Running Head: Women in Politics

Women in Politics: Who is the more effective Politician

Review of Literature
Tafari Nugent
University of Texas at El Paso

Women in Politics

ABSTRACT
Women began being elected to congress in 1916 and since then have slowly and
steadily increased their presence. In 2012, a record number of women were elected to
the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. This
literature review wishes to answer is which gender is the more effective politician with a
focus on raising money for campaigning, effectiveness in the legislative process, and
the public perception on whose has the qualities/traits of being an effective political
leader.

Women in Politics

Which Gender is the More Effective Politician: A Review of Literature

In the year 196 Jeannette Rankin was elected to the United States congress from the state
of Montana and since then women have increasingly over the past century been elected to serve
their communities as alongside men to various degrees of effectiveness. In the year 2012 women
were elected in record number to serve in the US senate and the House of Representatives
(Selyukh 2012). As a result, built upon the values of fair competition in the United States (Penn
2012), the question which gender is the more effective politician has arisen. This inquiry is
interesting and the answer can help solve, although elected in record number to the congress, the
underrepresentation of women in politics. If evidence is discovered that women are just as
effective or in the event that they are found to be more effective politicians, it can be inferred that
there would be a cause and effect relationship that further increases the number of elected female
politicians. If it is revealed that men are more effective politicians than females, than there will
be a reasonable explanation for the discrepancy between elected male and female politicians.
The objective of this literature review is to find evidence that answers the question Which
gender, Male or Female, is the more effective politician. To help guide the primary question in
the right direction three secondary question have been developed which are the following;
1. Which gender is more effective in the legislative process (i.e. introducing bills
and turning them into laws)?
2. Which gender possess the traits of an effective politician according to the public?
3. Which gender is more effective at raising money for their campaign?
These three question are essential to the process of answering the primary question. The
first question, which gender is more effective in the legislative process is going after the
mechanics of a politician, which gender can effectively produce more legislation. The second

Women in Politics

question, which gender possess traits of an effective politician according to the public is
important because it targets the people, the ultimate judges of determining which sex is more
effective politician. Finally, the third question, which gender is more effective in raising money
for their campaigns wants to find out which gender has more access to money to fund their
campaigns. During election years, politicians spend approximately fifty percent of their time
raising money. If these three question can be answered, then determining which gender is the
more effective politician will be revealed and will accomplish the goal set out for this literature
review.
Which Gender Is More Effective in Introducing and Passing Bills into Law?
The job of the United States congress, as written by the visitors page of the US capitol
website, is through legislative debate and compromise, the us congress makes laws that influence
our daily lives. What this question/ aims at revealing is whether female legislators are more
effective than male legislators at navigating the legislative process and passing bills into laws. If
the inquiry reveals that women are more effective and passing bills and laws, in addition it will
seek to explain why?
In 2010, The Legislative Effectiveness of Women in Congress was written by Craig
Volden, Alan Wiseman, and Diana Wittmer whose research revealed that female legislators
outpace their male counterparts when introducing bills to congress. Moreover, when women are
compared to women in the context of majority versus minority parties, women in majority
parties exceed the women in minority parties in introducing bills to the floor of the house.
Although when it comes to getting bills through the legislation process and turning them into
laws women are no better than men. Volden, Wiseman, and Wittmer show that men and women
are no more effective than each other in getting bills turned into laws, but if women are

Women in Politics

producing more bills than man and are turning them into laws at the same rate, this would
suggest that by default women are creating more laws than men providing glimpse of evidence
that women are more effective than men. What is causing this discrepancy in effectiveness?
Three major concepts which include High Effort, Consensus Building, and Issue Specialization
(Volden, Wiseman, and Wittmer 2010)
The first concept, High Effort, is the subject of women working harder than their male
counterparts in the belief that they must work harder to be as successful and respected (Reingold
1996). As stated in the previous paragraph, women in the majority party introduce more bills
than men, republican or democrat. In terms of numbers there is a seventeen percent increase
compared to men when introducing bills (Volden, Wiseman, and Wittmer 2010). The Second
Concept, Consensus Building, is the concept of women being more collaborative, more engaging
in working together with others which contributes tremendously to the massive increase in
effectiveness with women in minority parties when compared to men or rather women in the
minority party will introduce more legislation than their male counterparts (Volden, Wiseman,
and Wittmer 2010). A contemporary example of this concept is one of Hillary Clintons 2016
presidential slogans, a progressive who can get things done. A president cannot get things done
without the help of both political parties in congress, therefore with the phrase get things
done Hillary Clinton implies she will be able to work across the aisle to accomplish her goals.
Finally, the third concept, Issue Specialization, is when women specifically target and focus on a
specific set of issues. These issues are referred to as womens issues and cover six major areas
which include sexual discrimination/equal pay, children/family, education, welfare/poverty/social
services, general health, and environmental policies (Volden,

