Constituents Ask Female Legislators to Do More
Abstract
We test whether constituents ask women representatives to do more. In partnership with Republican and Democratic state legislators in multimember districts, we conducted a field experiment in which the politicians sent a survey to their constituents, asking about the issues they should work on. It was randomized whether citizens were contacted by their male or female representative. We find that female legislators receive 14% more issue requests per constituent they contact than male legislators. This increase in workload requests of female legislators occurs on a wide range of issues. Put simply, constituents ask female legislators to do more.