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Rewriting Title IX: The Department of Education's Response to Feminists' Comments in the Rulemaking Process

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2016

Ashley English
Ashley English*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
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Abstract

Feminist organizations, like many other interest groups and advocacy organizations, have increasingly turned to the rulemaking process to create meaningful policy change. Although rulemaking is an attractive policy-making venue for feminists because it provides them with an opportunity to bypass congressional gridlock and interact with more women policy makers than they might in Congress, the existing literature does not address how and when feminist organizations' participation in rulemaking is influential. To examine this question for the first time, I analyze a sample of the 5,860 comments that the U.S. Department of Education received in response to its 2004 proposed rule allowing for public single-sex education programs and the department's justifications for its proposed and final rules. Specifically, I ask whether findings from the rulemaking literature showing that organizations can encourage bureaucrats to change their proposed rules when they submit large numbers of high-quality, homogenous, opposing comments hold for feminist organizations in a redistributive policy area. The findings indicate that when bureaucrats receive multiple sets of high-quality homogenous comments, they are more likely to side with commenters who support their initial proposals and/or partisan and ideological positions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , September 2016 , pp. 491 - 517
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2016 

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