Women in the Club

Gender and Policy Making in the Senate

Michele L. Swers

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780226022826, 9780226022796
• eBook ISBN: 9780226022963
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, Democrats and Republicans were locked in a fierce battle for the female vote. Democrats charged Republicans with waging a "war on women," while Republicans countered that Democratic policies actually undermined women's rights. The women of the Senate wielded particular power, planning press conferences, appearing on political programs, and taking to the Senate floor over gender-related issues such as workplace equality and reproductive rights.

The first book to examine the impact of gender differences in the Senate, Women in the Club is an eye-opening exploration of how women are influencing policy and politics in this erstwhile male bastion of power. Gender, Michele L. Swers shows, is a fundamental factor for women in the Senate, interacting with both party affiliation and individual ideology to shape priorities on policy. Women, for example, are more active proponents of social welfare and women's rights. But the effects of gender extend beyond mere policy preferences. Senators also develop their priorities with an eye to managing voter expectations about their expertise and advancing their party's position on a given issue. The election of women in increasing numbers has also coincided with the evolution of the Senate as a highly partisan institution. The stark differences between the parties on issues pertaining to gender have meant that Democratic and Republican senators often assume very different roles as they reconcile their policy views on gender issues with the desire to act as members of partisan teams championing or defending their party's record in an effort to reach various groups of voters.

1

Women and the New Senate Club

In the months leading up to the 2012 presidential election, the Republican and Democratic parties were locked in a battle for women’s votes. Democrats and President Barack Obama’s campaign accused Republicans of waging a “war on women.” Republicans and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney countered that Democrats were instigating a false gender war and President Obama’s policies undermined the interests of women. The women of the Senate played key roles in this quest for the hearts and minds of female voters. Female Democratic senators took to the Senate floor, called press conferences, and appeared on political news shows to shine a spotlight on Republican policies that hurt women including Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and Republican opposition to coverage of contraception in Obama’s health reform bill (McCarthy 2012c; Sanger-Katz 2012). The Democratic women also lamented Republican obstruction of the Violence Against Women Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill to strengthen equal pay legislation (Weisman 2012b; Steinhauer 2012). Patty Murray (D-WA), the head of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, launched an advertisement denouncing the Republican war on women and urging voters to elect more women to the Senate (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0hC0T_fHlU).

In response, Republicans deployed their own female surrogates to push back on the Democratic message of a war on women. Republican senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) became a prominent spokesperson for the Republican Party and the Romney campaign (Schultheis 2012). Utilizing her moral authority as a woman, Ayotte countered that Republican opposition to forcing employers, including Catholic universities and hospitals, to cover contraception was a matter of religious freedom and not women’s health (McCormack 2012). Republicans frequently noted that the economy was the top concern of women voters and that more than 92% of the jobs lost on Obama’s watch were women’s jobs (Associated Press 2012).

Clearly, both Republican and Democratic women utilize the power of their position as senators to influence the public debate over the representation of women’s interests and to shape policy that addresses the needs of women and their families. The emergence of women as a significant force in the Senate is a recent phenomenon. Indeed, the United States Senate is among the most powerful legislative institutions in western democracies. At the same time it is in many ways the least representative (Dahl 2003; Lee and Oppenheimer 1999). In both its demographic makeup and its institutional rules the Senate defies ideals of equal representation. For most of its history the Senate has been a white male bastion, and the number of women and minorities in the Senate continues to lag far behind their share of the U.S. population. The institutional structure and rules of the Senate are antimajoritarian. The filibuster gives individuals and small groups of senators the ability to obstruct legislation and the allocation of two seats for each state gives outsized influence to senators representing small state populations (Koger 2010; Wawro and Schickler 2006; Lee and Oppenheimer 1999). In contrast to the House of Representatives, the Founders intended for the Senate to be the less responsive body, cooling the passions of the masses in an effort to reach decisions that reflect the national character and interest (Federalist 63 in Rossiter 1961; Dahl 2003). As a result of this design, the Senate has often been described as both the world’s greatest deliberative body and an insular old boys club where powerful white men meet behind closed doors to shape public policy (Dahl 2003).

The modern Senate club is a study in contradictions. Senators are freewheeling policy entrepreneurs whose large staffs, ready media access, and institutional prerogatives, including the ability to offer non-germane amendments, place holds, and threaten filibusters, allow them to become important players on any issue they choose (Evans 1991; Baker 2001; Sinclair 1989). At the same time, ideological polarization and tight electoral competition between the parties has created a Senate divided into partisan teams. Senators work together to create a party message and policy agenda. They are expected to be loyal to the team or risk a loss of standing and influence with their colleagues (Sinclair 1989, 2006, 2009; Lee 2009, 2008b; Sellers 2010).

