Women are outperforming men in state legislatures across the country.
Women often arrive in state legislatures eager to get to work. But then they find themselves in less valuable committee seats rather than the coveted spots on more powerful committees.
"Women are actually unable to get on to these high-performing committees, and even with that they're still outperforming men," says Jatia Wrighten at Virginia Commonwealth University, who has a new report in the upcoming issue of the Journal of Politics about women lawmakers. The paper is titled High Hurdles, and it concludes that despite receiving less valuable committee seats, women lawmakers often outperform their male colleagues.
"What they call this in the scholarship is the Jackie and Jill Robinson effect; this idea that women have to outperform men to even get elected," says Wrighten. "And so, we see is that women are better at negotiating across party lines. Women are more effective at co-authoring legislative policy."
Wrighten’s report was co-authored by Robert McGrath at George Mason University and Josh Ryan at Utah State University.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
