Overview

Though the number of women elected to the U.S. state legislatures has increased substantially in the last forty years, researchers still struggle to connect the presence of women in the legislature to public policy outcomes that affect women. One reason for this struggle is that we lack a complete understanding of how political parties modify the relationship between women legislators' interests in representing women and the creation of public policies that concern them. In How Women Represent Women: Political Parties, Gender and Representation in the State Legislatures, Tracy L. Osborn argues that political parties fundamentally shape the pursuit of women's policy issues in American politics. When women represent women, they do so as partisans. Drawing on a comparative study of U.S. state legislatures using original election, sponsorship, and roll call data in nearly all ninety-nine state legislative chambers in 1999-2000, Osborn argues that political parties influence women legislators both on an individual and a structural level. First, women's party identities shape the types of alternatives they offer to solve women's policy problems. Second, parties, by holding majority control (to varying degrees) over agenda setting and policy creation, have the institutional ability to constrain and dictate which policy proposals have a chance to become laws. How Women Represent Women provides a rigorous theoretical and practical understanding of what partisanship means and how parties fundamentally shape the pursuit of women's policy issues in American politics today.

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9780199845347

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<br> Tracy Osborn's book takes existing research on women state legislators to the next level by exploring the institutional and political conditions necessary for them to 'make a difference' - or legislate in a substantive fashion on behalf of women. How Women Represent Women is a compelling book that will be important to the fields of women and politics, legislative politics, and American government. --Sue Thomas, author of How Women Legislate<br><p><br> Tracy Osborn provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of how partisan identities and party control of legislative processes affect the attitudes and behavior of women legislators. How Women Represent Women serves as a clarion call for scholars to pay greater attention to how political parties influence the representational relationship between women elected officials and women in the electorate. --Susan J. Carroll, Professor of Political Science and Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University<br><p><br> Tracy Osborn's book, How Women Represent Women, offers a real and important advance in our understanding of how women act as legislators in general and on behalf of the interests of women specifically. Her analysis is careful, and her theoretical insights are supported by an impressive array of original state legislative data. The result is a must-read for anyone interested in gender in American politics, and indeed for students of American politics more generally. --Christina Wolbrecht, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Notre Dame<br><br><p><br>

"""Tracy Osborn's book takes existing research on women state legislators to the next level by exploring the institutional and political conditions necessary for them to 'make a difference' - or legislate in a substantive fashion on behalf of women. How Women Represent Women is a compelling book that will be important to the fields of women and politics, legislative politics, and American government.""--Sue Thomas, author of How Women Legislate ""Tracy Osborn provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of how partisan identities and party control of legislative processes affect the attitudes and behavior of women legislators. How Women Represent Women serves as a clarion call for scholars to pay greater attention to how political parties influence the representational relationship between women elected officials and women in the electorate.""--Susan J. Carroll, Professor of Political Science and Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University ""Tracy Osborn's book, How Women Represent Women, offers a real and important advance in our understanding of how women act as legislators in general and on behalf of the interests of women specifically. Her analysis is careful, and her theoretical insights are supported by an impressive array of original state legislative data. The result is a must-read for anyone interested in gender in American politics, and indeed for students of American politics more generally.""--Christina Wolbrecht, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Notre Dame"

Author Information

Tracy Osborn is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa

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