism stems from underlying feminine identification with the underdog and less macho beliefs about the use of force, then no short-run temporal changes would be expected. Finally, if greater female liberalism is simply a result of different party or constituency bases, then controlling for party and constituency should reveal no differences between men and women in their voting.

We explore these ideas using data on congressional voting from 1972 to 1980. Our study adds to previous work because it examines a number of congresses, uses a well-known measure of liberalism in voting, and employs multivariate analysis to assess the impact of sex, independent of party and constituency characteristics.

Data and Methods

The dependent variable in our analysis is the Congressional Quarterly's conservative coalition support score, adjusted for attendance.2 This measure, widely used by congressional scholars, is probably the best single measure of congressional conservatism. A lower score indicates greater liberalism; a higher score, conservatism. We examine this measure for members of the House of Representatives over a span of four congresses, 1972 to 1980.

Our major independent variable is, of course, sex. However, we examine and control for several constituency factors that influence voting: the proportion of the district's population residing in the center of the city, the percentage of Blacks in the district, the percentage of the non- Black population that is foreign born,3 the party of the representative, and the region (northern or southern state).

We explore the independent effect of sex using multiple regression. Differences between male and female representatives are analyzed with and without controls.

Findings

Table 1 shows male-female differences in conservative coalition support scores under a variety of conditions. In Column 1 we see the absolute difference between men and women in their overall conservative voting.

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TABLE 1 Effect of Sex

On Conservative Coalition Support Scores

Difference Members (female-male)a r

All -19.8 -.12 Democrats -16.7 -.12 Southern Democrats -20.8 -.14 Northern Democrats -8.0 -.10 Republicans -17.2 -.17 93d Congress -28.3 -.16 94th Congress -19.5 -.12 95th Congress -17.3 -.11 96th Congress -15.7 -.10

aA negative difference means that the average conservative coalition support score for males is higher than the average for females. All differences and correlations in this table are significant at the level of p < .05.

On a scale from 0 to 100, men vote about 20 points more conservatively, a difference which is both substantively and statistically significant. If we look at the breakdowns by party, we find that while differences among Republicans (17.2 points) and Democrats (16.7 points) are quite similar, it is among the Southern Democrats that gender differences are largest, over 20 points. Differences among Northern Democrats, averaging 8 points, are significant but less than the differences within other groups. Northern Democrats of both sexes tend to be quite liberal (male scores between 23 and 28 on the scale), leaving relatively little room for women to exceed men in their liberalism. The modest but statistically significant correlation coefficients in Column 2, ranging from .10 among Northern Democrats to .17 among Republicans, also reflect these differences.

Since there is a consistent, albeit small, relationship between a district's constituency characteristics and its likelihood of electing a woman, we need to control for these characteristics. If women are more likely to be elected from districts with more liberal constituencies, the findings of Table 1 could be an artifact of constituency bases, not of sex. Indeed, in Table 2, we see that several constituency characteristics are slightly related to the tendency of a district to elect a woman. Women are a little more likely to be elected from the North, from urban districts, and from districts with higher proportions of foreign-born and Blacks. However, the income of the district and the party loyalty of the member are unrelated to the sex of the representative.

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TABLE 2 Correlates of a Constituency's Characteristics

With Its Likelihood of Electing a Female Representativea

Congress Constituency Characteristic 93d 94th 95th 96th Al

Regionb .09e .05 .06 .08 .07e Partyc .06 .03 .01 .02 .03 Percentage Black .03 .08 .07 .04 .05e Percentage Central City .17e .14e .12e .12e .14e Percentage Low Income -.07 -.02 -.02 -.03 -.03 Percentage Foreign-Born .16e .15e .12e .13e .14e

al = female; 0 = male.

bl = North;0 = South.

C1 = Democrat; 0 = Republican. dPercentage foreign-born = percentage of non-Black population that is foreign born.

ep < .05

Over time, these relationships are quite constant. The generalizations that one can make from Table 2 are that women are only slightly more likely to be elected from one kind of district than from another but that these tendencies have remained very stable over time.

