Will She Stay or Will She Go? Career Ceilings and Women's Retirement from the U.S. Congress

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.3162/036298005X201680
• Published date: 01 November 2005
• Date: 01 November 2005
• Author: SEAN M. THERIAULT,JENNIFER L. LAWLESS

581Career Ceilings and Women’s Retirement

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, XXX, 4, November 2005581

JENNIFER L. LAWLESS

Brown University

SEAN M. THERIAULT

University of Texas

Will She Stay or Will She Go?

Career Ceilings and Women’s

Retirement from the U.S. Congress

This article offers the first broad-based, systematic, times-series assessment

of the gender dynamics underlying congressional retirement. We extend the body of

work on gender and representation by using the congressional retirement literature to

develop an argument that accounts for the gender gap in the average length of congres-

sional service. Our results indicate that women are less willing than men to remain in

Congress when their ability to influence the legislative agenda stalls. Because of

women’s relatively early departures from the House of Representatives, our analysis

suggests that prospects for women’s representation are less promising than the con-

ventional wisdom suggests.

The 1992 elections brought more new women to Congress than

any other elections in congressional history. One of the new faces of

the 103d Congress was Elizabeth Furse, a Democrat from Oregon. On

the same day that Oregon voters catapulted Furse to the House of

Representatives, they passed a congressional term-limits initiative that

forced members out of their seats after three terms. Furse refused to

endorse the initiative, despite the fact that she was running in a tough

race (and her opponent was using the issue against her). Five years

later, Furse surprised her colleagues and her constituents when she

announced that she planned to retire at the conclusion of the 105th

Congress. A tireless advocate for Native Americans and the environ-

ment, her prospects for rising to a committee leadership position were

not promising. Leaving Congress, Furse advised her colleagues to “focus

on one or two things and try and get satisfaction out of [them]”.1 She

traded in her busy congressional schedule to spend more time at her

Oregon winery and new summer home in France’s Lot Valley.

582Jennifer L. Lawless and Sean M. Theriault

Dale Kildee, a Democrat from Michigan, also surprised his

congressional colleagues, although for the opposite reason as Furse. In

2003, Kildee announced that he would seek reelection in 2004. Upon

his election in 1976, Kildee quickly climbed the Education and Labor

Committee ladder. Within 10 years, he was a subcommittee chair, where

he remained until the Republicans came to power in 1995. Since then,

Kildee has been the ranking member on the Education and the

Workforce subcommittee. Perhaps in expectation of his retirement, or

perhaps in an attempt to propel it, the Republican state legislature carved

up Kildee’s district when Michigan lost a seat in the 2000 round of

reapportionment. But Kildee, who is well into his 70s, is simply not yet

ready to abandon his stalled congressional career. While Furse sips the

finest wines in Oregon and France, all evidence indicates that Kildee

will continue to serve until he meets death or defeat.

A more-systematic assessment of voluntary retirement from the

U.S. House of Representatives suggests that a gender dynamic may

underlie these anecdotes. From the 98th Congress (1983–84) until the 107th

Congress (2001–02), the average tenure for men who retired was

approximately 40% longer than the average for women (slightly more than

17 years, compared to about 12 years; difference significant at p < .01). As

a result, only 2 of the 20 oldest members of the House to retire were

women (Virginia Smith at 79 and Carrie Meek at 75); only 3 of the 75

oldest members seeking reelection were women; and of the 35 members

who died in office, only 2 were women (Sala Burton and Patsy Mink).2

Despite the fact that women serve as members of Congress for

shorter spells than do men, the studies that examine and predict

congressional retirement do not include gender as an explanatory

variable (see, for example, Hall and Van Houweling 1995; Hibbing

1982; Moore and Hibbing 1998; and Theriault 1998). In large part, this

omission is an artifact of women’s numeric underrepresentation. Until

Furse and 24 other new women went to the House in 1992, there were

too few female members to allow for meaningful comparisons of men’s

and women’s legislative behavior, let alone retention and retirement.

With an increasing number of female representatives occupying House

seats over the course of the last two decades [Center for American

Women and Politics (CAWP) 2004], it becomes possible—and important—

to examine the role that gender plays in a legislator’s decision to leave

Congress. Not only does women’s presence in high-level elective office

decrease the possibility that gender-salient issues will be overlooked,

but it also brings a different voice to the legislative process.3

The degree to which a legislative body retains its female members

bears directly on issues of representation, in large part because power-