Critical mass or critical acts? An empirical test of the relationship between the presence of women in state legislatures and their policy impact on agenda setting and legislative success in fifty states, 1995 and 2005

Research on gender and politics often invokes Kanter's (1977) critical mass theory to draw a linkage between women political leaders' descriptive representation and substantive representation. Using the 50 state legislatures as the unit of analysis, I empirically tested the validity of the critical mass theory by investigating the relationship between women's share of legislative seats within lower chambers of state houses and their impact on legislative agenda setting and legislative success in 1995 and 2005. Based on the findings, I argue that the critical mass theory is of limited value in explaining women's policy impact and the field of gender and politics would benefit from the development of a new theoretical framework to better understand and examine how women's presence in political institutions translates into substantive public policy that promotes women's social, economic and political well-being. The fact that gender-related variables were poor predictors of the dependent variables and institutional factors played a more prominent role in explaining how many women's interest bills were introduced and passed in the 50 state legislatures suggests a needed shift from the critical mass-oriented approach to a more contextual- or individual-oriented approach to examining women political leaders' policy contribution.;This study has hopefully enriched the research domain of gender and politics by providing additional perspectives for theorizing about women's role in politics and examining their policy impact. The findings may assist women who aspire to political office and women's interest organizations seeking to advance women's status with formulating new strategies to influence public policy toward the actualization of greater gender representativeness and equality in our democracy. Future research may wish to explore individual women political leaders and their policy impact with qualitative methods to gain a richer insight into the complex world of policy making; to examine women's policy impact in other policy areas in addition to those dealing with women, children and families; to focus on women at the local level; and to investigate women's policy influence and the intersectionality between gender, race, ethnicity and class.