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Recent scholarship rejects campaign finance as a cause of women's underrepresentation in Congress because women raise as much money as men running in similar races. We argue that campaign finance still impacts which women can make a run for office because candidates have to build their own donor networks. Using a unique dataset that includes primary and general election candidates for the U.S. House in 2010 and 2012, we examine the gender composition of candidates' donor networks. We find that candidates' ideological views are very important to contributors. Donors, particularly Democrats, also exhibit a gender affinity effect in which men give more to male candidates and women favor female candidates. Furthermore, female Democratic donors seem to value the election of women, especially liberal Democratic women, over other traditional predictors of giving, such as incumbency and competitiveness. Meanwhile, Republican male and female donors do not focus on candidate gender, and female Republican donors prefer conservative candidates. Thus, the existing partisan donor pools are friendlier to the emergence of liberal female Democrats than Republican women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women are drastically underrepresented in American political institutions. This has prompted speculation about the impact of electing more women on policy and the functioning of government. Examining the growing presence of women in Congress, I demonstrate that women do exhibit unique policy priorities, focusing more on the needs of various groups of women. However, the incentive structure of the American electoral system, which rewards ideological purity, means that women are not likely to bring more consensus to Washington. Indeed, women's issues are now entrenched in the partisan divide. Since the 1990s, the majority of women elected to Congress have been Democrats, who have pursued their vision of women's interests while portraying Republican policies as harmful to women. In response, Republican women have been deployed to defend their party, further reducing the potential for bipartisan cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The politics of Supreme Court nominations present a case in which gender issues from abortion to diversity are highly salient on the bench. However, confirmation politics are also tightly constrained by institutional pressure for party loyalty. In the battle to replace Sandra Day O'Connor, we find that gender had a limited impact on senators' votes on the Roberts and Alito nominations. Republicans uniformly supported the president's nominees and the most liberal Democrats opposed them. However, gender did impact the votes of more moderate and conservative Democrats. Analysis of the explanations senators offer to justify their votes and build trust with constituents demonstrates that women—particularly Democratic women—place greater emphasis on women's rights in their floor statements, supporting the contention that female senators prioritize women as a constituency and bring a different perspective to policy deliberations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents an analysis of sex differences in cosponsorship activity. The ability of the U.S. Congress to accurately reflect the will of the people is an issue that has preoccupied scholars and political activists since the founding period. Today the politics of identity have taken center stage as women's groups raise money to elect female candidates and groups representing Hispanics and African Americans fight for the creation of majority-minority districts under the assumption that the election of more group members will improve substantive representation of their interests. Meanwhile, opponents insist that social identity is irrelevant to the representation of constituency interests. Empirical research on legislatures reflects this dichotomy. Women-and-politics scholars focus on illuminating the ways in which gender as a social identity affects policy preferences and legislative activity, but these scholars often discount the importance of constituency interests, party affiliation, and institutional structures.

Presents views on the impact of electing more women to public office on the making of public policy in the U.S. Improvement of attention to the needs of women, children and family; Relationship of women to institution they serve; Policy of women as legislators.