Women in Politics

Wiseman, and Wittmer 2010). The ability for women to specialize in issues and utilize the
concepts of High Effort, allows them to more efficiently provide bills for those specific issues.
The process/strategies used by male and female legislatures to pass bills is also as
relevant in explaining the differences in effectiveness. Beth Reingold, wrote a journal article in
1996, while an assistant professor at Emory University, saying the legislative strategies
suggested by female and male legislators within each state did not differ much at all. Two
strategies existed, a masculine power over strategy and a feminine power to strategy; and in
overwhelming numbers both males and females leaned toward the feminine power strategy
(Reingold 1996). Both sexes, more importantly males lean toward a feminine or "female"
approach toward passing bills, which shows the feminine strategy to be more effective than the
masculine or male strategy in the process of passing bills.
Which gender possesses the traits of an effective politician according to the
public?
What the primary question of this literature review is attempting to answer is which
gender makes the better politician. The ultimate judge to this question are the people the
politicians are serving; therefore, it is important to know what the public perception is on this
inquiry. More specifically it is vital to understand what the public believes makes a good
politician and who they believe better encompasses these traits, men or women?
According to a Pew Research Center study released in 2008, there are eight key traits that
the public find important in a political leader. Those traits are honesty, intelligent, hardworking,
decisive, ambitious, compassionate, outgoing, creative. In political terms it was a landslide, the
public believes that only one of the eight traits are more true of men (decisive) while
hardworking, and ambitious were a tie.

Women in Politics

Table 1: The Percentage at which adults

chose male or female for each category

Five out of the eight

traits went in favor of
women in overwhelming
numbers: honesty,
intelligent
compassionate,
outgoing, and creative

Honest
Intelligent
Hardworking
Decisive
Ambitious
Compassionate
Outgoing
Creative

Male
20
14
28
44
34
5
28
11

Female
50
38
28
33
34
80
47
62

Talyor,
P., Morin,
R.,toCohn,
A., & Wang,
W.
(Pew Research Center 2008) (For exact
percentages
refer
tableD.,
1). Clark,
The numbers
are clear;
(2008). Men or Women: Who's the Better Leader. Pew
women beat out men five
Research Center .
to one and the case can be made
it is more lopsided than reported by Pew Research Center and it should be 6 to 1. As it was
previously revealed in this inquiry through the concept of High Effort, where women believe
they must work harder than males and do so by introducing bills at a higher rate, women are
harder working than males and not tied like the public sees them at. In addition to this, the report
goes on the find that on the category of compromises, a category that the report uses to rate
political performance, the public is more twice as likely to say women are better than men at
working out compromises which is only slightly higher than two decades ago (Pew Research
Center 2008). This is in line with the second of the three concept of Consensus Building from
Volden, Wisemann, and Wittmer. Not only are women outperforming men in the legislative
process but the public is recognizing this as well. As the Pew Research Puts it the right stuff for
leadership: women mostly have it-men, not so much.
The public believes that women are at a minimum equally qualified to become politicians
Additionally, there are few differences in how the public rates the actual performance of men and women

Women in Politics

in public office (Pew Research Center 2008) further supporting the idea that women are at least as
effective male politicians. Not to mention that as stated in the introduction in the year 2012, a record
number of women were elected to the US senate and US House of Representatives, which indicates that
voters are acting on the thinking and placing females on an equal footing as males in terms of politics.
Not to mention that Political Parity, a group devoted to getting women elected to office, in study
discovered women are elected at the same rate as men or rather as they put it when women run, women
win.

Which gender is more effective in Raising Money?

