Maria C. Escobar-Lemmon

Vote-Seeking Incentives and Legislative Representation in Six Presidential Democracies

Through the use of an original data set of bill initiation activity in six presidential democracies, we advance scholarly understanding of how the institutional incentives faced by legislative candidates influence representation. We extend and adapt theory, derived primarily from the experience of the U.S. Congress, demonstrating its viability, once assumed constants from the U.S. case are explicitly modeled, in quite distinct institutional contexts. In particular, we find the focus of individual legislators on national versus parochial concerns responds to the incentives provided by the candidate selection process, general election rules, legislator career patterns, and interbranch relations.

Getting to the Top Career Paths of Women in Latin American Cabinets

Are presidential cabinets gendered institutions? This important question has been ignored for Latin America to date. In this article, the authors propose four benchmarks for evaluating whether presidential cabinets should be classified as gendered institutions. If they are we should observe (1) that there are differences in career length, continuity, and mobility between men and women; (2) that women receive feminine domain posts and men masculine ones; (3) that masculine ministries offer greater potential for upward mobility; and (4) that women must be better qualified than men to receive appointments. Using data from eighteen Latin American countries from 1980 to 2003, the authors analyze the degree to which cabinets conform to these criteria. They conclude that even though women are starting to gain appointments to high-profile and to masculine domain cabinet posts, the overall evidence supports the conclusion that there are gendered patterns to cabinet appointments.

The Electoral Connection and Legislative Committees

This article examines whether the career needs of legislators – to be re-elected or to move on to another political post – allow us to explain the rules governing committee structures and the committee assignments individual legislators obtain. It uses the institutional variations provided by Argentina, Costa Rica, and Venezuela to test hypotheses about committee assignments and committee assignment mechanisms. It finds that incentives created by candidate selection procedures and electoral rules show some relationship to committee assignments, but with a good deal of variation across national cases and individual careers.

Just the Facts? Media Coverage of Female and Male High Court Appointees in Five Democracies

