Women make more effective legislators than men

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/02/20/257304/the-numbers-dont-lie-women-make.html

By EMILY GREENHOUSE
Bloomberg NewsFebruary 20, 2015

Everyone knows that Congress does very, very little. The Washington Post crunched the numbers last year and found that, mathematically,"no Congress in 40 years has been paid more to pass less legislation." It's also a fact that Congress is heavily male. The current, 114th Congress has a record 104 women - but that's 104 of 535 lawmakers inall. (And somehow we're supposed to cheer.) But what if these things are connected - that men are less likely to introduce legislation and cut deals than women? It turns out that women have been considerably more likely than their male counterparts to get bills through, and to achieve that near-unicorn of modern Washington:bipartisan agreement.

Thenumbers, as publishedThursdayby a new startup called Quorum, founded not a month ago by two Harvard seniors, seemto bear this out. Over the last seven years, in the Senate, the "average" female senator has introduced 96.31 bills, while the "average" male introduced 70.72. In the House, compare 29.65 for women, and 27.2 for men. And women were more likely to gain co-sponsorship: In the Senate, women had an average of 9.10 co-sponsors, men 5.94. In the House, the difference was smaller - but women still proved better, or more interested, in sponsoring together: Female Representatives averaged 16.84 co-sponsors, and men 14.64.

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Women are also more likely to co-sponsor with other women than men are with other men. From the 111thCongress to the present one, the typical female senator cosponsored 6.29 bills with another female senator, as opposed to 4.07 bills cosponsored by male senators with a male peer.

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There's also an unusual streak of bipartisanship. Susan Collins co-sponsored a whopping 740 bills with opposite party sponsors. Lisa Murkowski co-sponsored 445, Kelly Ayotte 217, Klobuchar 200, and Mazie Hirono 172.

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Last December, in something of a holiday wish-list, Michael Lewis wrotefor Bloomberg View that women should "henceforth make all Wall Street trading decisions." They are less prone to egregious risk-taking, and overconfidence. Lewis compared trading to pornography: "Women may like it, but they don't like it nearly as much as men, and they certainly don't like it in ways that create difficulties for society. Put them in charge of all financial decision-making and the decisions will be more boring, but more sociable."

Boring, sociable - how about just plain effective?