Still Underrepresented? Gender Representation of Witnesses at House and Senate Committee Hearings

ABSTRACT

We know very little about the women who testify before congressional committees. Here we present data on the women who appeared as witnesses out of the 36,950 persons who gave testimony before 7,750 subcommittees and committees. We consider the roles of political party, party control, gender of chiefs of staff, location of hearings, and chamber rules among other factors to explain the underrepresentation of women witnesses. We find that women are dramatically underrepresented. Ultimately, the presence of Democratic women staff directors and women committee chairs, as well as initiatives to track witness diversity, increase the likelihood of women testifying.

KEYWORDS:

• Congress
• committees
• congressional witnesses
• gender
• critical actor theory

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the School of Public Affairs for its support of undergraduate researchers and Jonathan and Robyn Helfat for their generous support of this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Collin Coil

Collin Coil is an undergraduate at American University where he has a double major in Pure Mathematics and Data Science. He is a research fellow at the School of Public Affairs Center for Data Science and focuses on machine learning and its applications. He began working on this project as a first-year undergraduate.

Caroline Bruckner

Caroline Bruckner is a Senior Professorial Lecturer in the Department of Accounting in the Kogod School of Business at American University where she teaches tax policy. Her areas of research include women in the gig economy and congressional witnesses. A former Chief Counsel to the US Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, she has testified before both the House and Senate congressional committees.

Natalie Williamson

Natalie Williamson is a graduate of American University where she majored in Political Science and Sociology. She began work on this project while an undergraduate and has continued to be an invaluable member of this group. She has developed a specialty on congressional rules, especially as they apply to congressional witness testimony.

Karen O’Connor

Karen O’Connor is the Jonathan N. Helfat Distinguished Professor of Political Science in the department of Government at American University where she founded the Women & Politics Institute and serves as director Emerita. She is the past editor of Women & Politics as well as the President of the APSA’s Organized Sections on Law & Courts and Women and Politics. She is the former president of the National Caucus for Women in Political Science, the National Capitol Area Association of Political Scientists and the Southern Political Science Association.

Jeff Gill

Jeff Gill is a Distinguished Professor in the departments of Government and Math & Statistics and the Founder and Director of the School of Public Affairs’s Center for Data Science. He is the editor of Political Analysis and is a past president of the Society for Political Methodology as well as the Southern Political Science Association.