Implementing intersectionality: women’s organizations’ representation of women of color and poor women during two rulemakings

Abstract

ABSTRACT Women’s organizations have long been criticized for failing to prioritize the concerns of the most marginalized subgroups of women, but many of these critiques often fail to provide a nuanced analysis of how the policymaking context influences women’s organizations’ choices about which women to discuss in their advocacy efforts. Therefore, I analyze 2,103 comments that women’s organizations and individual women submitted during two Obama administration rulemakings, one focused on contraception and one focused on wage discrimination, to determine how effectively women’s organizations represent women in high and low salience contexts. I find that women’s organizations most often depict women as a homogenous group, and that tendency was exacerbated during the highly salient contraception rulemaking debates. However, a low attention wage discrimination rulemaking encouraged women’s organizations to devote more attention to women’s races, ethnicities, nationalities, and classes. Comparing the comments that women’s organizations and individual women submitted reveals that individual women are also more likely to oppose the stances that women’s organizations take during salient policy debates. Thus, women’s organizations appear to “better” represent women during low-attention rulemakings.