Book
Mahoney, Anna Mitchell. 2018. Women Take Their Place in State Legislatures: The Creation of Women’s Caucuses. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
How do women strategically make their mark on state legislatures? Anna Mitchell Mahoney’s book traces the development of women’s state legislative caucuses and the influence both gender and party have on women’s ability to organize collectively. She provides a comprehensive analysis of how and why women organize around their gender identity in state legislatures—or why they do not.
Women Take Their Place in State Legislatures includes a quantitative analysis of institutional-level variables and caucus existence in all 50 states. Case studies of caucus attempts in New Jersey, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Iowa between 2006 and 2010 examine attempts at creating women’s caucuses that succeeded or failed, and why. Mahoney’s interviews with 180 state legislators and their staff explore the motivations of caucus creators and participants. Ultimately, she finds that women’s organizing is contextual; it demonstrates the dynamic nature of gender.
Mahoney also provides insights into broad questions regarding gendered institutions, collective action, and political party governance. Women Take Their Place in State Legislatures fills a lacuna in the evaluation of women in government.
Peer Reviewed Articles
Brown, Nadia, Christopher J. Clark, Anna Mahoney, and Michael Strawbridge. 2023. “Sister Space: Collective Descriptive Representation and Black Women in Legislative Caucuses.” Politics and Gender, First View, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743923X22000599.
Black women in elective office in the United States have demonstrated how descriptive representative transforms democratic institutions. This transformation is most evident in previously uncrystallized interests, those new to the agenda or not yet owned by specific political groups (Mansbridge 1999), articulated in legislative communication and action. For instance, Black maternal health is an issue that addresses the disproportionately poor health outcomes among Black women, who face systemic barriers to equitable care (Crear-Perry et al. 2021). Congresswoman Lauren Underwood’s (D-IL) 2021 Momnibus legislation included 12 bipartisan bills to address racial and ethnic disparities faced by mothers, children, and individuals who birth. Indeed, the creation of the Black Maternal Health Caucus (BMHC) demonstrates the legislative agency of Black women to form identity- and issue-based coalitions that suit the needs of Black women—needs often overlooked by Black men and white women.
Holman, Mirya and Anna Mahoney. “Take (her) to the Limit: What Term Limits Can Tell Us about Women’s Successes in Political Office.” Legislative Studies Quarterly. Preprints. http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12406
Women in political office out-perform men in legislative activity and constituent services. Scholars have identified two potential explanations for this over-performance: women are higher quality candidates when they run for office and women face elevated voter expectations to win elections. We use the presence of term limits to examine how these two justifications for women’s overperformance produce downstream effects. While designed to strike a blow to entrenched systems of power, term limits reduce the time that legislators spend on constituent service and legislative output, including bill sponsorship, votes, and committee work. We use the effects of term limits to as a tool for understanding the two paths to women’s overperformance, using data on over 6000 legislators serving in term limited states. We find more evidence for the quality candidate hypothesis than the voter expectations hypothesis. While term limits degrade men’s performance in office, women officeholders continue to overperform even under this institutional constraint. Our findings that women’s overperformance is more likely due to their higher quality have implications for efforts to increase the representativeness of political bodies, the quality of representation in state legislatures, and the gendered consequences of institutional reforms.
Evans, Melissa Goldin, Maeve Wallace, Katherine P. Theall, Anna Mitchell Mahoney, Lisa Richardson, and Clare M. Daniel. 2022. “State-Level Recommendations to Reduce Inequities in Sexually Transmitted Infections.” Women’s Health Issues 32(5): 427-430. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.whi.2022.07.002
Mahoney, Anna. “Community Engagement and State Legislative Research.” PS: Political Science & Politics, 55(3), 568 – 571. doi:10.1017/S1049096522000087
Brown, Nadia, Christopher J. Clark, and Anna Mahoney. 2022. Editors. “Special Issue: Women of Color Political Elites in the U.S.“ Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy. 43(1)(3).
More women of color were sworn in to the 117th U.S. Congress than ever before. For instance, Cori Bush became the first Black woman elected from the state of Missouri, accomplishing this feat by taking down William Clay, whose family served in that seat for decades. Cori Bush’s victory, along with those of other women of color, is simultaneously something to celebrate and investigate. How can it be that in 2021, women of color elected officials are still achieving firsts? How have scholars assessed, theorized, and studied these women who are novel players in American government? Political Science, as a discipline, is merely decades out from viewing women of color via a single-axis lens of either race or gender. Thusly, scholars are still grappling with how to examine women of color by their own merits. This special issue seeks to do just that. The essays in this volume are chiefly concerned with studying the multiplicity of women of color political elites as distinct actors in American democracy. As guest co-editors of two issues on the subject, we wanted to curate a set of essays from both established and burgeoning thought leaders and empiricists on the complexities of seeking elected office and governing as women of color.