In this article, we examine gender differences in news media portrayals of nominees to high courts and whether those differences vary across country and time. Although past research has examined gender differences in news media coverage of candidates for elective office, few studies have looked at media coverage of high court nominees. As women are increasingly nominated to courts around the world, it is important to examine how nominations are covered by the news media and whether there is significant variation in coverage based on gender. We analyze media coverage of high court justices in five democracies: Argentina, Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the United States. We compare coverage of women appointed to the highest court with coverage of the most temporally proximate male nominees. We also compare coverage over time within each country as well as between countries that nominated women early with those that did so more recently. We find some evidence of gendered coverage, especially with regard to the attention paid to the gender of the women appointees. digitalcommons.unl.edu Earlier versions of this article were presented at the “Women, Media, and Politics: A Comparative Perspective” conference at Arizona State University, April 2014, and at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C. We wish to thank Kim Fridkin, Gina Woodall, and the anonymous reviewers for feedback and suggestions. We would also like to thank Eduardo Aleman, Ernesto Calvo, Elisabeth Gidengil, Shireen Hassim, and Mark Jones for helpful advice and suggestions for our newspaper sources and Jennifer Kahn for research assistance. Media Coverage of Female & Male High Court Appointees 255 Q: It seemed to me that male judges do much more abrasive things all the time, and it goes unremarked. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Yes, the notion that Sonia is an aggressive questioner—what else is new? Has anybody watched Scalia or Breyer up on the bench? —New York Times Magazine, July 12, 2009 In May 2009, President Barack Obama announced his intention to nominate Sonia Sotomayor for the U.S. Supreme Court. Immediately, the New Republic aired criticisms that Sotomayor is “not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench.” 1 Subsequent news outlets picked up the story, including National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, which asked, “Is Sonia Sotomayor Mean?” 2 It was not the first time a female justice had been described as aggressive. A 1994 Newsweek article on Ruth Bader Ginsburg was entitled “‘Rude’ Ruth.” 3 Recent studies in the United States find fewer gender differences in the amount and tone of media coverage of female candidates in recent elections (Brooks 2013; Dolan 2014; Hayes and Lawless 2015). Yet are findings from studies of candidates generalizable to women in other political realms? Specifically, are there gender differences in news media portrayals of nominees to high courts? Further, do these differences vary across countries and over time? As calls increase for greater numbers of women on high courts around the world (Hoekstra 2010; Hoekstra, Kittilson, and Bond 2014; Williams and Thames 2008), it is important to examine whether there is systematic variation in coverage of nominees based on gender. Understanding how the media covers high court nominees is essential, as this coverage may influence appointment outcomes, thereby shaping the composition of the court. Moreover, media coverage may also have long-run implications for the willingness of government officials to nominate women and for women to accept nominations. Negative coverage (especially if it is inaccurate) may reduce the efficacy of women judges by lowering their credibility with their colleagues, their staff, and importantly, lower court judges and other officials charged with 1. Jeffrey Rosen, “The Case Against Sotomayor,” New Republic, May 3, 2009, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/the-case-against-sotomayor (accessed March 10, 2016). 2. Nina Totenberg, “Is Sonia Sotomayor Mean?,” Morning Edition, National Public Radio, June 15, 2009, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105343155 (accessed March 10, 2016). 3. “‘Rude’ Ruth,” Newsweek, April 10, 1994, http://www.newsweek.com/rude-ruth-186990 (accessed March 10, 2016). 256 Maria C. Escobar-Lemmon et al. in Politics & Gender 12 (2016) carrying out their decisions. The coverage creates a first impression of the nominee’s competence and qualifications (see Harp, Loke, and Bachmann 2010). Finally, negative media coverage might also affect women’s judicial ambitions. As Fox and Lawless (2010, 2011) observe, one of the greatest impediments to seeking elected office for women is that they are socialized to perceive themselves as less qualified for office, despite having objectively similar backgrounds as their male counterparts. An important part of the socialization process can be media coverage of the institution, especially when that institution has been predominantly male. Similar socialization effects might hinder women’s considerations of their qualifications for judicial appointments. We analyze differences in news media coverage of high court justices in five democracies: Argentina, Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the United States. We compare coverage of women appointed to the highest court with coverage of the most temporally proximate male appointees. These five cases provide us with variation across the type of judicial system, presidential/parliamentary system, region, the number of subsequent nominations, and the timing of the first woman to be nominated (which varies from 1981 in the United States to 2004 in Argentina). This cross-time and cross-country comparison sheds light on the conditions that ameliorate differences in the media’s coverage of male and female nominees. Gender is a social process that assigns meaning to sex differences, and judicial selections are events in which gender is constructed (Kenney 2012). As did Kenney (2012, 45), we find that the social construction of sex differences is not identical across countries or time, but it nevertheless persists “with variations in different contexts.” Our findings suggest that gendered coverage often frames nominees in terms that reference professionally irrelevant factors (such as personal and family life) rather than professional qualifications and achievements. Gender and News Media Coverage Nearly all research on gender in news media coverage focuses on candidates for elected office in the United States. Initial studies demonstrated that compared with men, women candidates in U.S. elections received less media coverage, less prominent coverage (Kahn 1992, 1994; Kahn and Goldenberg 1991), more negative coverage, greater focus on the viability of their campaigns (Kahn 1996), and greater emphasis on appearance and personal life; the coverage also Media Coverage of Female & Male High Court Appointees 257 deemphasized individual accomplishments and often corresponded with common gender stereotypes. However, Smith (1997) and Jalalzai (2006) report a general trend toward more equitable coverage and less gender stereotyping for candidates for the U.S. Senate or governorships. Bystrom, Robertson, and Banwart’s (2001) analysis of the 2000 Senate and gubernatorial primaries concludes that women candidates received more coverage than men, suggesting less pronounced differences over time. Across U.S., Australian, and Canadian elections, women politicians are more often portrayed in terms of feminine stereotypes (Acker 2003; Kittilson and Fridkin 2008; Robinson and Saint-Jean 1995). In television news coverage of the 1993, 1997, and 2000 Canadian elections, messages of female party leaders were less likely to receive neutral coverage than those of male party leaders (Gidengil and Everitt 2003). In the 2000 election, newspaper headlines employed more aggressive language for male party leaders and more passive language for the female party leader (Sampert and Trimble 2003). The Canadian and Australian media emphasize women’s physical attributes and backgrounds (Deutchman and Ellison 2004; Everitt 2003; Gingras 1995). Only a few comparative studies examine gender differences in media coverage of heads of state, but they suggest that differences in press treatment appear to be more dramatic for highly visible, prestigious positions, and these differences do not appear much diminished over time. Norris (1997) finds that women receive less coverage than their male counterparts. 4 Murray (2010) shows that, cross-nationally, female candidates for executive office receive more coverage about their appearance than their male peers. Furthermore, news stories on female leaders commonly mention gender-related themes, employing the “first woman” frame. Taken together, existing research on elected office shows that gender stereotypes are often invoked in news coverage of elected officials. How, then, does the news media cover women in nonelected, appointed positions such as those on supreme and constitutional courts? We think this is an open and important question. Although the literature on elections leads us to expect less or gender-stereotyped news coverage for women relative to men, this may not hold for high court 4. Elizabeth Dole’s bid for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination received less coverage and less positive coverage than the campaigns of some male opponents, including those trailing her in the polls. The coverage she received focused on her appearance, her sex, and her campaign’s viability (see, for instance, Aday and Devitt 2001; Bystrom 2006; Heldman, Carroll, and Olson 2005). 258 Maria C. Escobar-Lemmon et al. in Politics & Gender 12 (2016) nominees. In elections, higher amounts of news media coverage benefit all candidates by increasing visibility and name recognition. However, where judges are appointed, it is not clear that a lack of publicity is a negative; potential

