Representing All Women

Abstract

Is sisterhood global? This study investigates if women in Congress are representing women worldwide by extending their surrogate representation of American women to women in foreign countries. Congressional research shows that race affects surrogate representation across borders via transnationalism. I test whether this also applies to gender when no shared “mother country” unites women, there are divisions over how to represent women, and American foreign policy is considered a stereotypically masculine policy domain. With an original dataset of three Congresses (2005–2010), I test if female House Representatives are more likely to introduce foreign policy legislation that targets foreign women and girls by applying regression analysis. Controlling for likely individual, electoral, and institutional incentives, I find that gender matters and that women in Congress are more likely to introduce legislation on behalf of women worldwide, acting as global surrogates. These findings offer new insights into the boundaries of surrogate representation, congressional foreign policy decision making, the influence of gender on international relations, and the impact of women in Congress.

Keywords

U.S. Congress foreign policy impact of women representation gender global surrogate representation

As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.

—Virginia Woolf ([1938] 1966, 197)

Representation is a fundamental tenet of any democratic nation. Surrogate representation, as defined by Jane Mansbridge (2003, 522), is the “representation by a representative with whom one has no electoral connection—that is, a representative in another district.” Surrogate representation is particularly important for historically marginalized groups, such as women and racial minorities (Mansbridge 1999, 2003), where these groups may “lose” representation in their own district. Research shows that the addition of women and racial minority members of Congress has expanded the U.S. legislative agenda to better address the interests of women and racial minorities in U.S. domestic policy (Swers 2002; Tate 2003; Wallace 2014; Wolbrecht 2002).

Surrogate representation is most often examined within a specific polity. If we expand our conceptual definition of surrogate representation as potentially occurring outside of nation-state borders, will we find evidence of legislators acting as global surrogate representatives? Scholars exploring the transnational affective ties of race show that surrogate representation can transcend national borders by analyzing congressional foreign policy entrepreneurship (Tillery 2011; Wilson and Ellis 2014). Can surrogate representation beyond state borders also apply to gender, when women technically have no “mother country” and are a large, diverse constituency? Prior studies illustrate that U.S. congresswomen act as surrogate representatives for the interests of American women (Carroll 2002; Dodson 2006; Swers 2002, 2013). In recent years, women and girls in foreign countries are specified targets of American foreign policy legislation. To explore if congresswomen are acting as global surrogates, I test if congresswomen are more likely to introduce American foreign policy legislation that specifies foreign women and/or girls as policy targets, what I refer to as women’s foreign policy (WFP).

Using an original dataset, I compare how district, individual, and institutional factors affect the number of WFP bills sponsored during the 109th, 110th, and 111th Congresses (2005–2010) in the U.S. House of Representatives and test if gender matters. I find that congresswomen across racial, party, and committee divisions are more likely to sponsor WFP legislation, acting as global surrogate representatives of women. I suggest that systems of gender-based discrimination foster a shared affective tie among women that goes beyond state borders, leading some congresswomen to act as surrogate representatives for women worldwide.

This has both theoretical and practical importance. Women make up roughly half the world’s population and are integral to advancing political, economic, and human development goals. Initially pointed out by Ester Boserup (1970) in her classic Women’s Role in Economic Development, the importance of women’s participation in promoting economic growth, political stability, and human security is still overlooked by many development agencies, foreign policy legislation, and even in academic research (Hudson et al. 2012). Understanding which factors motivate members of Congress to take legislative action on behalf of women in foreign countries (a group that offers no direct electoral benefit) deepens our understandings of surrogate representation, enriches gender studies scholarship, and provides a richer context to analyze the gender dynamics of congressional foreign policy agenda-setting.¹ Practically speaking, excluding women as a group can lead to biased, ineffective American foreign policy and deter UN global development objectives.²

In the next section, I outline theories behind congressional foreign policy entrepreneurship and review studies of transnational surrogate representation and race. Turning to gender, I point out reasons why women in Congress may be less inclined to act as global surrogates of women. Following this, I review scholarship showing the impact of congresswomen on the representation of women’s issues. I propose that the lived experience of being a woman under systems of gender-based discrimination creates a shared affective tie that motivates some women in Congress to act as surrogate representatives for women worldwide. Using quantitative analysis, I test and find support for my hypothesis. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of my findings and areas for further research.

Congressional American Foreign Policy Decision Making

Although congressional American foreign policy decisions affect international affairs, there has been minimal analysis of how these decisions are made. American foreign policy research typically focuses on the role of the executive (Destler 2015; George 1980) and studies of Congress primarily analyze behavior toward domestic policy (Fenno 1973; Hall 1998; Mayhew 1974). But Congress has much foreign policy authority and responsibility, such as directing U.S. development aid, allocating military resources, overseeing the Department of State and Defense, and conducting foreign diplomacy. Members of Congress frame U.S. foreign policy issues and incentivize the executive to take action (Burgin 1991; Carter and Scott 2009; Lindsay 1994). Indeed, it was Congress that first expanded American foreign policy to address global human rights (Forsythe 1988). As Congress is the branch of government under the greatest electoral constraint, exploring congressional foreign policy entrepreneurship also provides some insights into how the U.S. electorate views America’s role in the world.

