Research has demonstrated that women legislators face tougher re-election campaigns, often confronting stiff general election
and primary competition. They typically received less favorable media coverage and get less support from their parties. How do they respond to this very different electoral context?
In
Gendered Vulnerability: How Women Work Harder to Stay in Office (University of Michigan Press, 2018),
Jeffrey Lazarus and
Amy Steigerwalt say that they work harder. Lazarus is associate professor of political science at Georgia State University; Steigerwalt is professor of political science at Georgia State University.
Lazarus and Steigerwalt show that in a number of areas, women members of Congress simply do more. They introduce more bills and bring more money back to their districts. They spend more time on constituent services than men and are more responsive to their constituents’ policy preferences. The authors attribute this in part to the disproportionate level of vulnerability that women legislators feel.