#12069. Getting a High Heel in the Door: An Experiment on State Legislator Responsiveness to Women’s Issue Lobbying

August 2026publication date
Proposal available till 19-05-2025
4 total number of authors per manuscript0 $

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Journal’s subject area:
Sociology and Political Science;
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Abstract:
How can women’s strategic lobbying increase the responsiveness of male legislators? This paper presents a field experiment examining how women and men in state legislatures respond to women’s organizational lobbying. The findings suggest that substantial gender gaps do exist; women are twice as likely to respond to a women’s issue group’s simple meeting request. That said, meeting requests signaling constituent mobilization have heterogeneous effects across legislator gender, doubling the likelihood that a male legislator will respond. My results identify how women’s lobbying can employ distinct lobbying strategies on descriptive and nondescriptive representatives to successfully gain their attention. In distinguishing differing pathways toward maximizing opportunities for women’s organizational inclusion in policymaking, this paper informs women’s groups lobbying in state legislatures, wherein low levels of descriptive representation often persist.
Keywords:
field experiment; gender; legislator behavior; lobbying; state politics; women’s advocacy

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