Legislative Diversity and the Rise of Women Lobbyists

• Author: James M. Strickland,Katelyn E. Stauffer
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211009305
• Published date: 01 September 2022
• Date: 01 September 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211009305

Political Research Quarterly

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129211009305

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Over the past several decades, women’s roles as political

lobbyists have changed considerably. Women now hold a

greater percentage of positions, represent more clients,

and represent major interests. Today, women hold 37 per-

cent of federal lobbying positions (LaPira, Marchetti, and

Thomas 2020). Roughly 29 percent of state lobbyists are

women according to the most recent figures, from 2005

(Lucas and Hyde 2012). Although this represents

improvement over women’s representation in decades

past, lobbying—like many areas of politics—continues to

be a male-dominated arena. The enduring dearth of

women lobbyists leads to questions about when and why

women are included (or excluded) from lobbying.

Existing work offers insights into how women lobby and

the role gender plays in structuring workplace environ-

ments, tactics, and the types of clients represented (e.g.,

Lucas and Hyde 2012; Nownes and Freeman 1998;

Schlozman 1990). Equally important questions, however,

are when, how, and why women are able to become lob-

byists. Here, the literature has been less clear, and we

have little understanding of the institutional factors con-

tributing to women’s emergence as lobbyists. To answer

this question, we examine the changing dynamics of

women’s representation across the American states.

Research on women legislators has frequently used a

supply-and-demand framework to explain temporal and

geographic variation in women’s representation (e.g.,

Inglehart and Norris 2003). A similar framework can be

applied to women lobbyists. Here, supply-side factors are

those that shape the pool of potential lobbyists: ability,

resources, and desire to acquire a position. Existing

explanations of women’s gains as lobbyists largely

address supply-side factors and tend to be functional (i.e.,

women lobbyists now represent more clients and earn

more money because they have gained more years of

experience on average) or context-based (i.e., women

have made gains due to changes in social norms and gen-

dered attitudes). In both cases, these theories explain why

the pool of potential women lobbyists has increased, with

the implicit assumption being a larger pool ultimately

results in more women in these positions. Conversely,

demand-side factors refer to the desire to see women in

political roles and the institutional factors that facilitate

women’s inclusion in (or exclusion from) these positions.

For lobbying, demand-side factors can be thought of as

the perceived incentives of interest groups to hire women.

Understanding these factors is critical to understanding

women’s emergence as lobbyists because groups exercise

a large degree of control over who gets to hold these

1009305PRQXXX10.1177/10659129211009305Political Research QuarterlyStrickland and Stauer

research-article2021

1Arizona State University, Tempe, USA

2University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA

Corresponding Author:

James M. Strickland, School of Politics and Global Studies, Arizona

State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA.

Email: James.strickland@asu.edu

Legislative Diversity and

the Rise of Women Lobbyists

James M. Strickland1 and Katelyn E. Stauffer2

Abstract

Despite a growing body of literature examining the consequences of women’s inclusion among lobbyists, our

understanding of the factors that lead to women’s initial emergence in the profession is limited. In this study, we

propose that gender diversity among legislative targets incentivizes organized interests to hire women lobbyists,

and thus helps to explain when and how women emerge as lobbyists. Using a comprehensive data set of registered

lobbyist–client pairings from all American states in 1989 and 2011, we find that legislative diversity influences not

only the number of lobby contracts held by women but also the number of former women legislators who become

revolving-door lobbyists. This second finding further supports the argument that interests capitalize on the personal

characteristics of lobbyists, specifically by hiring women to work in more diverse legislatures. Our findings have

implications for women and politics, lobbying, and voice and political equality in the United States.

Keywords

lobbying, women, state politics, legislatures

2022, Vol. 75(3) 531–546

Article

532 Political Research Quarterly 75(3)

positions. Individuals do not simply decide to become

lobbyists; they must be authorized or hired to represent an

interest.

