The year 2022 has brought a series of political surprises, and thankfully it has also brought us Catherine N. Wineinger’s Gendering the GOP: Intraparty Politics and Republican Women’s Representation in Congress to help us understand the world better. The particular world that Wineinger describes and analyzes is Republican women in Congress, and she does so brilliantly. Her central questions build on, and go beyond, foundational themes of the women and politics subfield. Gender gaps in ambition or participation and the legislative impact that women make are part of her story, but the main question brings us into the realm of partisan-gender intersectionality. As Wineinger puts it, the book “examine[s] the evolution of gender dynamics within the House GOP and how women navigate those dynamics,” allowing her to “unveil the process through which women’s representation occurs in a polarized congressional environment” (2; italics in original).
Increasing and asymmetric party polarization has had a differential impact on Republican women, who are overall less conservative than their male counterparts; the hard-right tilt of the party in recent years has therefore put GOP women in, scientifically speaking, a real pickle. Those who resist the extremist policies and cult of charisma in the party suffer the fate of Liz Cheney (effective expulsion through internal processes like party primaries), but it is increasingly difficult to claim to represent “women’s perspective” or “women’s issues” in a party so anti-feminist. Republican women House members, Wineinger tells us, are carving out new ways to represent women, not (as before) with a focus on policy issues but in “using their gendered perspectives to advance conservative issues that align with their party’s communication tactics” (3).
This has involved key changes in both rhetoric and practice for these women, necessitating the construction of a “partisan-gender identity,” with the order of those adjectives mattering deeply (and more than it has in the past). That women are now in fact overrepresented as GOP messengers (163), which Wineinger calls the “amplification” of women’s voices (Chapter 5)—while being descriptively and substantively underrepresented in the party itself—is a testament to the strategic intelligence of certain Republican party female leaders who have leveraged this partisan-gender identity to their advantage. “[T]he combination of ideological cohesion among Republican congressomwen and interparty competition between Republicans and Democrats has enabled Republican women to tactically leverage their gender identity, framing it as an electoral asset to the party” (10).
Wineinger’s research is meticulous and thorough, triangulating between multiple methods. While the quantitative data charts are excellent, the more interesting data are qualitative; her in-depth interview evidence is a treasure trove (deriving from work she did as a graduate student with a larger Center for American Women and Politics study on women in Congress). Content analysis of floor speeches also provides key evidence that she uses to explore and explain her findings on rhetorical maneuvers and recent shifts in strategy. Finally, the well-presented case studies of Susan Molinari, Jennifer Dunn, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers provide clear examples and exemplars of her claims about change over time.
The book is comprehensive and advances our field—yet somehow it also manages to be accessible and well written. This would be an excellent choice, in whole or in part, in an undergraduate or graduate seminar, and it will also, I have no doubt, become a staple on the shelves of women and politics professors both in the United States and beyond. Wineinger’s insight into the deep and relatively swift changes under the feet of Republican women at the congressional level, and how they navigate such tremors, is desperately needed now. Perhaps optimistically, Wineinger appears to believe that this clever maneuvering may eventually help more women integrate into the GOP (which, to my mind, is essential to the party’s survival).