The evolution of the Senate into an institution that is both partisan and individualistic coincided with the opening up of the Senate to new groups, particularly women. As late as 1991, women constituted only 2% of the Senate membership. By 2001, 13% of senators were women and the number of women in the Senate was equivalent to the proportion of women serving in the House. In the 112th Congress (2011–12), women make up 17% of the Senate’s membership (Center for the American Woman and Politics 2011a, 2011b). While the number of women in the Senate remains relatively small, the power wielded by individuals and the procedural rules protecting participation rights give senators outsized influence and an ability to engage any and all policy areas regardless of committee assignment or majority/minority party status.

By focusing on the Senate, I can examine how gender influences legislative behavior on a wider range of issues from social welfare policy to national security. Moreover, if senators feel strongly about championing gender-related causes, the organization of the Senate gives them the resources and tools to force consideration of these interests, thus magnifying senators’ influence beyond their numbers. In this book, I utilize the fact that senators are policy generalists who are involved in a wide variety of issues and wield extensive individual prerogatives to analyze the ways in which gender influences the legislative behavior of senators. I demonstrate that gender is a fundamental identity that affects the way senators look at policy questions, the issues they prioritize, and the perspective they bring to develop solutions. The importance of gender also transcends individual identity, creating opportunities and imposing obstacles in the electoral and governing arena that senators must confront when they design their political strategies and build their legislative reputations.

My research shows that, as they develop their legislative portfolio, female senators take into account long-standing public assumptions and voter stereotypes about women’s policy expertise. The strong link between gender and women’s interests on various social welfare and women’s rights issues enhances the credibility of women in these policy areas. Thus, women are able to leverage their gender to influence policy debates on a range of issues from health care and education to abortion rights and pay equity. These “women’s issues” routinely constitute at least one-third of the Senate agenda (see chapter 2). By contrast, deeply held voter perceptions that men are more capable of handling defense policy hinder women’s efforts to become leaders on defense issues. To counteract voter stereotypes that portray women as soft on defense, female senators construct policy records to demonstrate toughness and seek out opportunities for position taking through cosponsorship to highlight their support for the military.

Gendered perceptions of issue competencies are mediated by party reputations. I show how party ownership of issues can temper or exacerbate the importance of gender in policy debates. I highlight how these partisan and gendered perceptions of issues alter senators’ strategic calculations about which issues to engage and how much political capital to invest in the debate. Thus, the perception of the Republican Party as strong on defense can moderate the negative impact of gender stereotypes for Republican women. The view of Democrats as weak on national security reinforces gender stereotypes that women are soft on defense, making it more important for Democratic women to demonstrate toughness and commitment to our troops. The association of social welfare and women’s rights issues with the Democratic Party reinforces incentives for Democratic women to highlight these issues as they develop their legislative portfolios. Indeed, the centrality of these issues to Democratic voters, particularly female Democrats, can only benefit Democratic women senators as they work to achieve their policy goals and secure re-election. By contrast, Republican women do not reap the same level of benefits from pursuing women’s issues because these policies are not part of the core principles that make up the Republican Party’s message of lower taxes, strong defense, and support for business. At worst, women’s rights initiatives can antagonize key elements of the party’s base. Proposals promoting reproductive rights will antagonize social conservatives, and business-oriented Republicans will object to employment discrimination initiatives that impose more regulations on corporations and small businesses. Thus, Republican women must exercise more caution as they decide whether to focus on women’s issues and which policies to champion.

Furthermore, my research shows that partisan polarization and the resulting demands for party loyalty in the contemporary Senate affect senators’ calculations about whether to emphasize policy preferences based on gender. The ideological polarization and intraparty homogeneity that characterizes the contemporary Senate increase pressure on senators to act as members of partisan teams (Lee 2009; Sinclair 2006). Thus, my analysis indicates that in settings requiring party loyalty, such as judicial confirmation fights over Supreme Court nominees, even the most moderate female Republicans are hesitant to publicly oppose nominees based on their conservative records on women’s rights.

Finally, as members of partisan teams in an era of fierce electoral competition for control of the Senate, women are encouraged to utilize their gender in ways that will bolster the party’s standing with voters, particularly women voters. Women frequently participate in party messaging activities that highlight their status as women as they advertise the party message. Thus, Democratic women often join together to promote Democratic initiatives on social welfare and women’s rights issues. Republican women are often deployed in a defensive capacity to counter Democratic accusations that Republican policies are anti-women. Women senators can leverage these messaging opportunities to raise their media profile, gain power within the party caucus, and advance their own policy initiatives. However, they also run the risk of being pigeonholed in specific policy areas or used as symbols of diversity without influence over the details of policy.

