Women have not achieved equality in regards to political representation within the US. This exclusion weakens the quality of the political debate and destabilizes the legitimacy of our democracy. However, inroads have been made in building a more representative democracy at both the state and federal level in the US. This study extends the literature regarding gender and representation, exploring the association between descriptive representation, legislative factors, civil society contexts and the substantive representation of women.

The quantitative research design employed in this study was adapted from a model proposed by Beckwith and Cowell-Meyers, rooted in the theory of representation as developed by Hanna Pitkin. The model analyzes substantive representation as a function of descriptive representation, legislative factors, and civil society contexts. The dependent variable, substantive representation, is measured at three different stages of the policy process: bill sponsorship, roll-call voting, and policy outputs. Data were collected for all 50 states for two time periods, and across 25 states for two additional time periods. This resulted in a comprehensive and original panel dataset measuring substantive representation of women at three different stages of the policy process at four different time periods, n = 150. The data were analyzed using fixed effects analysis.

The results reveal that the theoretical model did not significantly predict the variance of the substantive representation of women at any stage of the policy process. These insignificant results are significant in that this model is the first of its kind to test the hypotheses using comparative state-level data. Insignificant results provide room for analysis investigating alternative measurement of key variables, inclusion of alternative hypotheses, as well as consideration of alternative causal models.

Future research should challenge key assumptions commonly found in the literature. This includes the assumption that women unilaterally act for women. The new question should be who acts for women? In addition, scholars must not make a priori assumptions of substantive representation. Rather, the construct must be analyzed respective of geographical, temporal, and ideological variation of women. Future research should challenge the classic definition of substantive representation, as well as the common tools for measuring substantive representation.