… With a record number of women running for Congress, there’s a decent chance that the number of women on Capitol Hill will grow next session. That could be a hugely important change, as women remain heavily underrepresented in Congress, making up 1 in 5 lawmakers, even as they make up more than half of voters.
However, there’s little reason to expect it will make Congress more bipartisan, according to a new study.
“Women and men are first and foremost partisans,” said Jennifer Lawless, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia. She and coauthors Sean Theriault and Samantha Guthrie studied how big the gap is between how likely women and men lawmakers are to reach across the aisle.
As it turns out, that gender gap is very, very small. CONT.
Danielle Kurtzleben, NPR