Revisiting a Natural Experiment: Do Legislators with Daughters Vote More Liberally on Women’s Issues?

Abstract

The pioneering work of Washington in 2008 shows that legislators with daughters cast more liberal roll call votes on women’s issues. Costa and coauthors in 2019 find that this pattern subsides in more recent congresses and speculate that increasing party polarization might diminish the “daughter effect.” We investigate patterns of change over time by looking at eight congresses prior to the four studied by Washington and eight subsequent congresses, including three not included by Costa and coauthors. Contrary to the party polarization hypothesis, we find no daughter effect prior to the period that Washington studied and no effect thereafter.