Beside the qualities of a politician and the his/her effectiveness in the lawmaking process,
the persons ability to get elected into office and continue to be reelected is as important as the
others in making an effective politician. The question of who is more effective at raising money
is more important than asking the general more natural question who is the better campaigner or
rather who is more effective at running a successful campaign. Money has become a major part
of American politics and is even required by the national parties. It has even been shown that
politicians in congress spend during election years at least 50 percent of their time raising money.
It is too difficult to determine which gender is the more effective orator or a more effective
organizer of people and frankly does not carry the same weight as money does, if a candidate
does not raise the tremendous amount of money needed to run a campagin, they will not win.
Raising money has become an important staple in the life of a politician. Newsweek
reported in 2015 that congress members in a ten-hour day can spend three to five hours a day
raising money. That is nearly fifty percent of the time spent on the job. It also reported that it is
required by both partys conventions that its members raise money and contribute to their
financial pools (Roemer 2015). It logical then to assume that the most important part of

Women in Politics

campaigning for elections is raising money. So which gender is more effective in doing this. A
different study by Political Parity called Money and Women Candidates wrote that women and
men have had relatively the same success in raising money from different sources including
PACs (political action committees). In contrast though, the same research showed that
incumbents easily able to raise more money and since majority of incumbents were male and not
female males were seen as being able to raise more money. In addition, research from a scholarly
journal entitled Early Fundraising by Nonincumbent Female Congressional Candidates: The
Importance of Womens PACs showed republican women struggling more than democratic
women in raising money due to PACs created to help women raise money only helping
democrats (Francia 2001). What all this research is telling is that females are finding more
difficult, fair or unfair, to raise money as much as men. Even more so, future women will find it
predominantly difficult because they will be running against incumbents that will be
predominantly male so not only are men more effective at raising campaign funds, they will be
doing so into the future.
Conclusion/Synthesis
This literature review set out to find the answer to the question which gender,
male or female, is the better politician? Through the three secondary research question: which
gender is more effective in the legislative process, which gender according to the public
possesses the traits of an effective politician, and which gender is more effective at raising
money for their campaign, the inquiry has revealed many things about which gender is the more
effective politician. The first question discovered females, specifically when in the majority
party, have been introducing bill at a much higher rate than men. It also revealed that through
consensus building, females in the minority party are more effective at working with members

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10

across the aisle. The second question gave insight to how the American public viewed politician
and who they believed to have the necessary qualities and traits of a desired political leader.
Overwhelmingly American public decided that women possessed more often than men the traits
they desired. Finally, the third question shifted in favor of the male politician. The third question
provided insight toward electability, specifically the possibility of electability. In order to run a
campaign huge sums finances must be acquired through fundraisers and political donations and
women although raising the same amount on average of money as males, found it more
challenging and difficult to do so. In addition, incumbents had a significant advantage in raising
money and were mostly made up of men. In the future if women wanted to run they would be
running against incumbents and would already have a steep hill to climb due to money issues.
The evidence here does not provide a clear answer toward which gender is the more effective
politician and more research is needed to determine that answer. More research is needed for the
specific mechanics of campaign running, although raising money is the biggest issue in that
category, minor issues like organizing a staff or events etc. are nuances that can help determine
which gender is the better politician. This literature review combined with the future research
laid out previously can form a stronger and clearer picture in which gender is truly the more
effective politician.

References
Francia, P. (2001). Early Fundrasing by Nonincumbent Female Congressional Candidates: The
Importance of Women's PACs. Women & Politics, 7-20.
Penn, M. (2012, July 4). Time . Retrieved from Time website:
http://ideas.time.com/2012/07/04/what-are-american-values-these-days-2/
Political Parity . (2015). Women Candidates and Their Campaigns. Political Parity .

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Political Parity. (n.d.). Political Parity. Retrieved from Political Parity Web Site:
https://www.politicalparity.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/inventory-money.pdf
Reingold, B. (1996). Conflict and Cooperation: Legislative Strategies and Concepts of Power
among Female and Male State Legislators. The Journal of Politics, 464-485.
Roemer, T. (2015, July 29). Newsweek . Retrieved from http://www.newsweek.com/why-docongressmen-spend-only-half-their-time-serving-us-357995
Selyukh, A. (2012, November 7). Reuters. Retrieved from http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usacampaign-women-idUSBRE8A62MG20121107
Talyor, P., Morin, R., Cohn, D., Clark, A., & Wang, W. (2008). Men or Women: Who's the Better
Leader. Pew Research Center .
Volden, C., Wiseman, A., & Wittmer, D. (2010). The Legislative effectiveness of Women in
Congress. Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions.
United States Congress. (2016, April 3). US congress. Retrieved from US congress web page:
https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/about-congress