Stop, Collaborate, and Listen: Women's Collaboration in US State Legislatures

• Author: Mirya R. Holman,Anna Mahoney
• Published date: 01 May 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12199
• Date: 01 May 2018

MIRYA R. HOLMAN

ANNA MAHONEY

Tulane University

Stop, Collaborate, and Listen:

Women’s Collaboration in US

State Legislatures

Collaboration plays a key role in crafting good public policy. We use a novel

data set of over 140,000 pieces of legislation considered in US state legi slatures in 2015

to examine the factors associated with women’s collaboration with each other. We

articulate a theory that women’s collaboration arises from opportunity structures,

dictated by an interaction of individual and institutional characteristics. Examining the

effect of a combination of characteristics, we find support for an interactive view of

institutions, where women’s caucuses accelerate collaboration in Democratic-controlled

bodies and as the share of women increases. Collaboration between women also

continues in the face of increased polarization in the presence of a caucus, but not absent

one. Our findings speak to the long-term consequences of electing women to political

office, the importance of institutions and organizations in shaping legislative behavior,

and the institutionalization of gender in politics.

In February 2017, Louisiana State Senator Sharon Hewitt (R) and

Representative Helena Moreno (D) discussed equal pay with Louisiana

advocates. Moreno, who had championed equal pay legislation in 2016

only to see the bill killed in committee, was eager in the next session to

change the message and the trajectory of the proposal. Hewitt argued

that success was more likely to come from a focus on the effects of

unequal pay on the larger economy. The collaboration between these

two legislators, both members of the Louisiana Legislative Women’s

Caucus, would lead to a repackaging of the proposal away from gender

inequality to the impact on Louisiana families. Such a collaboration

shows the possibilities when women legislators work together to

represent women’s interests. But what conditions facilitate women

working together on legislation?

Collaboration, or the act of working with other legislators within a

political body to craft policy, produces many benef‌its, including creating

better policy, increasing the probability of the legislation passing, and

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 43, 2, May 2018 179

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12199

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C2018 Washington University in St. Louis

producing long-lasting relationships between actors (Barnes 2012;

Kanthak and Krause 2012; Kirkland 2011; Wokcik and Mullenax

2017). Some individuals, including women, minority-party members,

and those excluded from governing coalitions, may be more likely to

collaborate than others (Barnes 2016; Kanthak and Krause 2010; Swers

1998). Institutional characteristics can also accelerate or decelerate

collaboration; for example, party control (Greene and O’Brien 2016;

Osborn 2014) and polarization (Thomsen 2014, 2015) may reduce col-

laboration, while organizations like caucuses may increase collaborative

work by their members (Miller 1990; Osborn 2012). Overall, the incen-

tives to collaborate and the benef‌its derived from the act vary based on

institutional and individual characteristics.

Under what circumstances do legislators with marginalized identi-

ties collaborate with each other? In this article, we evaluate women’s

collaboration with each other through a novel and comprehensive data

set of all bill activity in US state legislatures in 2015. We argue that

institutional characteristics interact with gender to inf‌luence women’s

collaboration: to complement women’s legislative interests or to

compensate for a lack of power and opportunity (Barnes 2012, 2016;

Osborn 2014) in what we posit is an interactive theory of institutions

and opportunities. We focus on the role of a woman’s caucus, which

works as both a complementary or as a compensatory mechanism.

Using a new data set of collaboration within all US state legislative

bodies, we f‌ind striking evidence to support our theory. First, caucuses

provide an opportunity to reduce the costs of collaboration; we f‌ind that

when collaboration is very costly—as is evident when chambers have

high levels of polarization—caucuses can reduce these costs for women.

We also f‌ind results consistent with theories of critical mass, gendered

institutions, and backlash; as the share of women in the body increases,

this produces a curvilinear effect on women’s collaboration, but only

absent a caucus. With a caucus, women’s collaboration increases with

the share of women in the body in a linear fashion. Partisan control also

matters: Caucuses have a stronger positive effect on women’s cospon-

sorship in Democratically-controlled chambers. Our f‌indings thus build

upon scholarship on how women’s strategy and inf‌luence is a function

of women’s presence, partisanship, and institutional features (Barnes

2016; Dodson 1997; Osborn 2012; Swers 2001).

Our research, which is the f‌irst to examine questions of collabora-

tion between women in the United States with such a large and

comprehensive data set of legislative action, extends the scholarship that

highlights the importance of the mechanisms by which women shape

institutions and their processes (Barnes 2016; Holman 2015; Osborn

180 Mirya R. Holman and Anna Mahoney