High Hurdles: Legislative Professionalism and the Effectiveness of Women State Legislators

Thursday, August 7, 2025

For numerical gains in American state legislatures to translate into substantive representation, women legislators need the ability to advocate for their constituents. In this forthcoming published paper in The Journal of Politics, Associate Professor Robert McGrath (George Mason University), Associate Professor Josh Ryan (Utah State University), and Assistant Professor Jatia Wrighten (Virginia Commonwealth University) examine the determinants of legislative effectiveness in state legislatures, theorizing that women in more professional legislatures will be subject to electoral selection mechanisms that make them more successful lawmakers. To rule out institutional factors that might produce differences in effectiveness across the sexes, the authors examine resource allocations within legislatures, focusing on standing committees. Using novel over-time data on committee assignments in state legislatures, their results show that women receive less valuable committee seats than men. Despite this, women in professional legislatures are more effective than men, indicating that the high barriers to entry in these states produce skilled women legislators who act substantively for their constituents.

To learn more, read the full report here.

Image is AI-generated. Source: Freepik