ARE WOMEN MORE LIKELY TO VOTE FOR WOMENS ISSUE BILLS THAN THEIR MALE COLLEAGUES

Many hypothesize that the election of more women to the U.S. Congress is more than simply an issue of equity, but will make a substantive po licy difference. I test this hypothesis by analyzing the voting record s of all representatives in the 103d Congress on a set of women's issu es. It is my premise that women will not necessarily exhibit a more li beral ideology than their male counterparts on all issues; however, th e more directly an issue affects women, the more likely it is that wom en will vote together across party lines. The results of regression an alysis on the composite score of women's issue votes indicate that gen der exerts a significant and independent effect on voting for women's issues in the face of controls for other major influences on congressi onal voting. These influences include constituency factors, party, per sonal characteristics, and ideology. Interaction terms for gender by p arty indicate that much of the impact of gender is due to the influenc e of Republican women. Legit analysis of the individual votes demonstr ates that the gender of the representative was most significant on vot es that dealt with abortion and women's health. The influence of gende r was overwhelmed by other factors such as party, ideology, and consti tuency concerns on votes that were less directly related to women, suc h as education.