Simple Majority: The Consequences of a Legislative Majority for Women

• In Event: The Substantive Representation of Women

Abstract

Nevada’s 2019 legislative session was the first in America to feature a majority women. This presents a unique opportunity for scholars of gender and legislative politics. Political science has long identified how women contribute to male-dominated institutions, tending to promote traditionally-defined “women’s bills” (Barnello and Bratton 2007; Swers 1998; 2002 Volden, Wiseman, and Wittmer 2013; Gerrity, Mendez, and Osborn 2007), demonstrating greater legislative effectiveness (Anzia and Berry 2011, Gagliarducci and Paserman 2016, Volden, Wiseman, and Wittmer 2018; Sweet-Cushman forthcoming), and offering a more communal leadership style than their male colleagues (Cammisa and Reingold 2004, Schneider et al. 2016). We aim to leverage the Nevada legislature’s status as America’s first majority woman legislature to examine the consequences of majority status for our existing understanding of how women legislate. We draw on interviews of Nevada legislatures and a unique dataset of the full text of bills as they progressed (or didn’t) through the legislative process during the 2019 session. We pay special attention to the ways in which gender may have interacted with party, tenure, leadership status, and issue domain to impact legislative results.

Authors

• Rebecca D. Gill, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

• Jennie Sweet-Cushman, Chatham University

• Christopher Zorn, Pennsylvania State University