Congressional entrepreneurship is defined as initiating, sponsoring, and/or advocating policy proposals (Kingdon 1989; Mintrom 1997; Sheingate 2003; Wawro 2001). Understanding why members of Congress decide to work on specific issues at the expense of other issues and be a “policy entrepreneur” is a fundamental question of political science (Anderson, Box-Steffensmeier, and Sinclair-Chapman 2003; Hall 1996; Mayhew 1974; Mintrom 1997; Mintrom and Norman 2009; Wawro 2001; Woon 2008). According to Fenno’s (1973) classic text, members of Congress make decisions to work on issues based on (1) institutional, (2) electoral, and/or (3) individual incentives.

Studies show that congressional foreign policy entrepreneurs are members driven by a slightly modified incentive structure. Traditional congressional foreign policy entrepreneurs (1) seek to establish their reputation as leaders of the nation, (2) desire to protect U.S. strategic interests, and/or (3) are driven to promote their own worldview (Carter and Scott 2009; Fenno 1973; Lindsay 1994). Looking at congressional foreign policy entrepreneurship from 1945 to 2000, Carter and Scott (2009) show that House Foreign Affairs or Senate Foreign Relations committee membership is a strong predictor of foreign policy activity. Members may join these committees out of their personal interests or to gain institutional leverage as electoral benefit is minimal (Burgin 1991; Carter and Scott 2009; Lindsay 1994).

Individual experiences of members can shape their foreign policy goals and salient identity characteristics (such as gender and race) affect these individual experiences (Lorber 2011). Given the significant shifts in the gender and racial makeup of the U.S. Congress and the importance of individual experience for congressional foreign policy decision making, racial and gender analyses are increasingly necessary. For example, in the 92nd Congress (1971–1972), the U.S. House of Representatives was 97 percent male. In the 111th Congress (2009–2010), the U.S. House of Representatives was 83 percent male (Center for American Women and Politics [CAWP], Rutgers University 2015). All of the case studies of congressional foreign policy entrepreneurs in Carter and Scott’s (2009) research were on white men and there was no gender or racial analysis. In the realm of American foreign policy, divisive domestic politics are supposed to “stop at the water’s edge” and members are pressed to prioritize the interests of the United States as a nation (Hook and Spanier 2004). Yet the racial and gender makeup of Congress may shape how U.S. national interests are defined.

Race and Congressional Foreign Policy Entrepreneurship: Transnational Ties

Due to the potential conflicts between diaspora politics and national allegiances (Smith 2000), numerous scholars have analyzed the relationship between race and ethnicity and U.S. foreign policy. Wilson and Ellis (2014) test if black members of Congress feel a sense of linked fate to Africa, drawing upon the work on black members of Congress by Tillery (2011) and Tate (2003). They find that black representatives are more likely to legislate on behalf of African interests (as measured by bill sponsorship and committee chairmanship in the House between 1975 and 2010) and act as transnational surrogate representatives. DeConde (1992) finds a bias in U.S. foreign policy toward white, Anglo-Saxon nations, analyzing the “special relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom. There is also research showing how the Israeli lobby is uniquely influential on U.S. foreign policy decisions (Mearsheimer and Walt 2006; Paul and Paul 2008).

Democratic theorist Michael Saward (2011, 11) suggests that the concept of surrogate representation can be “translatable to transnational spheres.” Wilson and Ellis (2014) attempt this translation, introducing the concept of transnational surrogate representation. Drawing from Tillery (2011), Wilson and Ellis (2014, 258) define transnationalism as “an orientation that leads individuals and groups living in one nation to engage in behaviors that maintain active linkages with their ancestral homelands.” This conceptual definition maps well onto the shared affective ties of race and ethnicity across national borders but is not as applicable toward the global shared affective tie of gender.

Gender and Congressional Foreign Policy Entrepreneurship: Unlikely Universalism

There are several reasons why women in Congress may not act as global surrogates for women. First, race and ethnicity are shared group identities that can be connected to a geographic space, making the possibility for diaspora ties beyond borders with potential shared cultural connections and linguistic unifiers. The same cannot be said for gender, as there is no “homeland” or “nation” for women to feel a tie to as women. Considering that women are such a large universal grouping, cutting across race, class, nationality, sexuality, ethnicity, religious, age, and cultural divides, a common denominator that connects U.S. congresswomen to women in foreign countries seems almost farfetched. Women’s and gender studies scholarship argues that even the construction of gender norms is connected to nationalist goals (Stevens 1999; Yuval-Davis 1997).