Holman, M. R., Mahoney A. and E. Hurler. 2021. “Let’s Work Together: Bill Success via Women’s Cosponsorship in U.S. State Legislatures.” Political Research Quarterly. DOI:10.1177/10659129211020123
Not all pieces of legislation introduced for consideration are equally likely to be successful. The characteristics of legislation’s cosponsors can influence bill passage rates. Despite facing marginalization in legislative bodies and more electoral vulnerability, women are effective lawmakers. We argue that one way by which women overcome marginalization and gendered expectations of performance is bill success from legislation cosponsored with other women. Testing this expectation on bills (140,000+) introduced in U.S. state legislatures in forty states in 2015, we find increased bill success from women’s cosponsorship with each other and women from the other party. Using variation in the share of women in legislative chambers and in legislative leadership, we find evidence to suggest that women’s success emerges both from marginalization and gendered opportunities.
Holman, M. R. and Mahoney, A. 2019. “The Choice Is Yours: Caucus Typologies and Collaboration in U.S. State Legislatures.” Representation. 55(1): 47-63. DOI:10.1080/00344893.2019.1581079
The marginalisation of some groups in legislative bodies promotes the construction of subaltern public spaces, including caucuses. In this paper, we evaluate whether the substantive focus of women’s caucuses in state legislatures matters in shaping women’s collaboration with each other. We first present an evaluation of the types of women’s caucuses in U.S. state legislatures, drawing on qualitative examples and evidence from founding efforts. We then evaluate whether it matters if a caucus is focused on social cohesion among women, sets policy agendas, or is has ad hoc policy focus. We theorise that the focus of the caucus should not matter, as it is the existence of the subaltern space (versus the absence of the space) that confers trust and collaboration among members. Using all co-sponsorship behaviour between women legislators in every U.S. state legislature in 2015, we find little evidence of consistent patterns of a type of caucus mattering across institutional arrangements; instead, all caucuses increase collaborative patterns. Our findings provide evidence for the importance of institutional arrangements that build trust and cooperation in increasingly polarised and divided legislative bodies.
Mahoney, Anna Mitchell and Christopher J. Clark. 2018. “When and Where Do Women’s Legislative Caucuses Emerge?” Politics and Gender. 15(4): 671-694. DOI:10.1017/S1743923X18000806
Women have organized around their gendered identity to accomplish political goals both inside and outside legislatures. Formal and informal institutional norms shape the form this collective action takes and whether it is successful. What, then, are the favorable conditions for organizing women’s caucuses inside legislatures? Using an original dataset and employing an event history analysis, we identify the institutional conditions under which women’s caucuses emerged in the 50 US states from 1972 to 2009. Within a feminist institutional framework, we argue that women’s ability to alter existing organizational structures and potentially affect gender norms within legislatures is contextual. Although we find that women’s presence in conjunction with Democratic Party control partially explains women’s ability to act collectively and in a bipartisan way within legislatures, our analysis suggests that institutional-level variables are not enough to untangle this complicated phenomenon. Our work explains how gender and party interact to shape legislative behavior and clarifies the intractability of institutional norms while compelling further qualitative evidence to uncover the best conditions for women’s collective action within legislatures.
Holman, M. R. and Mahoney, A. 2018. “Stop, Collaborate, and Listen: Women’s Collaboration in US State Legislatures.” Legislative Studies Quarterly. 43(2): 179-206. DOI:10.1111/lsq.12199
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 legislatures 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 bodes 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.
Special Issues
Brown, Nadia, Christopher J. Clark, and Anna Mahoney. 2022. Editors. “Special Issue: Women of Color Political Elites in the U.S.“ Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy. 43(1)(3).
More women of color were sworn in to the 117th U.S. Congress than ever before. For instance, Cori Bush became the first Black woman elected from the state of Missouri, accomplishing this feat by taking down William Clay, whose family served in that seat for decades. Cori Bush’s victory, along with those of other women of color, is simultaneously something to celebrate and investigate. How can it be that in 2021, women of color elected officials are still achieving firsts? How have scholars assessed, theorized, and studied these women who are novel players in American government? Political Science, as a discipline, is merely decades out from viewing women of color via a single-axis lens of either race or gender. Thusly, scholars are still grappling with how to examine women of color by their own merits. This special issue seeks to do just that. The essays in this volume are chiefly concerned with studying the multiplicity of women of color political elites as distinct actors in American democracy. As guest co-editors of two issues on the subject, we wanted to curate a set of essays from both established and burgeoning thought leaders and empiricists on the complexities of seeking elected office and governing as women of color.
Brown, Nadia, Christopher J. Clark, and Anna Mahoney. 2022. Eds. “Special Issue: Women of Color Political Elites in the U.S.” Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy. 43(1).
Brown, Nadia E., Christopher J. Clark, and Anna Mahoney. 2022. “The lack Women of the US Congress: Learning from Descriptive Data.” Journal of Women, Politics & Policy (2022): 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/1554477X.2022.2074757
Black women have been historically excluded from Congress and the policymaking power available in the institution. This essay shares details about the 52 Black women who have navigated this raced and gendered institution (Hawkesworth 2003) since 1969. We discuss data on these Black congresswomen, including, but not limited to, their educational attainment, occupations prior to serving in Congress, and ties to Black Greek Letter organizations. We argue that this descriptive data will prompt new questions for legislative scholars and open conversations about disciplinary norms and assumptions which may need revision in light of Congress’ increasing diversification.
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