WHO RUNS THE WORLD? AN EXAMINATION OF BLACK WOMEN AND LEADERSHIP IN STATE LEGISLATURES

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2020

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In 2020, black women continue to occupy a unique position in American politics, and their status is still widely misunderstood and undetermined. Many scholars have researched black women and their political behavior, but few have assessed how institutions impede or facilitate their influence within democratic legislatures. My research seeks to fill this gap in the literature by examining black women and leadership in state legislatures. In recent years, black women have been able to obtain an increasing number of elected seats in state legislatures, as they actually run for office and win more often than both white women and black men; and yet, these women are still grossly underrepresented in leadership positions. This research seeks to answer this question: Do black women attain leadership at different rates than other groups, and if so, why? This paper uses panel data that spans from 2007 to 2014 and includes 13,147 legislators from all fifty states to examine this puzzle. I argue that differences in ideology between black female legislators and their peers may help to explain differences in leadership attainment. However, I suggest that even after ideology is examined, a residual gap will remain. I forward an innovative concept called the Heavy Lifter Theory that identifies the connection between black women, their communities, and the U.S. Labor Market to explain the differences between black men and black women, the role of intersectionality, and the role of race in leadership attainment. Using a logistic regression, I found that ideology, intersectionality, race, and gender are all statistically significant with regards to chamber-level leadership. Key Words: Black women, state legislatures, intersectionality, Heavy Lifter Theory.

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