연사(Speaker): 라이언 교수 (Prof. Josh M. Ryan, Utah State University)
주제(Topic): Women's Lawmaking Power in the US State Legislatures
일시(Date/Time): 2022.07.06. 수(Wednesday) AM 10:30-12:00
장소(Place): 수선관(Suseon Hall) 61805.
저서(Books):
<The Congressional Endgame: Interchamber Bargaining and Resolution>
요약:
American state legislatures control policy in a variety of jurisdictions, including health care, education, and land use. They also vary in their governing capacity as some state legislatures, like California, are organized similar to the American Congress, with professional members and access to resources such as policy experts and staff. Others, like Utah, are part-time with low pay and few staff. We explore whether women legislators, a traditionally under-represented group in American politics, are able to access policymaking power. We focus on standing committees, which craft bills and oversee the executive branch, to assess whether there are gender gaps in committee assignments in state legislatures. Building on research on candidate quality, we expect professional legislatures to exhibit the same dynamics as in Congress, theorizing that women legislators will have more valuable committee assignments than men. This is due to the competition for seats in high professionalism states which results in only the most qualified and competent women winning election. In low professionalism legislatures, we do not expect candidate quality to be higher among women because of the reduced competition for seats. Thus, we expect women to hold less desirable committee assignments than men, reflecting traditional gender bias. We find support for these claims using novel data of committee assignments in state legislatures from 2007 to 2014.