Congresswomen may be less inclined to work on U.S. foreign policy due to its stereotypical association with masculinity. Research on candidate stereotypes show that American foreign policy is considered a masculine policy domain (Huddy and Terkildsen 1993; Lawless 2004). Men have long-held positions of foreign policy decision-making authority (Dean 2003), and the House Foreign Affairs Committee has even been referred to as the “big boys play pen” (Baker 1989). The institutional climate of Congress is already problematic for women to gain credibility due to their gender placing them as outsiders (Duerst-Lahti 2002). Goss (2009) illustrates how American women’s groups lost their status as American foreign policy general consultants and were viewed as relevant only to foreign policy discussions that dealt with women’s issues. The women in Congress may prefer to minimize foreign women’s issues to avoid being typecast by their gender. Instead, congresswomen may desire to spend their limited time and resources on issues where being a woman could perhaps serve as a benefit rather than a cost (Lawless 2004).

In addition, the representation of foreign women’s interests may not be necessarily connected to the identity of the legislator at all but rather based on how institutional structures and social movements pressure governments to act on behalf of women. Weldon (2002, 1156) problematizes the idea that individual legislators best represent women’s group interests based on their shared experience as women:

If she is a white, straight, middle class mother, she cannot speak for African American women, or poor women, or lesbian women on the basis of her own experience any more than men can speak for women merely on the basis of theirs. Moreover, marginalized group perspectives are not transparent to individual members of the group.

Extending this to U.S. foreign policy, how can American congresswomen then speak for the interests of Japanese women or Afghani women? In her study of thirty-six democratic countries, Weldon (2002) finds that institutional sources of representation, such as women’s policy machinery and autonomous women’s movements, are critical to improving the representation of women’s interests as a group rather than individual legislators.

Although my study analyzes who in the U.S. Congress is expanding the American foreign policy legislative agenda to address the interests of foreign women, future research needs to assess how institutional structures, such as the Office of Global Women’s Issues in the U.S. Department of State and the global women’s movement, affect WFP objectives. During the last Congress in my dataset (111th), Senator Hillary Clinton was appointed U.S. Secretary of State (2009). Clinton’s presence, an outspoken advocate for global women’s rights, may have had an impact on how congressional foreign policy entrepreneurs represent foreign women.

Last, WFP may be the result of traditional foreign policy entrepreneurs targeting women’s issues abroad because of the substantive and symbolic contribution of women to traditional U.S. foreign policy goals. Investing in women helps bring countries out of poverty (Summers 1994), women’s political power strengthens democratic states and reduces terrorism (Fish 2002; Hudson et al. 2009; Melander 2005), and women reinvest more in their children’s education and health (Coleman 2004). Women also make up the majority of the world’s poor, have less access to education, and one leading cause of death for women worldwide is violence (United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, http://www.unwomen.org/en).

Targeting foreign women may play a symbolic role for strategic U.S. foreign policy objectives, serving as tropes for the United States to promote modernity, American liberal values, and agitate masculine protectionism (Gienow-Hecht 2000; Hoganson 2000; Mohanty 2003; Young 2003; Yuval-Davis 1997). For example, during the Cold War, the United States portrayed Soviet women as overworked and brutish whereas U.S. women were shown as free and feminine (Gienow-Hecht 2000). Similarly, Young (2003) critiques the portrayal of Afghani women as repressed victims to justify the U.S. military intervention and the War on Terror. Young (2003, 18) argues that “[a]ppeal to women’s rights [in Afghanistan] was thus a cynical attempt to gain support for the war among the citizens of the United States and other liberal countries.”

Crafting U.S. foreign policy targeting gender dynamics may be a form of “soft power” (Nye 1990), where the United States uses cultural norms, such as women’s equality, to incentivize behavior in foreign countries, exert power, and gain influence. Thus, advocating for the interests of women and girls abroad may just be another U.S. foreign policy tactic to advance U.S. national interests, similar to support for global human rights (Apodaca 2006).

Representing All Women? Congresswomen Acting as Global Surrogates

Sisterhood is global. (Morgan 1984, 3)

Transnationalism is an effective theoretical approach to understand how the shared affective ties of race and ethnicity cross national borders. For gender, I suggest that globalism offers a better conceptual framework. According to the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus (2015), globalism is defined as “the idea that events in one country cannot be separated from those in another and that economic and foreign policy should be planned in an international way.” Thus, advocating for women’s rights worldwide reflects a global theoretical approach.

There is evidence of global affective gender ties (Antrobus 2004; Joachim 2003; Pessar and Mahler 2003; Peterson and Runyan 1993), with women and men organizing across state borders for the sake of supporting global women’s rights (Enloe 1999; Ferree and Tripp 2006; Hawkesworth 2012; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Thayer 2009; Yuval-Davis 1997). Although defining the interests of “women” as a category is always embedded in specific cultures, contexts, and organizations (Beckwith 2014), the shared experience of women as a group can create shared political interests for women (Beckwith 2014; Freedman 1979). These “shared political interests . . . constitute the foundation of women’s political representation” (Beckwith 2014, 19).

