Reflection 5: Gender and Leadership in the House of Representatives

The intersection between gender, leadership, and politics is interesting. In the 117th Congress, the current Congress, women hold the most seats they ever held during a Congress – 144 of 539 seats. This creates disproportionately more direct representation for men than women in the American political system. In part this follows the ILTs that are generally followed for political leaders; people expect and assume their political leaders will be white men in their 50s-60s that are independently wealthy and intelligent. Despite pushes to diversify Congress by gender, race, socio-economic class, and many other identities, the aforementioned group still makes up a disproportionately large part of Congress.

The office I am interning in is more diverse than many other offices by multiple standards. However, I am one of four women in the DC office (with two of us being interns) when there are 15 people in the DC office total. During the weeks I have been working in-person, I have often found myself being the only woman physically in the office (the office is functioning with a combination of remote and in-person work). From walking around the other Congressional offices, the gender breakdown of staffers does not seem to be unique to the office I am in. As such, I am reminded of unit in “Theories and Models of Leadership Studies” where we discussed gender and leadership: especially role congruity theory.

Role congruity theory is when the characteristics of a group – including the leadership ability of the leader – is judged based off of how they align with typical social roles. When considering women, the typical social roles are the roles relating to compassion, “maternal instincts” – lots of behaviors that fit closely into the care economy. As such, as leaders women are seen, and expected, to be more communal and relational based. As such, the leadership ability of women may not be seen as beneficial in a more task related field like legislative work (like the DC office focuses on). Meanwhile, men are typically assumed to be more task-focused, making their leadership more prototypical of the work being completed. As such, under role congruity theory, men would be seen as more successful leaders in this situation.

However, by this same standard, women may be seen as more successful leaders in political offices that are more relationship-oriented, like district offices. District offices tend to focus more heavily on constituent services, making it so compassion, a prototypically female trait, is at the heart of the work. Using role congruity theory, it would be assumed that women would be seen as better leaders in that situation because the typical social roles of women more closely align with the work being done. Within the office I work in, this idea is confirmed because about half to a little over half of the district office staff are women.