In sum, through careful analysis of senators’ policy activity, I demonstrate that gender is a fundamental identity that interacts with traditional influences on legislative behavior like partisanship and ideology to shape legislative priorities. Women senators are more vigorous advocates for inclusion of women’s interests in the development of policy, and they devote more attention to how specific policies differentially impact various groups of women. A senator’s own ideological views and the political context surrounding an issue impact whether senators pursue policy preferences based on gender. However, beyond personal preferences, senators also develop their legislative portfolio with an eye to public expectations regarding gender roles and party reputations. Thus, the history of women’s integration into politics and voter assumptions about women’s expertise facilitate women’s efforts to stake a legislative claim on social welfare policy while creating additional hurdles for female senators working to demonstrate expertise on defense issues. Party reputations for ownership of issues interact with gendered perceptions of policy expertise, creating opportunities for legislative entrepreneurship and shaping senators’ political strategies. However, demands for loyalty to one’s partisan team also complicate senators’ decisions about when to pursue gender-based policy preferences, particularly for Republican women. Finally, in an era of heightened electoral competition, gender has become a tool of partisan warfare as the parties turn to female senators to reach out to women voters by advertising how the party’s agenda will help women or by defending the party against criticism that their policies will hurt women. Female senators must decide whether employing gender to promote party messages will advance or inhibit their political and policy goals.

A Brief History: Evolution from the Old Senate Club to the New Senate Club

Classic treatments of the Senate of the 1930s to the late 1950s including Robert Caro’s Master of the Senate, William White’s Citadel, and Donald Matthews’ U.S. Senators and Their World provide a picture of a U.S. Senate that was inward looking, conservative, resistant to constituent pressures, and almost exclusively made up of white men (White 1956; Matthews 1960; Caro 2002). When future majority leader Lyndon Johnson (D-TX) arrived in the Senate, he saw an institution populated by whales and minnows, senior power brokers and more junior members with limited influence (Rae and Campbell 2001; Caro 2002). Johnson’s Senate was governed by norms of apprenticeship, specialization, reciprocity, and courtesy. New senators were expected to serve an apprenticeship where they were seen and not heard, taking the time to learn the rules and norms of the Senate before actively participating in policy making. As specialists, senators focused their efforts on the policy areas within their committee jurisdictions and those initiatives that affected their states. They offered few floor amendments and did most of their work in committee. The norm of reciprocity required senators to do favors for each other and keep their word once a bargain had been struck. In the spirit of reciprocity, senators rarely utilized their institutional prerogatives such as the right to filibuster, making the historic filibusters against civil rights legislation all the more notable. Finally, senators were expected to show each other courtesy. Senators did not engage in personal attacks against each other nor did they engage in self-promotion or any activity that would reflect poorly on the institution of the Senate (Sinclair 1989; Baker 2001; Schickler 2011).

By the election of 1958, the restrictive norms of the old boys club were already falling as the Senate began its transformation into what Barbara Sinclair calls the “individualist partisan Senate” in which party polarization, electoral competition, and the demands of the modern campaign led senators to abandon strict adherence to the institutional norms that enforced collegiality and maintained the exclusive nature of the Senate club (Sinclair 1989, 2006, 2009). The election of liberal Northern Democrats in competitive races and the realignment of the South toward the Republican Party led to increasing ideological polarization among senators, encouraging them to organize into partisan teams that utilize the procedural prerogatives held by the majority and minority party to score political points against the other side in an effort to win majority control in the next election (Lee 2011, 2009, 2008b; Sinclair 1989, 2006; Koger 2010).

The political ferment of the 1960s and 1970s rapidly expanded the policy agenda of government and the size and diversity of the interest group community. New issues from civil rights to environmental regulation provided senators with opportunities to become policy leaders on a range of issues. Senators responded by increasing their staffs to enhance their policy expertise and expanding their number of committee assignments and their participation on the floor to become policy generalists who could influence any issue that caught their attention (Sinclair 1989; Evans 1991; Fenno 1991). A proliferation of new interest groups representing business groups, trade associations, consumers, women’s rights, and civil rights organizations reinforced senators’ efforts at policy entrepreneurship by working to recruit senators as champions for the group’s causes (Sinclair 1989, 2006; Berry and Wilcox 2009). The ever-expanding news media, from state and national newspapers to network and cable news, offered senators opportunities to become national spokespersons on various policy issues. Today the Internet blogosphere and the social media of Facebook and Twitter provide additional avenues for senators to raise their profiles with constituents and policy activists (Sinclair 1989, 2006, 2009; Sellers 2002, 2010).