American congresswomen may perceive that as the result of their shared experiences of being female, they have shared political interests with women in foreign countries. I suggest that the global shared affective tie of gender is salient due to the norms of gender-based discrimination and sexism that are prevalent worldwide. Under systems of patriarchy, men have more formal political representation and economic power and women are more likely to be restricted to the domestic sphere, paid less in the formal workplace, to be victims of violence, and their sexuality devalued (Iversen and Rosenbluth 2010; Walby 1997). American congresswomen may have a global perspective toward patriarchy and desire to counter the negative effects of sexism worldwide. As Congresswomen Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) states, “[D]espite many gains, women are still fighting against oppression and are still relegated to the status of second-class citizens throughout the world” (Congressional Record, March 8, 2006).

Research shows that congresswomen have a history of expanding the policy agenda to address the political interests of women as a group (Dodson 2006; Swers 1998, 2002, 2013; Wolbrecht 2002) and that some congresswomen see themselves as surrogate representatives of women as a group (Carroll 2002). Based on this shared affective tie of gender, some congresswomen may desire to represent women as a global group. “[I]n addition to representing my district, I feel I’m on the front lines representing women everywhere, both nationally and internationally” (Congresswoman Nita Lowey, D-NY, in Dodson 2006, 65). At a Senate hearing on the Future for Afghan Women led by then-Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Senator Jean Carnahan (D-MO) claimed that “[o]ur bond as women reaches across national, ethnic, and religious boundaries” (November 29, 2001).

Some American congresswomen, both Republican and Democratic, appear to be dedicating their limited time and resources toward advancing international women’s issues. The bipartisan U.S. Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues (CCWI),³ made up of House Representatives, added “International Women’s Issues” as a policy taskforce in the 111th Congress (2009–2010). On the website for the CCWI, the description under “Caucus Accomplishments” highlights the impact congresswomen have had on drawing attention to women’s issues in American foreign policy and as worldwide leaders for women parliamentarians⁴:

Caucus members have championed women’s issues around the globe from Afghanistan and Iraq to Cambodia to Cairo to Beijing, working to bring international attention to the plight of women and representing the Congress at U.N. world conferences on women and on population and development. The Caucus has also served as an inspiration and a model worldwide for women parliamentarians—whose image of American democracy is shaped in part by the example of women from different political parties working together to improve the lives of women and families. (Emphasis added, womenspolicy.org, accessed June 2016)

The “plight of women” is not defined but I suggest that this refers to systems of gender-based discrimination that infringe upon women’s human rights.

At times, congresswomen have focused on foreign women in a specific country, such as Representative Kay Granger’s (R-TX) work with Iraqi women, who remains “committed to supporting the women as they work to ensure their rights are recognized and maintained, along with all Iraqis” (May 24, 2006). Other times, congresswomen represent women as a global category. In the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA) and the U.S. ratification of CEDAW (UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) Senate hearing she convened, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) stated that “[e]veryday women and girls endure horrific acts of violence in their homes and in their communities . . . women are raped, beaten, disfigured by acid, denied basic rights simply because of their gender” (Congressional Record, June 24, 2014).

Congresswomen are claiming to be acting as global surrogates, but is this global shared affective tie of gender cutting across the many divisions among congresswomen themselves? Studies have illustrated how political party and race shape how congresswomen represent the interests of women as a group in domestic policy (Carroll 2002; Swers 2002, 2013). In her study of the Senate in the 107th (2002–2003) and the 108th (2004–2005) Congresses, Swers (2013) shows how rising partisanship in Congress has been more favorable for Democratic women to advocate on behalf of women’s interests and more challenging for Republican women. Advocating for the political and economic interests of foreign women, a group with no electoral constraint and potentially in areas of U.S. strategic interest, may be an opportunity for Republican women to “counter Democratic efforts to portray Republican policies as anti-women,” and maintain congruence with party expectations (Swers 2013, 26). Alternatively, it may be an extension to the existing partisan divide on the representation of women.

In her analysis of how women members of Congress perceive their representation of women, Carroll (2002, 57) finds that it was the congresswomen of color who described their interest in representing women beyond America’s borders: “As Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) explained: ‘I think that as American legislators, women in this body, we have a responsibility that goes beyond women in America, women in the United States. We have a responsibility to protect women elsewhere.’” The women of color in Congress may have an additional incentive to address women’s rights abroad, with potential affective ties of gender and race, and be more active as congressional WFP entrepreneurs.

In sum, we know that surrogate relationships are not straightforward or linear (Carroll 2002) and factors such as the type of women’s issue (Swers 2002), the polarization of the chamber (Swers 2013), political ideology (Frederick 2009), partisanship (Wolbrecht 2002), race (Bedolla, Tate, and Wong 2005), and the women’s committee assignments (Norton 1995) can affect legislative activity. Evidence supports the transnational surrogate representation of racial and ethnic interests in Congress. In this study, I test if there is global surrogate representation of women’s interests in Congress. Even though (1) foreign policy is a masculine policy domain, (2) there is disagreement over how women’s interests should be represented, and (3) members incur an electoral cost when spending their limited time on the nuances of U.S. foreign policy, I argue that the shared experience of being a woman fosters a global affective gender tie due to the global systems of gender-based discrimination. As such, congresswomen are more likely to act as global surrogates of women as a group.