Sex, Survival, and Scandal: A Comparison of How Men and Women Exit Presidential Cabinets

The process of selecting cabinet ministers often takes place behind closed doors, including weighing the need to balance or manage factions within the presidents party and/or coalition partners; addressing demands for diversity in the cabinet, such as appointment of women or other historically underrepresented groups; sending signals about the administrations policy agenda; and enabling the president to have people he or she trusts close at hand. On the other hand, ministerial exits are usually less private affairs. In some cases they come after weeks of public or congressional scrutiny and criticism of ministers for policy failures or follow extended speculation about who will lose their seat when the president reshuffles the cabinet. Some ministers depart to pursue lucrative private-sector opportunities. Other ministers switch posts but stay in government. How ministers exit can have implications for the administration since a president who is frequently forced to shuffle the cabinet or sack ministers looks ineffective, and comparisons to rats and sinking ships are difficult to avoid in the wake of excessive changes. At the same time, an administration with zero turnover may also not be healthy, as it would suggest that presidents are staidly bound to their initial course of action and unable (or unwilling) to adapt to changing circumstances.

Leading toward equality: the effect of women mayors on gender equality in local bureaucracies

ABSTRACT Do women elected officials contribute to the creation of public sector workforces that are more representative of the populations they serve? A more representative bureaucracy is expected to produce better outcomes, and thus understanding the role that elected leadership plays in diversifying the bureaucracy is important. Using data from over 5000 Brazilian municipalities from 2001 to 2012, we examine whether the election of women mayors leads to the formation of municipal executive bureaucracies that are more representative in terms of gender. In addition, we test whether the presence of a woman mayor leads to increased wages for women bureaucrats and smaller wage gaps between men and women bureaucrats. We find that while women mayors do not increase women’s numerical representation in the municipal executive bureaucracy, they do contribute to the creation of bureaucracies with fewer gender inequalities. Electing a woman mayor increases the average wages of women bureaucrats and decreases the gender wage gap in the bureaucracy. These findings suggest that women mayors advocate for the promotion of women to leadership positions and reduce the gap between men’s and women’s ranks in the bureaucracy since the salaries of Brazilian civil servants are linked to their positions.