We address these demand-side factors and theorize

that interest groups are motivated to hire lobbyists who

share the descriptive characteristics of their legislative

targets, under the assumption that descriptively similar

lobbyists will have an easier time achieving access among

legislators “like them.” Changes in the gender composi-

tion of legislatures should increase the “demand” for

women lobbyists, thereby increasing the number of

women lobbyists and their clients. We note our research

examines how institutional demand shapes women’s

emergence only; we do not make claims about why cer-

tain women decide to pursue a career in lobbying. Gray

and Lowery (1996) and Leech et al. (2005) find that

demand for lobbyists (in general) varies depending on

populations of organized interests or legislative policy

agendas. Our work applies this concept to the kinds of

lobbyists organized interests hire.

We argue there are two possible reasons to expect inter-

est groups to hire more women lobbyists in response to

legislative gender diversity. First, interests may assume

female lobbyists have an easier time forming personal

relationships with female legislators. As these personal

relationships are integral to state lobbying (Rosenthal

1993), organized interests should be incentivized to

respond to changes in legislative diversity by hiring lob-

byists whom they believe can gain access more easily. A

second explanation is informational in nature. Lobbyists

regularly achieve influence by providing relevant infor-

mation to lawmakers and performing ancillary services

(see Hall and Deardorff 2006). Because there is overlap in

the types of issues women frequently lobby for and legis-

late on, interest groups may see women legislators as nat-

ural allies to women lobbyists and their interests. Gender

diversity in the legislature may therefore produce an envi-

ronment more conducive to the emergence of women lob-

byists and women’s issue groups. While we do not

completely disentangle these two causal pathways, both

suggest states with more women legislators are contexts

where organized interests perceive women lobbyists are

more valuable, thus increasing demand.

We test our expectations using thousands of regis-

tered lobbyist–client pairings across the American states

in 1989 and 2011. The results of our analyses indicate

women’s representation among lobbyists is linked to

representation in legislative politics—even after account-

ing for contextual factors that presumably influence the

supply of both women legislators and lobbyists. We find

states with increasing percentages of women in the legis-

lature also see increases in the number of clients women

lobbyists represent—indicating greater breadth of influ-

ence. Women legislators are also more likely to become

lobbyists after leaving office in these states, compared

with those where women hold few legislative seats.

Additional analyses show that the number of women

lobbyists in a state is associated with women’s represen-

tation in majority parties but not minority parties, provid-

ing further evidence that organized interests strategically

seek out gender diversity in their ranks to match their leg-

islative targets. In short, we show that legislative diver-

sity plays a role in shaping the demand for women

lobbyists and the barriers to entry faced by women inter-

ested in the profession.

Our study represents an advance in research on lobby-

ing and gender and politics in several ways. First, we

address the factors leading to women’s emergence, rather

than focusing on women’s activities after they have

already become lobbyists. This is important because the

factors influencing women’s presence likely also shape

subsequent lobbying activities. Second, while existing

scholarship notes that access and influence are key goals

among interest groups, our understanding of how groups

decide who to hire is limited. Although our results do not

allow us to examine internal decision making within

organizations, they do help to provide a framework to

understand one aspect of how institutional context poten-

tially shifts hiring incentives.

Our results also have implications for the literature on

gender and politics and women’s representation. As we

highlight, women’s representation in political positions is

dynamic, and representation in one area of politics (in our

case, legislatures) can shape the dynamics of representa-

tion elsewhere. In addition, while past research has exam-

ined the factors leading to women’s emergence as political

candidates (e.g., Lawless and Fox 2010; Thomsen and

King 2020), less attention has been paid to women in

non-elected political roles in American politics. Although

comparative politics scholars have examined women’s

emergence in non-elected roles such as cabinet ministers

(e.g., Barnes and O’Brien 2018), our understanding of

women’s emergence in non-elected policy-making roles

in the United States remains limited. Our findings address

this gap in the literature and have implications for under-

standings of substantive representation. Past research

suggests women tend to represent different kinds of inter-

ests and groups than their male counterparts (LaPira,

Marchetti, and Thomas 2020; Lucas and Hyde 2012).

Understanding the institutional circumstances that lead

women—and the groups they represent—to be more

present in the political system has ramifications for equal-

ity and voice in American democracy.

Women as Lobbyists

Previous research on gender and lobbying generally

focuses on questions related to how men and women