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INTERSECTING INTERESTS

Gender, Race, and Congressional Attention to Women’s Issues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 December 2014

Michael D. Minta  and
Nadia E. Brown
Michael D. Minta
Affiliation:
Department of Black Studies and Department of Political Science, University of Missouri
Nadia E. Brown*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science and African American Studies and Research Center, Purdue University
*
*Corresponding author: Nadia E. Brown, Department of Political Science and African American Studies and Research Center, Purdue University, Beering Hall, Room 2249 100 N. University Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2098. E-mail: brown957@purdue.edu
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Abstract

Despite claims by normative theorists that gender diversity in Congress leads to better representation of women’s interests, the results of empirical studies have been largely mixed. While some scholars have found positive effects of gender diversity, others have found very little impact. We argue that it is not the presence of White and minority women alone that makes political institutions more responsive to women’s issues, but rather it is the organizational presence of minority men along with minority women who make similar claims for inclusion, power, and organizational formation to achieve those goals that matters. We examine to what extent gender and racial diversity have led to more attention to issues that directly and indirectly impact women. Using congressional hearings data from 1951–2004, we find that the increased presence of minority men and women legislators in the House, but less so in the Senate, is responsible for keeping women’s interests on the congressional agenda. We demonstrate how an intersectional and additive approach can add both theoretical and empirical value to the study of political representation by demonstrating the impact of women and minorities in Congress.

Keywords

RepresentationRaceGenderEthnicityIntersectionality
Type
State of the Art
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , Fall 2014 , pp. 253 - 272
Copyright
Copyright © Hutchins Center for African and African American Research 2014 

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