Hypothesis 1: Women members of Congress are significantly more likely to introduce foreign policy legislation that targets foreign women and girls.

Furthermore, I test if certain women are more likely to act as global surrogates due to additional incentives (race, committee membership, and political party).

Hypothesis 1A: Women of color in Congress are significantly more likely to introduce foreign policy legislation that targets foreign women and girls.

Hypothesis 1B: Women members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee are significantly more likely to introduce foreign policy legislation that targets foreign women and girls.

Hypothesis 1C: Democratic women members of Congress are significantly more likely to introduce foreign policy legislation that targets foreign women and girls.

Method

To test my hypotheses, I use an original dataset that includes information on the 435 House Representatives and their districts for each of the three different Congresses. Each Congress reflects a differing institutional partisan dynamic: 109th (United-Republican, 2005–2006), 110th (Divided, 2007–2008), and 111th (United-Democratic, 2009–2010). The differing partisan dynamics provide a robust context for analysis (Ahn 2011; Carter and Scott 2009; Swers 2002), particularly since Congress has grown increasing polarized (Theriault 2008). To ensure a rigorous test of gender, I control for the effects of likely electoral, institutional, and individual incentives. My dependent variable is the number of WFP bills a member of Congress sponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives (2005–2010).

Defining WFP

As any policy arguably affects women, whether domestic or foreign policy, how should we separate “women’s foreign policy”? There are two central approaches in women and politics scholarship to analyze the representation of women. One approach is to define an issue as a “women’s issue” if the policy area is perceived to have a disproportionate impact on women, such as specific health, education, and social welfare policies, or if the issue is identified as important to women by women’s political organizations (Burrell 1994; Dodson and Carroll 1991; Dolan 1998; Reingold 2008; Swers 2002, 2013; Thomas 1991). Another approach is to define a bill or policy as a “women’s issue” policy if there is an explicit reference to women in the bill or policy language, where women are the explicit policy target (Celis 2008; Reingold 2000). Celis (2008, 92) argues that this approach “entails not giving an essentialist content to substantive representation of women and respects the theoretical assumption that women’s interests are a priori undefined, context-related, and subject to evolution.”

I apply the second approach to demarcate WFP and define WFP as any U.S. foreign policy bill that explicitly mentions “women” or “girls” in reference to foreign women or girls in the Congressional Research Service (CRS) Summary of the bill as provided by the official website of Congress, www.thomas.gov.⁵ In these bills, members of Congress have decided to make “representative claims” on behalf of foreign women (Saward 2006). Examples of WFP bills are the Women and Children in Crisis and Conflict Protection Act of 2005, Afghan Women Empowerment Act of 2007, William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2007, or the IVAWA of 2009. I reviewed all U.S. foreign policy bills referred to the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee introduced during the three Congresses that met the search criteria and included only bills that targeted foreign women in foreign countries.

I examine WFP entrepreneurship in the House for two reasons. First, House members have smaller constituencies and a shorter reelection cycle than Senate members and thus are under greater electoral constraint. If domestic politics affect WFP entrepreneurship, we are more likely to see effects of this in the House rather than the Senate. In addition, there were no women of color and few men of color in the Senate during the 109th, 110th, and 111th Congresses (2005–2010). To adequately test the effect of race and gender, I prefer to use the House with a substantial population of women of color (roughly 31% of the women in Congress and 5% of my entire dataset).

Given the lack of research on WFP legislation, the focus of this study is to first establish who in Congress is bringing foreign women’s issues to the legislative table rather than how these foreign women’s issues are defined. There is no measure of directionality in terms of policy objectives or geographic location. Future research needs to explore how the objectives of WFP differ and their substantive impact on the lives of foreign women.

Dependent Variables

Bill sponsorship is a strong measure of legislative entrepreneurship because the sponsor faces the fewest barriers in the introduction process and requires the greatest amount of effort for broader legislative success (Swers 2002). Bill sponsors, more than cosponsors, typically make a larger commitment of time and resources. Cosponsorship is also demonstration of a member’s support and a form of position-taking but fewer resources required and the reputational stakes are lower (Wawro 2001). Looking at bill sponsorship best demonstrates which members of Congress are willing to make the greatest commitment to represent women on the U.S. foreign policy legislative agenda (Kingdon 1989; Schiller 1995).

Independent Variables

To see if gender matters, I test how competing institutional, electoral, and individual incentives affect WFP entrepreneurship. The independent variables are as follows: member of the House Foreign Affairs committee, rank, safety of seat, district median income, percent urban in a district, and percent foreign-born in a district, race of the member, political party, political ideology, and gender of the member. I gather the data for these measures from the U.S. Census, the Almanac of American Politics, the Center for American Women and Politics, and from Poole and Rosenthal’s dynamic, weighted (DW)–Nominate Scores.

