CAPS Presents- Emily West (Pitt)- "Speaking Up, Speaking More? Gender Dynamics in Committee Hearings” (joint with Pamela Ban (UCSD), Justin Grimmer (Stanford) and Jaclyn Kaslovsky (Harvard))

October 5, 2018 - 2:30pm to 4:00pm

Subject: Emily West presenting at CAPS Friday 10/5

As part of the Center for the Study of American Politics and Society’s internal departmental speaker series, Emily Wet will present her paper “Speaking Up, Speaking More? Gender Dynamics in Committee Hearings” (joint with Pamela Ban (UCSD), Justin Grimmer (Stanford) and Jaclyn Kaslovsky (Harvard)) this Friday 10/5 2:30pm-4pm in Posvar 4500. Below is the abstract of the paper.

 

Female legislators have been shown to focus on different issues and sponsor legislation at different rates than their male counterparts. Among ordinary citizens, experimental data suggests that female participation increases with the number of women present, particularly under majority rule. We bridge the gap between these two literatures by investigating gender dynamics in congressional committees. Using a variety of speech-based outcomes from transcripts of congressional committee hearings and a generalized difference-in-differences design, we show how the gender composition of a committee affects members’ participation rates, sentiment, and aggression. We find that increased proportions of women on a committee (1) negatively impact the speaking instances and number of words spoken among senior men and (2) positively impact the same outcomes for majority party women. However, the sentiment and aggression exhibited by committee members of either gender are not influenced by the gender ratio. Taken together, these results suggest that the gender ratio has diverging effects on how men and women participate in the deliberative stage of policymaking, although style remains unchanged.

Location and Address

4500 WW Posvar Hall