Political Widowhood in the United States: An Empirical Assessment of Underlying Assumptions of Representation

Abstract

One of the earliest paths to power for women in the United States Congress was through political widowhood. In fact, this route to office still exists today. While literature on widows primarily explores factors associated with their entrances into Congress, this article examines their actions once in office by comparing their behavior to that of their late husbands. Specific questions explored include: do widows share the same political ideologies as their husbands? Do they vote differently on policy issues, particularly those considered important to women? Are they more likely to sponsor women's issues bills? Examining differences among these pairs offers a unique test for assessing the potential gender differences between male and female legislators. Thus its significance extends beyond the literature on political widows, and adds to the growing research assessing the impact of gender on the substantive representation of women.

Keywords:

• Widows
• widowhood
• women
• gender
• Congress

Notes

1. Widows are defined here as women who enter seats left vacant following their husbands' deaths. As Kincaid (1978) points out, several other congresswomen are widows, but do not enter Congress to fill seats vacated by their deceased husbands. These women are not analyzed in this paper.

2. All four widows won reelection in the 2006 elections and entered the 110^th Congress as of this writing.

3. Of course, the separation of spheres has been murky in practice and gender is dependent on many factors including race, ethnicity, and social class.

4. According to Klosko and Klosko (1999) single women had more rights than married women at earlier points in American history, particularly in terms of property. However, women, regardless of their marital status, were still continually discriminated against in many arenas including employment and politics. Traditional notions were that, if unmarried, a woman would be “covered” by her father.

5. These differences are similar to those displayed by the general public as evidenced in the gender gap in party identification and vote choice: men identify more with the Republican Party and vote for Republican candidates, and women identify more with the Democratic Party and are more likely to vote for Democratic candidates. (Conway et al. 2005).

6. The first two women to serve in Congress (Jeanette Rankin of Montana, who was elected to the House in 1916, and Rebecca Latimer Felton, who was appointed to the Senate in 1922) did not enter Congress through widowhood succession. Widowhood succession began with the special election of Edna Mae Nolan to the House in 1922 and Hattie Caraway‘s appointment to the Senate in 1931. While Nolan did not run for reelection after her first full term, Caraway sought and won election to three consecutive terms (Biographical Directory of the United States Congress).

7. Apart from national office, the first woman to serve as governor of a state, Nellie Tayloe Ross (D‐Wy. 1925–1927) was also a widow. The next two women governors that followed, Ma Ferguson (D‐TX. 1925–1927, 1933–1935) and Lurleen Wallace (D‐Al. 1967–1968) came to office while their husbands were still alive. Governor James Ferguson was impeached and Governor George Wallace faced term limits. These cases suggest that death is not a necessary condition for women to enter their husbands' seats. Other scenarios leading to the husband's inability to remain in office may suffice.

8. Bullock and Heys analyze median terms while Gertzog uses the mean.

9. Wolbrecht analyzes predicted counts in her study. Widows only cosponsor statistically fewer women's rights bills than other congresswomen in five Congresses: 1959–60, 1961–62, 1963–64, 1981–82, and 1983–84 (183).

10. Other widows elected simultaneously to serve out their husband's term and another full term include Oldfield and Wingo.

11. According to the Center for American Women and Politics, eight widows have served in the Senate. Because of their small numbers, we limit our analysis to widows serving in the House.

12. Matsui ran for reelection in 2006 and was elected to a full term. Because the 110^th Congress does not begin until 2007, we are unable to include her at this time in our analysis of DW‐NOMINATE Scores.

13. We look at only the first dimension scores in order to calculate the ideological distance between pairs. First dimension DW‐NOMINATE scores capture the difference along the liberal conservative continuum. The second dimension captures regional differences, mainly differences on slavery and civil rights, and becomes meaningless after 1980 (Poole and Rosenthal 1997). The additional explanatory power of the second dimension is minimal.

14. Interestingly enough, this actually requires us to drop a couple because the husband (Walter Capps) did not have the necessary number of DW‐Nominate observations.

15. Coding of independent variables‐Region: 0‐Southern 1‐Otherwise, Party‐1‐Republican 0‐Democrat, Prior political experience: 1‐Having Political Experience, 0‐otherwise, Wife Career‐1‐wife worked outside of the home 0‐otherwise, Education‐0‐High School 1‐College 2‐Graduate School, Age, Husband Years Served, and Wife Years Served are all continuous variables.

16. Biographical information obtained from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (http://bioguide.congress/gov), the Washington Post Congressional database website (http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/e000172/) and her personal website (http://www.house.gov/emerson/about).

17. The exact number of bills has actually varied over the years. For example, the ADA rated 25 bills in the past and awarded 4 points to those voting in line with them.

18. This is not meant to suggest that there are no criticisms of ADA scores. In fact, according to Jackson and Kingdon (1992), ADA scores may overemphasize personal ideology at the expense of other important factors (806). While this may be the case, we believe that we are able to control for many of these possible factors by our case selection. Furthermore, there are several scholars who support the validity and reliability of ADA scores (see Cohen et. al 2000).

19. The Global Gag Rule (or the “Mexico City Policy”) “restricts foreign non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) that receive US family planning funds from using their own, non‐US funds to provide legal abortion services, lobby their own governments for abortion law reform, or even provide accurate medical counseling or referrals regarding abortion” http://www.crlp.org/hill_int_ggr.html

20. The Fetal Protection Act makes it a criminal offense to injure or kill a fetus when engaging in a federal crime. This has been criticized by various women's groups because of concerns that it might eventually be used to affirm a fetus's right to life over a woman's right to choose during all stages of pregnancy (although the bill states it would not be used for this purpose).

21. Library of Congress Dataset, http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d109query.html

22. From Lois Capps's congressional website: http://www.house.gov/capps/about lois.shtml.