One likely reason why members of Congress sponsor WFP bills is as a result of their institutional position. If legislative entrepreneurship on WFP reflects traditional U.S. foreign policy entrepreneurship, then members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee will be more likely to sponsor these bills due to committee jurisdiction (Kingdon 1989). I also control for the rank of the member and the safety of their congressional seat, measured by their victory margin in the prior election. Members of higher rank may sponsor these bills to challenge the foreign policy authority of the President or leaders of the opposition party (Carter and Scott 2009). Similarly, members with larger victory margins (in safer seats) have a lessened electoral constraint and may work on foreign policy issues to gain status and influence in the institution (Burgin 1991).

Aside from the institutional incentive, members may introduce WFP bills in response to concerns from their constituents. One of the dominant explanations for congressional behavior is that of rational reelection (Mayhew 1974). Although I do not have a district measure of support for women worldwide, I test other factors that may affect support. Members from districts with large foreign-born constituencies may have greater interest in sponsoring bills that address foreign women. McCormick and Mitchell (2007) find that members from districts with a larger percentage of foreign-born residents are likely to be members of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus.

The median income and the percent urban in a district may also affect WFP entrepreneurship. Swers (2002) finds that members from wealthier districts are more likely to sponsor domestic women’s issues bills. Uscinski et al. (2009) show that as the median income of a district increases, so does the probability that the House Representative will take action against the Darfur genocide. Members from more urban districts are also more likely to support women’s issues (Swers 2002). This may again be true for WFP.

Last, the individual experiences of members may best explain the introduction of WFP bills. Individual experiences have been shown to increase congressional foreign policy entrepreneurship (Carter and Scott 2009; Fenno 1973; Lindsay 1994) and domestic women’s issues policy entrepreneurship (Swers 2002; Washington 2006). I test the impact of the member’s political party, gender, and race on support for WFP as measures of individual experience.⁶

My variable of interest is gender. I will not only test if congresswomen are acting as global surrogates but also examine which congresswomen. We know that some congresswomen are motivated to introduce women’s issues bills out of the need to make good public policy for all women (Carroll 2002; Dodson 2006; Swers 2002), acting as domestic surrogate representatives. But congresswomen do not act cohesively as a group, with political party often serving as a salient division (Swers 2002, 2013). To better estimate if a subset of women in Congress are acting as global surrogates, I investigate if gender in conjunction with race, political party, or House Foreign Affairs committee membership significantly affects congressional WFP entrepreneurship. These constitute my four different models. With this approach, I can explore if a select group of women are acting as global surrogates or if congresswomen are legislating on behalf of foreign women across these divisions.

In Model 1, I simply test the impact of being a woman (gender) on congressional WFP entrepreneurship against other likely factors using regression analysis. Model 2 also includes women on the House Foreign Affairs committee as an interaction variable. Women House Foreign Affairs committee members could have a dual incentive to introduce WFP, due to their gender and institutional positioning. I test if women of color are leading this policy trend in Model 3, as they may have enhanced motivation due to gender and potential transnational racial ties. In Model 4, I analyze the effects of gender and party. Democratic women may be more active as global surrogates for women, extending their domestic women’s policy agenda to U.S. foreign policy.

Results and Discussion

Table 1 summarizes the patterns in the combined dataset over the three Congresses. Sixteen percent of the members of Congress are women (11% are Democratic women and 5% are Republican women). Sixteen percent of the members are not white and 5% are women of color. Eleven percent of the members are on the House Foreign Affairs Committee (2% are women and 9% are men). Although some foreign policy legislation draws attention to women and girls, the vast majority of foreign policy bills do not. In the 109th Congress, 671 bills were referred to the House Foreign Affairs Committee and 39 addressed women and/or girls. In the 110th Congress, 784 bills were referred to the House Foreign Affairs Committee and 40 addressed women and/or girls. In the 111th Congress, 645 bills were referred to the House Foreign Affairs Committee and 34 addressed women and/or girls.

Table 1.

Description of U.S. House Districts, U.S. House Members, and Women’s Foreign Policy (WFP) Entrepreneurship for the 109th, 110th, and 111th Congresses (2005–2010).

	M(SD)
Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee	0.11
(0 = no, 1 = yes)	(0.31)
Rank of the member (1–435)	220.04
	(126.86)
Percent of victory	68.14
	(13.12)
Adjusted median income (in $10,000)	3.31
	(2.30)
Percent foreign population in district	12.04
	(11.35)
Percent urban in district	78.99
	(19.82)
Political ideology	0.07
Liberal → Conservative (−1 to +1)	(0.51)
Not white	0.16
(0 = no, 1 = yes)	(0.37)
Woman	0.16
(0 = no, 1 = yes)	(0.37)
Democrat	0.53
(0 = no, 1 = yes)	(0.50)
Woman of color	0.05
(0 = no, 1 = yes)	(0.21)
Woman on the House Foreign Affairs Committee	0.02
(0 = no, 1 = yes)	(0.12)
Democratic man	0.42
(0 = no, 1 = yes)	(0.49)
Republican women	0.05
(0 = no, 1 = yes)	(0.21)
Democratic woman	0.11
(0 = no, 1 = yes)	(0.32)
WFP bill sponsor	0.05
	(0.22)
How many WFP bills sponsored?	0.09
(0–6)	(0.44)
N	1,305

