Cross-posted at Everyday Politics Blog – a student textbook blog.
When I was in college, I signed up for an internship
to work in the office of the Mayor of Binghamton, New York. My job was
to answer mail from the constituency who complained about potholes in
the streets or the drunks who poured out of local bars and puked on
their front lawns. The mayor took these letters very seriously, so I
put a lot of time into writing sensible and caring responses.
It
was a fascinating experience. I learned that politicians must be
concerned with keeping their constituency happy, and since then I've
never hesitated to write an e-mail to my representative when I disagree
with his voting record. These sorts of hands-on experiences are an
excellent way to gain insight into politics that can't be gained from a
textbook. I hope that you take advantage of such opportunities at your
school.
As part of the internship, I had to discuss certain
assigned readings with a professor and complete a research paper. My
paper was on the governing style of women, since the mayor was a woman.
At that time, there were very few women in government, so the paper
consisted of mostly case studies and theoretical work. Twenty years
later, I'm still pleased that I received an A for that paper.
Since then, more women have leadership positions in government. We have Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, Hilary Clinton, Secretary of State, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotormayor on the Supreme Court. There are 17 women in the Senate and and 75 women in the House of Representatives.
While
women still do not comprise 50 percent of Congress, their numbers have
increased substantially enabling researchers to gain further insight
into their governing style. Recent research finds that women
congressional leaders are more likely to sponsor pork-barrel legislation than male congressional leaders. The authors conclude:
We find that congresswomen secure roughly 9 percent more spending from
federal discretionary programs than congressmen. This amounts to a
premium of about $49 million per year for districts that send a woman
to Capitol Hill. Finally, we find that women’s superiority in securing
particularistic benefits does not hurt their performance in
policymaking: women also sponsor more bills and obtain more
cosponsorship support for their legislative initiatives than their male
colleagues.
Pork-barrel
legislation are laws that contain a benefit that goes directly to one
location. It might mean funding to build a bridge in a community or to
support a local army base. The people in the community like it, because
it provides jobs for locals. Congressional leaders like to pass these
bills, because they can go back home and tell the people who vote for
them, their constituency, that they took care of them. Their tax money
is going to benefit them and not somebody thousands of miles away.
So, why are women more likely to sponsor pork-barrel legislation? Other research may provide the answer.
One of the authors that I read for that internship so many years ago was David Mayhew. Mayhew
argues that all congressmen engage in three activities:
credit-claiming, advertising, and position-taking. (My undergraduate
mnemonic device for memorizing those activities was CAP.) These
activities are necessary to get reelected.
Some speculate that
women have to work harder than men to get re-elected and therefore have
to spend more time taking credit for sponsoring legislation with their
constituency. They can tell their constituency that they were
responsible for that bridge, which they use every day and was built by
contractors in the community. Men have to take credit for legislation
also, but they just don't have to do it as much as women do.
Is
this a positive development? Many people believe that pork-barrel
legislation is not the best use of government money. On the other hand,
people reward congressional leaders that sponsor this legislation by
re-electing them. People like pork-barrel legislation when it means
benefits for themselves; they just don't like it when other people get
it.
Do you believe that women have a different leadership style than
men? Is it important to increase the number of women in Congress? Will
women change their governing style if they don't have to work so hard
to be re-elected and if there is a larger group of women in Congress?
Apt. 11d 
The theory in the article — a “Jackie Robinson Effect” in order for a woman to win she has to be a lot better than a man due to prejudice against women — strikes me as very unpersuasive. It is impossible to tell during an election which candidate will be better or worse on delivering pork, both because these are not observable or debated traits, and also because it is largely dependent upon committee assignments. I will not deny there may be a “Jackie Robinson Effect” of some sort, but “ability to get pork” seems like an unlikely way for it to be expressed — the re-election rate is so high for everyone that the “JRE” would be expressed in the initial election, not subsequent ones with a female incumbent.
My theory is the male-led parties both wanting to be considered the “Party For Women” (you know — to court those gender-biased female voters who pushed Hillary Clinton, and then Sarah Palin, to the White House.) Helping female Congresspeople is one way to make their male-dominated parties look more woman-friendly.
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Couldn’t it just have to do with the general “incumbent-with-ass-parked-on-the-throne” set-up of today’s Congress? Women, mostly lacking in seniority, would be more likely to be in the few competitive seats that remain. Being too junior to sponsor “Free ponies for all” legislation, they get to do more pork.
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If you know Mayhew, let him know he is free to borrow the acronym ‘IWAPOTT’ if he needs a title for his next book.
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IMHO this whole business with women having a different leadership style is fading with the passage of time. As a society, we accept certain kinds of behaviors more/less readily from men vs. women, but this is a total moving target. Just as many people under 40 could care less about sexual orientation, so it’s also true that many younger people accept women in leadership much more readily. Depending on the environment there’s less need for female leaders to soft-pedal all their decisions or spend lots of time providing free therapy to colleagues. (Where female power intersects with motherhood is a much different story, but that wasn’t Laura’s question.)
So I’m not sold on the “women’s style of leadership” thing. When comparing pork barrel projects, I’d be more interested in seeing how women legislators compare to male legislators of an equivalent level of seniority. I betcha both groups are indulging in pork barrel when they’re just starting out, and still need to exploit any potential advantage.
BTW I do believe in the Jackie Robinson Effect, but am not convinced that it translates into a specific style of leadership.
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There’s an NYT article on the maleness of Obama’s White House.
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2009/10/obamas-white-house-boys-club.html
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