Some of these small associations are in accord with past research. Rule (1981) found that women were more likely to be elected to the 1974 Congress from urban districts. Diamond (1977), Welch, Ambrosius, Clark, and Darcy (1982), and King (1977) found increasing predispositions for women to be elected from urban state legislative districts.4 However, Rule found a positive relationship of the average income of males in the district, whereas we found no relationship with income.

When controls for these constituency characteristics are applied, voting differences between men and women decrease markedly (Table 3). Overall, the nearly 20 point difference becomes only 5, as indicated by the unstandardized regression coefficient. This difference is still significant, but the adjustment indicates that gender differences are in part a function of the kinds of constituencies that are likely to elect women. With controls, differences among Northern Democrats decrease significantly, to less than 2 points. Gender differences among Southern Democrats and Republicans are still marked, over 13 and 11 points respectively, but only the latter is significant.

Table 3 also shows the entire set of regression coefficients for all congresses and the three distinct party/region subcategories. It can be seen

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TABLE 3 Predictors of Conservative Coalition Support

Southern Northern Predictors All Democrats Democrats Republicans

Region -.36* -.19* Party -.56* Percent Foreign-Born -.29* -.34* -.41* -.43* Percent Black -.06* -.04 -.17* -.09* Percent Central City -.03* -.08 .01 -.03 Sex -.03* -.09 -.02 -.11*

R2 .68 .15 .25 .29

Number of Cases 1702 338 739 625

* significant at s < .05.

that, for all members of Congress, party, region and the proportion in the district of foreign born are the major predictors of the vote, with the sex of the representative and the racial and central city characteristics of the district playing a much smaller role. The variance explained in the total sample is .68, a proportion which falls greatly in the subsample equations where party (and in the case of the Democrats, region) are removed from consideration.

This analysis informs us that women in Congress do vote in a more liberal direction than men. These differences are substantial overall and especially so among Republicans and Southern Democrats. However, a significant portion of these differences is due to the differing constituency bases of men and women in Congress. That is, women are slightly more likely to represent constituencies which are Northern and urban and have higher proportions of Blacks and the foreign-born. Once these are controlled, gender differences are less substantial and are insignificant among Northern Democrats.

We have also seen that gender differences have decreased over time. In the 93d Congress, women scored 38 points lower on the conservative index than men; eight years later they scored only about 16 points lower. This latter difference was still significant. Controlling for other factors, the adjusted difference decreased slightly, from 6 to 2.6. An inspection of the coalition scores reveals that the gender difference appears to have decreased primarily because of the reduction in liberalism of female members. Female conservatism increased almost linearly from 28 to 41 over the four Congresses, while the scores of males stayed constant, hovering between 53 and 56.5

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Discussion

We have observed that in Congress women are moving in a somewhat more conservative direction at the same time that they are increasing in numbers; this observation conforms to the explanation, cited above, that women have been more liberal because their career opportunities have been more limited. As more women are elected to public office at higher and higher levels, not only will recruitment of a woman have a broader base but pressures for conformity will also increase. In fact, a preliminary examination of voting in the 97th Congress (1981-1982) shows that the gender gap decreased further, to around nine points. Women are still significantly less conservative than men, but the gap continues to narrow.

These findings also indicate that voting in Congress does not simply reflect the differences in opinion between men and women in general. The "gender gap" in voting in Congress decreased at a time when it increased in the general public. It is probably impossible to determine whether the gender gap is larger in Congress than in the public, since we are comparing very general attitudes of the public to specific behavior among members of Congress.

Finally, it is clear that a good deal of the "gender gap" in voting is due to the different constituency bases of men and women representatives. While differences in these bases are not striking, they are large enough to explain some of the differences between men and women in their liberal voting. It seems significant that after controlling for constituency characteristics, the gender gap remains in the two more conservative groups (Republicans and Southern Democrats) but disappears among Northern Democrats.

This essay has sketched broadly some trends in liberalism among male and female members of the House. Future research should extend these trend lines as well as examine more specific issues. As more women are elected to the House, more specific analyses can be done, for example, of Southern Democrats in the 96th Congress. Then, too, an extension of the trend line can help us determine how the gender gap changes in periods of greater societal liberalism and greater conservatism. For now, however, it appears that while the gender gap in congressional voting is not as large as it was, women members still vote in a slightly more liberal direction than do men.

Susan Welch is Professor of Political Science, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0328.