On average, only 5 percent of congressional foreign policy bills draw attention to the concerns of women and girls and constitute “women’s foreign policy.” Five percent of members of Congress ever sponsor a WFP bill during this time period (WFP bill sponsor) and I find that women are disproportionately leading this foreign policy expansion. In the 109th Congress, 2.7 percent of men and 19.7 percent of women in Congress sponsored a WFP bill. In the 110th Congress, 3.6 percent of men and 20 percent of women in Congress sponsored a WFP bill. In the 111th Congress, 2.5 percent of men and 13.7 percent of women in Congress sponsored a WFP bill. Although men are larger population of Congress, a greater percentage of congresswomen sponsor WFP legislation. The numbers also show that the majority of the women in Congress are not acting as WFP entrepreneurs.

My second indicator of WFP entrepreneurship measures how many WFP bills a member introduces in a given Congress. For the members of Congress who decide to sponsor WFP, the average number of WFP bills sponsored is 1.62 bills per Congress. Relatively few members of Congress sponsor WFP but those who do are relatively active. I select this count of WFP bills introduced as my dependent variable as it is a stronger measure of policy entrepreneurship.⁷ Due to the high number of zeros in my variable of interest, I test to see if zero-inflated regression model would better suit the data. Both the Bayesian and Akaike information criteria prefer the negative binomial distribution; thus, I apply a negative binomial regression analysis.⁸

Across the combined dataset of the three Congresses, I test how my independent variables affect the number of WFP bills a member will likely sponsor.⁹ Table 2 presents the results of my analysis. Based on these data, I find strong support for my first hypothesis. In each model, being a woman significantly increases the likelihood of WFP bill sponsorship. American women in Congress appear to be acting as global surrogates for women worldwide.

Table 2.

Likelihood of Women’s Foreign Policy (WFP) Bill Sponsorship, Negative Binomial Regression Analysis, U.S. House of Representatives, 2005–2010.

	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4
Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee	1.854 **	1.864 **	2.192 **	1.869 **
Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee	(0.326)	(0.322)	(0.433)	(0.324)
Rank of the member	−0.003	−0.003 *	−0.003 *	−0.003 *
Rank of the member	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)
Percent of victory margin	0.030 *	−0.030 *	0.028 *	0.029 *
Percent of victory margin	(0.012)	(0.012)	(0.012)	(0.013)
Adjusted median income	0.147	0.131	0.132	0.126
Adjusted median income	(0.132)	(0.139)	(0.131)	(0.132)
Percent foreign population in district	−0.002	−0.001	−0.003	0.001
Percent foreign population in district	(0.012)	(0.012)	(0.013)	(0.012)
Percent urban in district	0.050 *	0.050 *	0.049 *	0.047 *
Percent urban in district	(0.022)	(0.022)	(0.022)	(0.021)
Not white member	−0.337	−0.078	−0.235	−0.329
Not white member	(0.356)	(0.392)	(0.359)	(0.358)
Democratic member	0.455	0.403	0.432	0.218
Democratic member	(0.485)	(0.492)	(0.488)	(0.563)
Woman member	2.043 **	2.204 **	2.313 **	1.397 **
Woman member	(0.346)	(0.418)	(0.426)	(0.632)
110th Congress (2007–2008)	0.604	0.532	0.532	0.509
110th Congress (2007–2008)	(0.606)	(0.599)	(0.599)	(0.600)
111th Congress (2009–2010)	−0.503	−0.485	−0.475	−0.479
111th Congress (2009–2010)	(0.288)	(0.440)	(0.436)	(0.289)
Woman on the House Foreign Affairs Committee		−0.959
Woman on the House Foreign Affairs Committee		(0.508)
Woman of color			−0.484
Woman of color			(0.579)
Democratic woman				0.788
Democratic woman				(0.650)
_cons	−10.57**	−10.48**	−10.37**	−10.10**
_cons	(2.467)	(2.453)	(2.475)	(2.412)

Ln(alpha)	.652	.613	.559	.666

N	1,305	1,305	1,305	1,305
Log likelihood	−266.030	−265.670	−264.753	−265.433
Pseudo-R²	.2285	.2295	.2322	.2302

Standard errors are given in parentheses and are adjusted for 566 clusters on members. Bolded values are significant at p < .05.

p < .05. **p < .001.

Gender is not the only significant variable, and other institutional, individual, and electoral incentives also matter. My data show that the percentage urban in the district, percent victory, and whether or not the member is on the House Foreign Affairs Committee also significantly increase WFP bill sponsorship. As the percentage of urban in a district increases, the probability that the district’s representative will sponsor WFP legislation increases. The percent victory, that is, the safety of the member’s seat, significantly increases WFP bill introduction. Last, similar to other forms of traditional U.S. foreign policy (Carter and Scott 2009), being on the House Foreign Affairs Committee significantly increases the likelihood of WFP bill sponsorship.

