Abstract

To what degree does the religiosity of a representative’s constituency affect substantive representation for women? Religion has long been known to have effects on gender equality and it is shown herein that more religious populations will indeed drive their representatives to adopt policy stances that have a negative effect on women’s substantive representations. Illustrating this is an empirical based case study approach on the 112th Congress in the United States. By examining the vote likelihood of each legislator on specific bills relating to women’s substantive representation it is shown that religiosity is indeed a good predictor of how a representative will vote, with higher levels of religiosity in the representative’s district resulting in their being more likely to take a stance that limits women’s substantive representation.