Anna Mitchell Mahoney’s new book examines the ways in which gender and partisanship shape behavior in state legislative institutions. More specifically, Women Take Their Place in State Legislatures illuminates how these dynamics facilitate or constrain the creation of women’s caucuses at the state legislative level. By shifting the focus to the states, the author is able to identify factors that appear to both influence and allow collective organizing along gendered lines, as well as factors that make this type of organizing unlikely. In addition to important documentation of women’s caucuses and where they have emerged, Mahoney offers important theoretical and conceptual contributions to literatures on identity politics, partisanship, and collective action within legislative institutions.
Before analyzing why and how women’s caucuses are formed (or not), Mahoney offers a new typology of women’s caucuses that is more inclusive of the diverse models of women’s organizing. She challenges the idea that caucuses must have an explicit policy focus, formal structure, and/or formal recognition by the legislature in order to count. Instead, she convincingly suggests that the very gendered and partisan dynamics that women’s caucuses often seek to disrupt are those that make meeting these criteria particularly difficult. By expanding the definition of women’s caucuses to include varied sites for focus—including information sharing, social networking, and support—and somewhat less formal structures, she captures a broader swath of women’s organizing that is strategic in its navigation of existing institutional hurdles. Importantly, while she includes caucuses that do not have a substantive policy focus in her counts, Mahoney makes clear that policy impact may still emerge from social caucuses in that they allow for the relationship development that can foster policy progress.
After establishing her typology for women’s caucuses, Mahoney—in Chapter 3—maps the existence of these caucuses across states in 2016 and offers data on the emergence of women’s state legislative caucuses from 1972 to 2009 in order to take a first cut at identifying conditions associated with caucus creation. Her findings suggest that there are opportunities for caucus creation in legislatures where other identity-based caucuses exist, where Democrats control the legislature, and where women’s representation is low (suggesting greater need for gender solidarity).
In the four chapters that follow, Mahoney investigates whether these conditions appear to influence caucus creation within specific states. She conducts four in-depth case studies: in New Jersey and Colorado, where women’s caucuses were created successfully, and in Pennsylvania and Iowa, where attempts to create women’s caucuses failed. Within each case study, she tests a central claim of her book: that women’s ability and willingness to organize is informed by the same three components oft-cited in collective action literature: opportunity, resources, and frames.
Through more than 180 interviews with state legislators and staff across the United States, as well as process tracing within the four states where caucus creation was attempted, Mahoney finds support for this claim. In New Jersey, for example, the political opportunity created by an increase in women’s legislative representation facilitated the founding of a woman’s caucus. Resources—particularly those that might be allocated by institutional leaders—also appear to shape the degree to which a legislative environment supports the creation of a women’s caucus. In Pennsylvania, for example, an unfriendly environment within the legislature erected high hurdles for the caucus entrepreneur to clear. Finally, collective action literature identifies a need for shared beliefs among participants as both necessary for fostering support and essential for motivating organizational action. In the case of women’s caucuses, gender consciousness within institutions factors into the likelihood of caucus creation. In Iowa, for example, Mahoney notes how the lack of strong gender consciousness among women members made it difficult for any caucus entrepreneur to make an effective case for collective organizing.
While these components are important to caucus creation, Mahoney’s findings do not reveal universal truisms for when, where, and why women’s caucuses emerge. In fact, a more significant finding from her research is that the differences in political environments across time and place, as well as the diversity in caucus types and focus, prevent any single success story from emerging. The factors that appear to weigh most heavily in caucus creation, however, are partisanship and the role and effectiveness of caucus entrepreneurs—or those individuals leading the effort to create a women’s caucus.
In legislative institutions where partisanship is the dominant mechanism guiding behavior, the creation of bipartisan caucuses attempts to disrupt deeply held norms and loyalties. But as Mahoney astutely explains: “Organizing legislatures around partisan identities poses inherent contradictions for legislators who hold multiple politically salient identities” (p. 26). Women’s caucuses can create sites for organizing among women that are alternative to their party caucuses, thus addressing their shared experiences and marginalization, but they may also pose risks and challenges to women members. These risks and challenges are documented in interviews and case studies throughout the book, suggesting that partisanship is the most significant hurdle—and one that only seems to be growing taller—to women’s collective organizing within today’s state legislative chambers.
“Savvy entrepreneurs,” as the author calls them, are necessary to effectively evaluate and navigate the partisan and gendered terrain of state legislatures if attempts to create women’s caucuses are to be successful. These critical actors must be willing to take on the risk of organizing along gender lines, and must be savvy enough to understand and identify windows of opportunity and marshal the resources to take advantage of them. They must also develop effective frames by which to recruit caucus supporters and members, recognizing where partisan constraints require the creation of less policy-focused organizations and tapping into the type of gender consciousness identified by Mahoney as at least helpful for uniting women legislators.
While the bulk of the text focuses on the creation of women’s caucuses, it also makes a strong case for why women’s collective organizing in state legislatures matters. Mahoney argues that women’s caucuses can provide emotional support for women in male-dominated—and too often hostile—environments; facilitate information sharing and relationship development; help women to develop skills and expertise for legislative success; and offer outward-facing results, such as support for women’s leadership development and candidacy.
More directly drawing from feminist institutionalism literature, Mahoney describes the interventions of women’s caucuses into legislative institutions that go beyond, though can also include, the adoption of women-friendly policy. She notes that women’s caucuses challenge the false idea of gender neutrality in these institutions, simultaneously making visible and pushing back against male dominance. When she describes women’s caucuses as “visible gendered practice,” she clearly captures why studying them is so important and revealing. Beyond telling compelling stories about the success or failure of specific caucuses, Women Take Their Place in State Legislatures successfully tells a much larger—and even more broadly applicable—story about the ways in which gender and partisanship significantly shape the patterns, distribution, and exercise of power within our legislative institutions.