Race did not appear to be a significant predictor of congressional WFP entrepreneurship. Although studies of transnational surrogate representation show how black and Hispanic members of Congress take foreign policy action toward their respective diaspora, this study finds that race, broadly defined as “being not white,” has no significant effect on WFP introduction. If the WFP legislation were to be separated into areas of the world, such as Latin America or Africa, perhaps there may be a different relationship. Future research needs to explore this potential site of global intersectional ties of surrogate representation (Hancock 2014). In this dataset of the three Congresses (2005–2010), I find that no Congress was significantly more favorable to WFP introduction than any other. Thus, members will introduce WFP legislation regardless if Congress is divided or unified by either party. Democratic members are no more likely than Republican members to introduce this legislation.

In Model 1, I find that women in Congress are significantly more likely to introduce WFP legislation than men. Models 2, 3, and 4 test if certain congresswomen were more likely to act as global surrogates of women. I find that women on the House Foreign Affairs Committee are no more likely to introduce this legislation in Model 2. This indicates that women in Congress take action on behalf of foreign women regardless of committee assignment. Model 3 shows that women of color are not significantly more active than white women to act as advocates for women in foreign countries, suggesting that the global surrogate representation of women crosses the racial divides of congresswomen.

Last, partisanship does not appear to affect congresswomen’s support for women in foreign countries. Model 4 shows that Democratic women are no more likely to introduce WFP (and being a woman remains a significant factor). This suggests that there is no partisan division on congressional WFP entrepreneurship. Although these analytic results are somewhat limited due to the few women in Congress who constitute these groups in the dataset, I find no support for my three sub-hypotheses.

In sum, these findings suggest several trends. Select institutional (House Foreign Affairs Committee Membership), electoral (percent victory and percent urban), and individual (gender) factors significantly affect congressional WFP entrepreneurship. Members may introduce this legislation because it falls in line with their committee assignment, they fear no electoral cost (perhaps due to rank and/or victory margin), or if the member of Congress is a woman.

The aim of this study is to test the national boundaries of surrogate representation in terms of gender. My results show U.S. congresswomen are acting as global surrogates of women worldwide. Upon a more detailed examination of which women in Congress are driving this trend (Models 2, 3, and 4), I find that race, committee assignment, and political party do not significantly affect support. My data suggest that the shared experience of being female creates a global affective gender tie that unites some American congresswomen to women in foreign countries. This is not to discount the importance of context when determining how women’s interests are defined or to oversimplify the multiple incentives that drive congressional decision making. In addition, my study is not analyzing the content of this legislation.

Conclusion

This article breaks new ground as there has been no empirical assessment of the relationship between American foreign policy, Congress, and gender up to this point. Research analyzing American foreign policy, Congress, and race has shown that black members of Congress act as transnational surrogates for African interests (Tate 2003; Tillery 2011; Wilson and Ellis 2014). Therefore, race appears to be a shared affective tie beyond borders. In this article, I test if gender is also a shared affective tie beyond borders. Using an original dataset over three different Congresses (2005–2010), my data show that U.S. congresswomen, regardless of race, committee membership, or political party, are more likely than their male counterparts to introduce WFP legislation, and I argue are acting as global surrogate representatives for women.

This suggests that women in Congress are having an impact on the U.S. foreign policy and they are expanding the agenda to address the interests of women worldwide. Thus, if more women are elected to Congress, there will likely be an increase of WFP legislation. Future research needs to test if the WFP legislation introduced by congresswomen has a significantly different focus. Those who are members of the House Foreign Affairs committee, members from highly urban districts, and members with fewer electoral risks are also active as congressional WFP entrepreneurs, suggesting that surrogate representation is not the only incentive behind addressing the interests of foreign women in Congress. Future research could expand upon these findings by extending the time period, analyze other forms of legislative activity (floor speeches, votes), investigate the objectives of WFP, and assess how other characteristics of congressional members may shape congressional foreign policy objectives.

American gender politics appear to no longer “stop at the water’s edge,” and the impact of having women in positions of political power is more far reaching than has ever been discussed. Congresswomen are acting as global surrogates and taking action to represent all women, not just American women. This has implications for our understandings of the impact of women in Congress, global women’s rights, and surrogate representation. Congressional foreign policy decisions matter to both their district constituents and to those affected by the policy. Global surrogate representation by members of Congress may now be a channel to provide representation for populations who “lose” not in their state district (Mansbridge 2003) but rather in their nation-state.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Susan J. Carroll, Kira Sanbonmatsu, Ross Baker, Jorge Bravo, Joyce Kaufman, Brittany Stalsberg, Lisa Chauveron, and the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback and insightful suggestions.

Author’s Note

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Seattle, Washington, September 1 to 4, 2011.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Supplemental Material

Replication data for this article can be viewed at .

Notes

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