Colorado's women politicians: Public voice and private conscience

The purpose of this study was to discover: (1) how women legislators describe the role interpersonal relationships play in accomplishing their work, and whether that description varies from how men legislators describe the same process; (2) analyze the role gender plays in how these women go about accomplishing their work, and whether this description varies from how men legislators talk about the process; and (3) understand how women describe their ethical framework when faced with proposed legislation and the process they go through in reaching a conclusion on legislation; again, a corollary is understanding whether their orientation varies from how men legislators describe the process. Depth interviews were conducted with twenty women and twenty men who have served in the Colorado state legislature. Grounded Theory methodology was used to analyze the data Results indicated that women as well as men identify strong interpersonal communication with other legislators as the most predictive variable in defining a successful legislator. Legislators were uniform in describing the ingredients of strong working relationships. Analysis also revealed that women as well as men operate from a core set of ethical beliefs which guide them when making tough decisions about proposed legislation. The data showed that there were far more similarities between women and men in the areas of relational communication and ethical decision-making than common perceptions and prior research would have us believe. On the other hand, major findings in the area of gendered communication support prior scholarship which indicates that women legislators continue to believe they work longer and harder then men in order to gain colleagues' trust, and continue to experience gender bias in the workplace; a substantial proportion of men agree with those perceptions. While women are convinced that they can perform their political jobs as well as the men, they believe that promoting women into legislative leadership roles will propel them to parity with their male counterparts; men agree.