Essay On Gender Differences In Congress

My topic of interest is gender difference in US Congress voting on child welfare laws. This is an important issue because legislators greatly impact our society and how it runs. In the past several decades, the amount of female legislators has significantly increased, holding around 15-20 percent of seats in Congress. Is the increasing inclusion of women in government changing the laws of our country? Will women’s issues be more prevalent in Congress? How will this change in the demographics of Congress impact our nation? Stereotypically, women are known to be more compassionate, empathetic, warm and family-oriented. Due to these traits attributed to women, it can be reasoned that female legislators would be more inclined to vote favorably on child welfare laws, as they are in the best interests of the child. Determining if gender does influence voting in …show more content…
Welch (1985) found that there was an absolute difference in voting between men and women. Men vote 20 points more conservatively on a scale of 0 to 100. This difference is substantially and statistically significant. Welch somewhat attributes this difference in voting to constituency bases of men and women. Women are more likely to represent Northern and urban constituencies with high proportions of blacks and immigrants. Furthermore, Welch (1985) said that female’s greater liberalism may be “because they are in a minority position, they may have more ‘liberal’ sentiment on domestic social-welfare issues” (p. 127). Women do vote more liberally, however, the gender gap in voting continues to narrow. Another study was conducted to determine the effects of gender on congressional behavior. Vega and Firestone (1995) found that female members of Congress had slightly more liberal voting behaviors when compared to their male counterparts. However, they found that party, constituency and district characteristics were better predictors of voting than