UF Study: Links To Women’s Groups Influence State Legislators’ Voting

August 12, 1997

GAINESVILLE — Ties to influential women’s groups — not whether a legislator is a man, woman, Republican or Democrat — most likely determine how state lawmakers nationwide vote on family issues, a new University of Florida study finds.

“Just being female doesn’t guarantee a legislator will represent women’s interests,” said Elizabeth Williams, who surveyed 494 female and 617 male state legislators for her doctoral dissertation in political science. “Male legislators with connections to women’s groups represent women and family issues better than females without such relationships.”

Williams’ research is the first nationwide study of state legislators since the 1994 Republican electoral sweep, when 88 moderate-to-conservative Republican women replaced more than 100 mostly liberal Democratic female legislators, said James Button, a UF political scientist who supervised her work.

Generally, political experts have believed that electing more women to statehouses, particularly Democrats, who have a stronger tradition than Republicans in supporting social issues, was the key to passing legislation favorable to women and children, Button said.

“But our study finds that women’s interests are much more subtle and complex than just increasing the numbers of female legislators,” he said. “In fact, there were no significant differences in support for women’s issues between Democratic men and Republican women, provided they received money or endorsements from women’s groups.”

Specifically, legislators with ties to groups such as the National Organization for Women, Business and Professional Women’s Association and the American Association of University Women are much more likely to support child welfare, day care, public education, anti-discrimination and other issues women generally favor, Williams said.

“The results have important implications for feminist groups, female voters and political action committees that finance campaigns,” she said. “If their goal is getting legislation passed that benefits women and children — or defeating bills that would harm them — they need to look beyond a legislator’s gender and political party identification. Some men, particularly Democrats with ties to women’s groups, can offer better representation than women without such relationships.”

The number of women elected to state legislatures has increased fivefold since 1970, to more than 1,500 nationwide. Today, one out of five state legislators nationwide is female.

Learning how women affect legislatures is important because these once relatively weak institutions have become increasingly influential, Williams said. Many policies once determined by the federal government have shifted to the states, such as welfare and more recently gun control, with the 1997 U.S. Supreme Court ruling granting states authority to decide whether to enforce background checks on firearm purchases, she said.

“More and more, the important issues that affect our daily lives are going to be decided by state legislatures,” Williams said.

Although men sponsored fewer bills on women’s issues than their female counterparts, they were just as successful in getting their bills passed. Eighty-seven percent of the men’s bills became law, as did 86 percent of the women’s bills, she said.

The UF study’s other major finding is that today’s female legislators represent more than just women’s issues.’ By building strong and often bipartisan coalitions, they are as effective as their male colleagues in getting legislatures to pass bills they sponsored on transportation, finance, crime and a wide range of nongender-related issues, Williams said.

Twenty-six women have been elected to chamber leadership positions in state legislatures nationwide, including Republican Senate President Toni Jennings in Florida and both the senate president and house speaker in Alaska.

“In the past, women legislators were called benchwarmers’ because they merely served until they could be replaced in the next election,” she said. “Many were widows who took over their husband’s seats. Today, female legislators are independently elected, run their own campaigns and are as effective as their male colleagues in sponsoring and passing bills.”