A Decade Increasing Women’s Representation in the Pennsylvania General Assembly

• In Event: Women, Politics, and Policy: A View from the States

Abstract

After hovering around 18 percent for several decades, the percentage of women in Pennsylvania’s General Assembly has grown significantly in the last decade. Women now comprise nearly 1/3 of legislators and hold significant leadership positions in both houses and in both parties—including Speaker of the House, a Democrat, and Senate Majority Leader, a Republican. Using data from the 2013-2014, Sweet-Cushman (2020) found that despite their relatively small numbers at the time, women legislators in Pennsylvania were more likely than their male counterparts to: 1) sponsor women’s issue bills, 2) garner support for legislation they sponsored, 3) work across the aisle, and 4) have a higher rate of passage of bills into law.

These earlier findings suggest a number of possibilities for the impact of women’s greater representation and leadership in the General Assembly. It is possible that an increase in the number of women in Pennsylvania’s legislature would further foster efforts to address women’s policy issues, increase legislative collaboration, and enhance legislative productivity (i.e. bill passage). Alternatively, the relative inexperience of these newer legislators combined with the possibility of gender-based backlash (Schilling & Osborn 2020) has the potential to dilute women’s legislative behavior and contribution. In this paper, we will explore these competing possibilities. Pennsylvania, as a full-time, professional, and large legislature without term limits and with increasing partisan polarization offers an excellent forum to examine the impact of an increase in women’s representation.

We utilize comparative legislative data from terms over the course of a decade, from the 2013-2014 to the 2023-2024 legislative sessions to examine the contribution women legislators have made over time on measures of support for women’s issues, cosponsorship, bipartisanship, and bill passage. This analysis will provide insight into the impact of increasing the number of women in legislatures and offer empirical data to measure gendered legislative effectiveness. Ultimately, using Pennsylvania as a critical and empirical case study, this paper will help to answer questions of the factors that complicate women’s contribution (e.g. seniority, leadership, polarization) as their representation in legislative bodies expand.

Author

• Jennie Sweet-Cushman, Chatham University