The politics of speeches, votes, and deliberations: Gendered legislating and energy policy-making in Germany and the United States

Abstract

Empirical evidence reveals a gender difference in both energy technology preferences and environmental concern. In contrast, research on gender differences in environmental or energy policy-making is rather sparse and yields inconclusive results. But more recent research on gender in environmental policy-making provides empirical evidence that female legislators make a difference in policy outcome. This paper contributes to this research by analyzing the legislative behavior of female and male legislators in energy policy-making in Germany and the United States for both roll call votes and legislative debates. The study gives hints that there exist gender differences in energy policy-making revealed by legislators’ energy policy preferences.