In this book, Michele L. Swers offers the first extensive account of women in the ultimate “old boys’ club,” the U.S. Senate. She examines in great detail women senators’ efforts in the 107th and 108th Congresses (2001–4) and in substantial policy debates of the 2000s, such as the eight-year debate on “partial–birth” abortion. As in her well-known work on the U.S. House (The Difference Women Make, 2003), Swers concludes that Senate (like House) women use their gendered social identity to represent women’s interests in Congress. Additionally, she demonstrates how Senate women make these contributions in a changing modern institution with strong electoral pressures, increasing party demands, and an array of strategic institutional tools at the disposal of each member. Using congressional data and staff and legislator interviews, the author demonstrates a mastery of the intricacies of Senate deliberation and illuminates a number of new avenues through which we see the influence of gender on lawmaking.
Women in the Club contributes three compelling and innovative insights to our understanding of the ways in which women legislators address women’s interests. The first insight is that explaining how gender matters must be done within the context of partisan politics. As Swers contends in her opening chapter (pp. 6–7), the modern Senate is one where parties exert increasing pressure on members to comply with their demands, despite an individual senator’s substantial tools of influence, such as holds. Throughout the book, she shows how these partisan pressures shape women’s actions, especially behind the scenes. For instance, pro-choice Republican women had to balance party pressure and even constituency concerns in the decision whether to back an amendment endorsing the standard in Roe v. Wade within the context of the high-profile partial-birth abortion debate.
In a similar vein, the second insight is that electoral pressure leads the parties to use women senators as a conduit for party messages to women voters. The literature on women in legislatures often focuses on behavior within the chamber, removed from interactions with voters and elections. Swers gives us several examples of parties urging women legislators to speak on issues because of what she calls their “moral authority” (p. 117) on such issues. The author’s description of the debate on the Lilly Ledbetter Act demonstrates these dynamics. Democrats at the time pushed for the bill to pass the Senate and strategically labeled detractors of it, particularly Republican women detractors, as anti–equal pay for women. Republicans then searched for the right woman in their party to sponsor an alternative Republican equal-pay bill. They settled on Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), who, they contended, could put a female face on the bill (rather than Mike Enzi (R-WY), the “middle-aged white guy” (p. 106) who authored the bill). One Republican senator interviewed by Swers called Hutchison a “good soldier” (p. 106) to act on behalf of Republicans in this capacity. As she notes, these strategic choices by parties to communicate with women voters are not always successful; for instance, the effort by Rick Santorum (R-PA) to recruit a woman as “window dressing” for a proposal about Iraqi women was less effective (p. 233). Swers’s analysis, however, illuminates how parties strategically utilize women senators as key communicators of party positions to women voters.
Finally, the author’s third insight is a strong demonstration of the way that issues seemingly unrelated to gender on the surface can, in fact, be issues on which women senators represent women constituents. For instance, Swers uses press releases issued by male and female senators to show that Democratic women senators cited a lack of concern for women’s rights as an explanation for their “no” votes for the confirmation of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court (Chapter 4). In addition, she details the similar rates at which women (particularly Democratic women) and men in the Senate offer amendments on defense bills, though Democratic women senators focus on “soft” defense amendments that offer benefits to military personnel and their families (pp. 198–99). Few common definitions of women’s issues would incorporate defense or judicial decisions, but Swers clearly demonstrates how each of these issues can take on a gender dimension. Her focus on these areas is of particular importance in the Senate, where judicial and defense issues are visible and often controversial.
I have two primary concerns with Swers’s work, each of which the author is aware of and each of which is common to studies women in legislatures. First, Swers is able to conclude more about the behavior of Democratic women senators than of Republican women senators. The reason is simple: There are many more Democratic than Republican women in the Senate. However, this limitation does not stop Swers from making keen observations about Republican women. For example, she identifies points in the legislative process in which Republican women had to choose sides between possible positions on women’s equality for the Lilly Ledbetter Act. She also details how Democratic women have appealed to Republican constituencies. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) adopted the persona of “Military Mary” to speak to constituents and combat gendered assumptions about her interests. In general, Swers’s work captures the unique pressures that Republican women face in the Senate to choose positions on issues where party positions and women’s positions are in conflict. However, there are limitations to the amount of information we can draw from the few Republican women in the Senate in her study, several of whom (Olympia Snowe of Maine and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas) are no longer in office. As Swers notes, the number of Republican women, and thus our understanding of them, is likely not to increase in the near future because of these retirements and defeats.
My second concern relates to what we can extrapolate from women’s behavior in the unique institution that is the Senate. The book demonstrates the positives and negatives of such an in-depth study of a single institution. On the one hand, the Senate’s unique individual prerogatives allow for fascinating examples of women’s representation, such as the behind-the-scenes dynamics in which Democratic and Republican women senators cooperated to restore women’s health coverage to the Affordable Care Act. On the other hand, few legislative institutions have the unique dynamics of the Senate, for example, individual legislator power. Scholars can draw from some of Swers’s findings to apply to their own work; for example, a scholar could identify other legislative institutions in which legislators possess the ability to be policy generalists and to bargain with the implicit threat of legislative obstruction. This sort of extrapolation will take some creative work by other scholars, however, as they seek to draw parallel conclusions with other legislative bodies.
These limited drawbacks do very little to undermine this strong and interesting book. Women in the Club is highly recommended reading for women and politics and for legislative scholars.
