Diversifying Congress: Political Amateurism and Women's Representation in the House of Representatives

Abstract

In this paper I find that increases in women’s representation in Congress, and specifically in the House of Representatives, are generally not achieved through the political pipeline, as conventional political wisdom may suggest. For this research I have created an innovative scale of three experience levels charting the career paths to Congress of Congresswomen in the House of Representatives from the 80th Congress to present. When examining this new data, I find that as the numbers of women in each political party have increased in Congress, so have the numbers of women with less political experience. Therefore, it seems that the traditional solution for women’s underrepresentation in Congress, improving access to the political pipeline, has not been effective; rather, political amateurism in Congress has become a diversifying force and allowed for more women from diverse backgrounds to enter public office. Additionally, I find little evidence supporting the assumption that amateur politicians are irresponsible, naive, or ideologically extreme; indeed, I do not find a pattern across parties in terms of the ideology of amateurs. Though amateur Republican women do tend to be more extreme than their professional counterparts, amateur Democratic women are actually less ideologically extreme than more politically experienced Democratic Congresswomen. Finally, since this recent historical expansion of womens’ caucuses in Congress, women have also managed to be elected to districts that do not fit into the “women-friendly” district stereotype; as the number of women elected to Congress has increased, the locations where these women are elected have become more varied. In conclusion, alternative pathways into Congress that do not rely upon the political pipeline have typically been viewed in political science as inferior to political professionalism; however, these pathways have opened doors for diverse groups of representatives and continue to make representation in Congress more reflective of our country as a whole. Therefore, we must rethink the conventional wisdom regarding the political pipeline and consider alternative routes into public office as similarly legitimate.