Gender Politics, Women, and the New Senate Club

The emergence of social identity as a political force in the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s coincided with the evolution of the Senate into a more individualist partisan institution. Women’s rights groups benefited from the newfound willingness of individual senators to employ the rules of the Senate in ways that would force consideration of their individual and/or partisan priorities. Liberal senators like Birch Bayh (D-IN) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA) took up feminist causes from the Equal Rights Amendment to gender equity in the workplace (Mansbridge 1986; Gelb and Palley 1996; Conway, Ahern, and Steurnagel 2005). Still the Senate was largely closed to female members. As late as 1991 there were only two women serving in the Senate, Republican Nancy Landon Kassebaum (KS) and Democrat Barbara Mikulski (MD) (Center for the American Woman and Politics 2011a, 2011b).

By 1992, the political climate was ripe for the election of more women to Congress. Women candidates, particularly Democrats, benefited from the Bush-Clinton presidential campaign’s focus on the economy and social welfare issues, particularly health care. The end of the Cold War diverted attention from defense and foreign policy concerns that favor male candidates. The media frenzy surrounding Anita Hill’s testimony during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas spotlighted women’s rights issues, particularly sexual harassment and the underrepresentation of women in Congress. Women benefited from their status as outsiders in a Congress that was beset by ethics scandals and suffered from a dismally low approval rating. As a result, the 1992 “Year of the Woman” election saw four new Democratic women but no Republican women elected to the Senate, the largest contingent of women elected in one cycle (Wilcox 1994; Chaney and Sinclair 1994; Fox 1997). All four of these Democratic women, Barbara Boxer (CA), Dianne Feinstein (CA), Carol Moseley Braun (IL), and Patty Murray (WA), portrayed themselves as champions of women’s rights, and each claimed that the spectacle of the all-male Judiciary Committee’s handling of the Clarence Thomas hearings contributed to their desire to run for the Senate. One candidate, Patty Murray (D-WA), explicitly utilized her gender as a reason to support her candidacy by adopting the campaign slogan “Just a Mom in Tennis Shoes.” Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) sold fundraising merchandise emblazoned with the assertion that “2% is not enough,” highlighting the fact that there were only two women in the Senate (Smolowe, McDowell, and Shannon 1992; Schroedel and Snyder 1994).

The advancement of women into the Senate continued at a slow pace in the 1994, 1996, and 1998 elections. In 2000, the election of another four Democratic women, including former first lady and future presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (NY), Maria Cantwell (WA), Jean Carnahan (MO), and Debbie Stabenow (MI), increased the number of women in the Senate from nine to thirteen. Thus, in the 107th Congress (2001–2002), women for the first time held an equivalent proportion of seats, 13% in the House and Senate (Center for the American Woman and Politics 2011b).¹ The Democratic wave elections of 2006 and 2008 brought several new Democratic women into the Senate including Amy Klobuchar (MN), Claire McCaskill (MO), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), and Kay Hagan (NC). Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) was appointed to fill Hillary Clinton’s seat after Clinton became Secretary of State in the Obama administration. While Democratic women continue to hold more Senate seats than Republican women, Republican women increased their Senate representation from three to five in the 108th Congress when Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Elizabeth Dole (NC) joined Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX), Olympia Snowe (ME), and Susan Collins (ME) in the Republican caucus.² To date, there have never been more than five Republican women in the Senate (Center for the American Woman and Politics 2011b).³ Republican women did not make substantial gains in the Tea Party–fueled Republican wave in 2010. Kelly Ayotte (NH) was the only female Republican senator elected in that year. While Republicans are expected to gain Senate seats in the 2012 election, the number of Republican women in the Senate will remain small because Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX) and Olympia Snowe (ME) are retiring and Republican women are likely nominees in few competitive Senate races (Hotline Staff 2012).⁴

The contemporary Senate provides an important opportunity to systematically evaluate the impact of gender on the policy-making decisions of senators across several issue areas and in a context with strong institutional and partisan norms of behavior. The election of increasing numbers of women to the Senate coincided with political turmoil on a range of social welfare and women’s rights concerns. The pursuit of comprehensive health insurance reform by Democratic presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama instigated fierce Senate battles over policy changes in all aspects of the health care system. Campaigning as a compassionate conservative, Republica...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Women and the New Senate Club
• 2. A Stronger Voice for Women, Children, and Families? Gender Identity and Policy Making on Women’s Issues
• 3. Playing Offense and Defense on Women’s Rights
• 4. Replacing Sandra Day O’Connor: Gender and the Politics of Supreme Court Nominations
• 5. Providing for the Common Defense: Gender and National Security Politics in the Post-9/11 World
• 6. Gender and Policy Making in the New Senate Club
• Notes
• References
• Index