Like Women on Boards, Female Lawmakers Work Harder and Do More - Building Gender Balanced Business

• Female legislators work harder in Washington, much like women on corporate boards have higher attendance rates.

• Stanford University and University of Chicago researchers found that women in the US House of Representatives (lower house) garnered 9% more discretionary spending for their home districts than male members.

• Whether one sees that as a good thing or not, it was just one benchmark in which women excelled. From 1984 to 2004, the women also introduced more bills and won over more co-sponsors for those bills, increasing the likelihood of adoption, than men did.

• A woman on average sponsored three more bills in each two-year congressional session than her male counterpart.

*Again like in the corporate world, women may feel they need to work harder just to keep even: Incumbent women attract more challengers for re-election than their male counterparts, and many studies have found that women consider it harder for them than men to raise campaign donations.

*Women make up just under 17% of the 435 current US representatives, up from 3% in 1979, and 2% of the total number of representatives since 1789.

• The study adjusted for seniority, party affiliation, majority/minority status and the differing priorities of novice and longtime members of Congress.

A summary of the study and related research