TRiSS in association with the Department of Political Science at Trinity College Dublin
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Date: Thursday 30 March 2017
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Time: 1-2.00pm
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Venue: TRiSS Seminar Room, Room C6.002, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin
The Department of Political Science at Trinity College Dublin, in association with Trinity Research in Social Sciences (TRiSS), is pleased to invite you to a talk by Dr Mirya Holman:
Stop, Collaborate, and Listen: Women's Caucuses, Collaboration, and Policy Making in U.S. State Legislatures
"Collaboration plays a key role in the crafting of good public policy. Certain individual and institutional characteristics are associated with higher levels of collaboration; in particular, women are more likely to work with others and collaboration is more likely to occur in environments where collaboration is less costly. We use a new dataset of all pieces of legislation considered in 2015 in U.S. state legislatures to examine the factors associated with women's collaboration with each other. We leverage the diversity of caucuses in U.S. states to examine the collaboration between female legislators in caucus and non-caucus states. The analysis demonstrates that the power of women's caucuses to connect women within legislatures is predicated on their representation and the party in power. While caucuses do not have an independent effect on women's collaboration with each other, they are effective in Democratically controlled bodies and when interacted with the level of women's representation. We find that all types of women's caucuses can increase co-sponsorship rates, but in interaction with higher levels of women's representation in the body. Our findings speak to the long-term consequences of electing women to political office, the importance of women's organizations, and the institutionalization of gender in politics."
About the Speaker
Dr Mirya Holman is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Tulane University. Her interests include women and politics, local politics, research methods, and environmental politics