NOTES

The author would like to thank the University of Nebraska Foundation for its fimancial support of this project and John Hibbing and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments.

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1. For an interesting account of the problems and styles of representation among the 23 female members of Congress in 1983, see "Special Report on Women's Issues" in Current American Government, 1983.

2. These scores are altered by failure to vote, so we have undertaken the standard correction procedures (see Poole, 1981). Poole's finding that the adjusted conservative coalition support score correlates more strongly than any other with an overall conservative-liberal dimension makes the use of the adjusted measure especially attractive.

3. There is a negative correlation between the percentage foreign-born and the percentage Black. Districts with very high percentages of Blacks have very low percentages of foreign-born, because almost none of the foreign-born population is Black and vice versa. Thus, the percentage foreign-born is adjusted to indicate the percentage of the non-Black population born outside the U.S.

4. Earlier research had found a disproportionate number of women elected from rural districts (Werner, 1968; Kirkpatrick, 1974).

5. The conservative coalition support scores are interval, not ratio scores. Thus, a given score may not represent exactly the same thing over time, because the nature of the votes tabulated differs from year to year. Nevertheless, the comparisons of male-female scores are valid over time, and the trends of decreasing female liberalism are suggestive if not definitive.

REFERENCES

Barone, Michael and Grant Ujifusa. 1981. The Almanac of American Politics 1982. Washington, DC: Barone.

Baxter, Sandra and Marjorie Lansing. 1980. Women and Politics: The Invisible Majority. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Cook, Beverly B. 1979. "Sentencing Behavior of Federal Judges, Draft Cases-1972," University of Cincinnati Law Review 42:597-633.

Darcy, Robert and Sarah S. Schramm. 1977. "When Women Run Against Men," Public Opinion Quarterly 41:1-52.

Diamond, Irene. 1977. Sex Roles in the State House. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Erikson, Robert and Norman Luttbeg. 1973. American Public Opinion: Its Origins, Content and Impact. New York: Wiley.

Frankovic, Kathleen. 1977. "Sex and Voting in the U.S. House of Representatives: 1961-1975," American Politics Quarterly 5:315-330.

Gehlen, Frieda. 1977. "Women Members of Congress: A Distinctive Role," in Marianne Githens and Jewel Prestage, eds., A Portrait of Marginality. New York: McKay.

Gruhl, John, Cassia Spohn, and Susan Welch. 1981. "Women as Policy Makers," Amer- ican Journal of Political Science 25:309-3 22.

King, Elizabeth G. 1977. "Women in Iowa Legislative Politics," in Marianne Githens and Jewel L. Prestage, eds., A Portrait of Marginality: The Political Behavior of the American Woman. New York: McKay, pp. 284-303.

Kirkpatrick, Jeanne J. 1974. Political Woman. New York: Basic Books. Kritzer, Herbert M., and Thomas M. Uhlman. 1977. "Sisterhood in the Courtroom:

Sex of Judge and Defendant in Criminal Case Disposition," Social Science Journal 14 (April):77-88.

Leader, Sheilah. 1977. "The Policy Impact of Elected Women Officials," in Joseph Cooper and Louis Maisel, eds., The Impact of the Electoral Process. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, pp. 265-284.

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Lee, Marcia Manning. 1976. "Why Few Women Hold Public Office," Political Science Quarterly 91:297-314.

Poole, Keith. 1981. "Dimensions of Interest Group Evaluation of the U.S. Senate: 1969-1978," American Journal of Political Science 25:49-67.

Rule, Wilma. 1981. "Why Women Don't Run," Western Political Quarterly 34:60-77. "Special Report on Women's Issues." 1983. CurrentAmerican Government. Washington,

DC: Congressional Quarterly, pp. 76-77. Welch, Susan. 1977. "Women as Political Animals?" American Journal of Political

Science 21:711-730. Welch, Susan, Margery Ambrosius, Janet Clark, and Robert Darcy. 1982. "The Effect

of Candidate Gender on Electoral Outcomes: A Six State Analysis of State Legislative Candidates." Delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Denver, CO.

Werner, Emmy E. 1968. "Women in the State Legislatures," Western Political Quarterly 21:40-50.



are women more liberal than men in the u. s. congress?

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