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Religious Adherence, Women-Friendliness, and Representation in American State Legislatures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2020

Nicholas L. Pyeatt  and
Alixandra B. Yanus
Nicholas L. Pyeatt
Affiliation:
Penn State—Altoona
Alixandra B. Yanus*
Affiliation:
High Point University
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Alixandra B. Yanus, High Point University, One University Parkway, Drawer 34, High Point, NC27268. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

National and cross-national studies demonstrate that the probability of women candidates' emergence and success is lower in more religious areas. One recent study of the U.S. House of Representatives even suggests that the effect of religiosity may be so powerful as to render insignificant other contextual factors, including a district's baseline women-friendliness. We argue that this finding is an institutional artifact; in less competitive contests with more internally similar constituencies, both religion and other contextual factors should affect women candidates' emergence and victory. We test this proposition using state legislative data and find that while women are less likely to run and win in more religious areas, district women-friendliness has an independent, positive effect on women's candidacies. These effects are particularly noteworthy in districts with large evangelical Protestant populations and affect Republican and Democratic women similarly.

Type
Article
Information
Politics and Religion , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , June 2020 , pp. 217 - 244
Copyright
Copyright © Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2020

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Footnotes

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2018 State Politics and Policy Conference, State College, PA, June 7–9. The authors gratefully acknowledge Steven Rogers, Mark Setzler, Sean Bueter, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback.

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