So Women Bring Home the Bacon: Are Congresswomen Rewarded for Their Performance By Being Reelected at Higher Rates? An Analysis of Female Incumbent House Members

Abstract

A review of the literature on women in the House reveals that Congresswomen gradually passed a threshold, starting as single-term members who over decades transitioned into competitive, successful, but vastly underrepresented legislators. The literature on this topic has posited that once in office women will achieve the basic goals of a Congress member, such as bringing more federal spending home to districts and being more active on roll call votes, better than a Congressman. When gender-biased selection is present, women who are elected to office will on average perform better than men because of the unique challenges faced by women in the electoral process, which weeds out all but the strongest female candidates, subsequently leading them to becoming more successful members; this combined with the incumbency advantage should logically result in superior performance when it comes to reelection. The position of this essay is that we can expect women to perform equal to or better than their male counterparts when running for reelection because Congresswomen's superior performance in the House will translate into higher reelection rates.