TY  - JOUR
TI  - INTERSECTING INTERESTS: Gender, Race, and Congressional Attention to Women's Issues
AU  - Minta, Michael D.
AU  - Brown, Nadia E.
PY  - 2014
PB  - Cambridge University Press (CUP)
LA  - eng
AB  - AbstractDespite claims by normative theorists that gender diversity in Congress leads to better representation of women's interests, the results of empirical studies have been largely mixed. While some scholars have found positive effects of gender diversity, others have found very little impact. We argue that it is not the presence of White and minority women alone that makes political institutions more responsive to women's issues, but rather it is the organizational presence of minority men along with minority women who make similar claims for inclusion, power, and organizational formation to achieve those goals that matters. We examine to what extent gender and racial diversity have led to more attention to issues that directly and indirectly impact women. Using congressional hearings data from 1951–2004, we find that the increased presence of minority men and women legislators in the House, but less so in the Senate, is responsible for keeping women's interests on the congressional agenda. We demonstrate how an intersectional and additive approach can add both theoretical and empirical value to the study of political representation by demonstrating the impact of women and minorities in Congress.
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1017/s1742058x14000186
DO  - 10.1017/s1742058x14000186
T2  - Du bois review: social science research on race
VL  - 11
IS  - 2
SN  - 1742-0598
SN  - 1742-058X
SP  - 253-272
UR  - https://www.pollux-fid.de/r/cr-10.1017/s1742058x14000186
H1  - Pollux (Fachinformationsdienst Politikwissenschaft)
ER  -