Speaking Out

Abstract

This study demonstrates that Republican female House members invoke women in their public statements at the same frequency as their Democratic counterparts. Despite this congruency, the specific issues that female partisan legislators emphasize when they invoke women in their statements are quite different. Republican women discuss how tax, business, and pension laws affect working women while Democratic female representatives concern themselves with laudatory tributes and funding for welfare state programs. In addition to controlling for party, the explanatory variable of race is also introduced to explain variation in emphasis, particularly regarding the issue of abortion. Congressional Recordentries contributed by the female members of the 105th Congress in 1997 serve as the data for this analysis.