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77 Judicature 166 (1993-1994)
The Representative Role of Women Judges

handle is hein.journals/judica77 and id is 180 raw text is: The representative role of women judges The mission of the National Association of Women Judges, as well as the views of members and non-members, suggest that women judges tend to embrace a role that is representative of their gender. by Elaine Martin A n issue of continuing in- terest in women and poli- tics research is the repre- sentation of women's inter- ests by women officeholders. This is- sue is generally framed in terms of whether women officeholders merely stand for other women in the nu- merical sense or whether they act for women,' There seems to be a clear consensus that simple fairness re- quires increased numerical represen- tation for women in political office. It is not so clear that such an increase will result in an increase in the interest representation of women. Early research on women political elites found little support for the propo- sition that women officeholders would impact public policy promoting wom- en's interests any differently from men officeholders. A variety of explanations was offered for this lack of expected sup- port, a major one being tokenism.' As women's representation on legisla- tive bodies has become less tokenistic, a more complex line of research has devel- oped. For example, recent research has found that the likelihood of women leg- islators' promotion of women's interests is related to factors such as their commit- ment to feminist ideology,4 the existence of a supportive network of other women legislators,5 and the proportion of women in the legislature.6 A more controversial stream of scholarship takes the view that women's potential behavioral differ- ences from men are rooted in gender role differences in behavior patterns that are either biologically or cultur- ally induced. In this literature, the fo- cus is on gender differences as ex- pressed in styles of personal interac- tion rather than voting patterns. Men are characterized as more instrumen- tal and women as more contextual in their modes of thinking and feel- ing.7 It is suggested that pervasive changes in institutional norms, values, and processes may occur as women achieve numerical representation.' Judicial literature Although the research on women judges is quite sparse, it parallels the research on women legislators to some extent. Judicial scholars have stressed The research for this article was partially funded by the Center for the American Woman and Poli- tics, The Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University. Opinions expressed are the author's alone. 1. Pitkin, THE CONCEPT OF REPRESENTATION (Ber- keley: University of California Press, 1967). 2. Sapiro, When Are Interests Interesting? The Prob- lem of Political Representation of Women, 75 Am. POL. ScI. REv. 701 (1981). 3. Kanter, MEN AND WOMEN IN CORPORATIONS (New York: Basic Books, 1977). 4. Carroll and Taylor, Gender Differences in Policy Priorities of U.S. State Legislators, paper presented at the 1989 meeting of the American Po- litical Science Association, Atlanta. 5. Carroll, WOMEN AS CANDIDATES IN AMERICAN POLITICS (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985). 6. Thomas and Welch, The Impact of Gender on Activities and Priorities of State Legislators, paper presented at the 1989 meeting of the Mid- west Political Science Association, Chicago. 7. Gilligan, IN A DIFFERENT VOICE (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982); and Ruddick, Ma- ternal Thinking, 6 FEMINIST STUDIES 342-356 (1930). 8. Ferguson, Work, Text and Act in Discourses of Organization, 7 WOMEN AND POLITICS 1-21 (1987); the fairness issue in supporting in- creased numbers of women on the bench.9 Early studies of women judges found that they had more feminist atti- tudes on women's issues, such as mari- tal name change, than did their male political party counterparts.10 More re- cent survey research on women judges' feminist attitudes supports these early conclusions. Initial re- search on possible gender-based dif- ferences in judges' criminal sentenc- ing patterns attributed the lack of findings to tokenism, or women judges having to make it in a man's world.'I2 Research on federal trial and appellate courts also failed to find important dif- ferences in case decisions by judicial gender.3 This research, however, was Kathlene, Gendered Approaches to Policy For- mation in the Colorado Legislature, paper pre- sented at the 1991 meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago; and VanWagner and Swanson, From Machiavelli to Ms: Differences in Male-Female Power Styles, 47 PUB. ADM. REv. 66-72 (1979). 9. Goldman, Should there be affirmative action for the judiciary?, 62 JUDICATURE 489 (1979); and Slotnick, The paths to the federal bench: gender, race and judicial recruitment variation, 67JuDIcATuRE 370 (1984). 10. Cook, Will Women Judges Make a Difference in Women's Legal Rights? A Prediction from Attitudes and Simulated Behavior, in Rendel and Ainsworth (eds), WOMEN, POWER AND POLITICAL SYSTEMS 216 (Lon- don: Croom Helm, 1980). 11. Martin, Differences in Men and Women Judges: Perspectives on Gender, 17J. POL. Sm.. 74-85 (1989). 12. Gruhl, Spohn and Welch, Women as Policy Makers: the Case of Trial Judges, 25 AM. J. POL. SC. 308-22 (1981); and Kritzer and Uhlman, Sisterhood in the Courtroom: Sex ofJudge and Defendant in Crimi- nal Case Disposition, 14 Soc. Sci.J. 77-88 (1977). 13. Gottschall, Carter's judicial appointments: the influence of affirmative action and merit selection on voting on the U.S. courts of appeals, 67JUDICATURE 165 (1983). 166 Judicature Volume 77, Number 3 November-December 1993

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