Interdisciplinary scholars have long documented how women in positions of power, such as politics, confront gendered stereotypes that shape evaluations of their competence and “fitness” for office (Alexander and Anderson 1993; Huddy and Terkildsen 1993a, 1993b). These stereotypes shape how lawmakers are evaluated, yet measures of legislative performance may reinforce these biases. Using the common Legislative Effectiveness Score (Volden and Wiseman 2014), I find that female legislators receive lower overall effectiveness scores than men, as it uses aggregated variables of types of bills sponsored. When disaggregated, I find that women are more likely to sponsor substantive bills and less likely to sponsor commemorative bills relative to their male counterparts. This suggests that standard measures of legislative effectiveness may systematically undervalue women’s efforts in Congress and raises broader questions about how institutional metrics only further construct gendered evaluations of political performance. 

The ongoing debate about what makes a legislator effective while in office has been widely studied throughout political science, with varying scholars studying a variety of measures ranging from spatial models (Hitt, Volden, and Wiseman 2017) to a more systematic approach based on laws sponsored and passed (Frantzich 1979, Volden and Wiseman 2009). Miquel and Snyder (2006) utilized a self-reported survey of state legislators to factor on three specific measures to quantify effectiveness: intrinsic aptitude of a legislator, ongoing education or investment in legislative skills, and institutional positions held, such as committee chair or majority party membership. As to be expected, these self-reports and inconsistent measurement adds to the ambiguity of what it means for a legislator to be effective in office. To try to mitigate these inconsistencies, Volden and Wiseman (2014) created a new measurement that has quickly become the gold standard in measuring effectiveness.

Varying scholars have debated about what makes a legislator effective in their tenure in office. To try to mitigate these inconsistencies, Volden and Wiseman (2014) created a new measurement that has quickly become the gold standard in measuring effectiveness in political science.

To calculate the LES, lawmakers are assigned a score on weighted 15-point aggregated indicators of the life of a bill sponsored by the legislator. These bills are classified as “significant”, “substantive significant”, “commemorative”.

SS: mentioned on two or more occasion in Congressional Quarterly Weekly/CQ Magazine during that Congress, identified as the subject of a key vote by Project Vote Smart, and/or discussed in the Fact Sheets in the CQ House section of CQ.com.

C: Various criteria, including dedicating a ceremonial day to an individual or renaming a street

S: All others, including C that are also SS