Sharece Thrower is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Chancellor’s Faculty Fellow at Vanderbilt University. Her research interests include American political institutions, separation of powers politics, inter-branch policymaking, and executive power.
Gender Diversity and Staff in Congressional Committees
Descriptive representation is vital for ensuring that the voices of marginalized groups are reflected in public policies. Though numerous studies examine the descriptive characteristics of legislators, less is known about the diversity of their staffs, who are unelected individuals with vast opportunities for influencing the policymaking process. Recent research on staff representation mostly focuses on personal staff. Studies on committee staffers, who are arguably more consequential for policymaking, are limited and incomplete, relying heavily on survey data or data from limited timeframes. Accordingly, we collect the most comprehensive dataset on the racial and gender composition of committee staffers between 1950 and 2023, to systematically track descriptive representation. We supplement this data with information on salary, position type, and promotion to further characterize potential disparities among committee staffers by race and gender. Finally, we examine which institutional and political factors can advance or inhibit diverse and equitable workforces across congressional committees. Overall, this project will shed light on the efficacy of representative democracy in the United States, particularly with respect to incorporating the voices of traditionally marginalized groups.
