Explaining a Gendered Distribution of Legislative Power

• In Event: The Legislative Process in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

An incumbency advantage, seniority rules, and even open discrimination have been identified as potential causes for the relegation of female legislators to the sidelines during the policy-making process. This paper expands this line of work by considering how variations in institutional design affect the appointment of women to powerful committees. In chambers where committees have substantial gatekeeping authority, a position in an influential committee is more valuable than instances where gatekeeping powers are limited. We hypothesize that when committees are afforded strong gatekeeping power, female legislators are less likely to be appointed to prestigious committees than their male counterparts. We systematically test our conditional hypothesis using a novel data set that combines elite surveys containing information on committee appointments, political experience, and political party for legislators in seven Latin American democracies. Importantly, in our analysis, the value of committee appointments varies not only across countries in terms of the committee system design and gatekeeping powers, but also within countries because not all committees are equally likely to impact the policy agenda.

Authors

• Tiffany D. Barnes, University of Kentucky

• Constanza F. Schibber, Michigan State University