Salta, a northwest province of Argentina, is known for its conservative and machista society. These characteristics, compounded by the fact that women hold a minority of legislative seats and are excluded from legislative leadership, mean that women's influence is limited in the Salta Chamber of Deputies. As one deputy put it: “There are 11 of us women, out of 60 legislators; that's very few. Salteños are very machista. The men are the ones in control; they leave you out for being a woman.” Thus, in order for women to have an influence in the chamber, they report that they have to work together – particularly when it comes to women's issues. “In the issues of gender, us women unite, if not we do not accomplish anything.”

Despite the need for collaboration, not all women are willing to work together. Multiple women who consider themselves champions of women's rights observe a lack of participation from their colleagues. One notes, “I was the deputy who worked the most in gender issues in this chamber, presenting legislative projects and reporting discrimination problems against women. There have been women who did not join me on this defense. And that is concerning.” She speculates about why women are not always willing to join her in defending women's rights and suggests that perhaps it is because “they are obeying a partisan mandate.” Another female deputy echoes her concerns about partisan constraints: “Not all women are willing to advance – maybe out of fear of losing their positions, their job. Maybe they say ‘I can't go against this government, or against my party's president.’ It is not easy, these battles are tough.”

These women's experiences illustrate the relationship between women's marginalized status in the legislature and their compromised ability to exert influence in the policy-making process. Given their lack of power, women view collaboration as a tool for overcoming marginalization and shaping policy. Still, deputies from Salta report that multiple factors limit collaboration among women.

Five days into the U.S. government shutdown in 2013, Republican Senator Susan Collins took the Senate floor and challenged her colleagues to work together to put an end to the impasse. In the midst of a fierce partisan standoff, she pieced together a bipartisan coalition – disproportionately comprised of women – that would lay the foundation for the federal fiscal plan later signed into law. Although the large role female senators played in forging a compromise attracted considerable media attention, the senators themselves suggested this was par for the course. Senator Collins explained: “I don't think it's a coincidence that women were so heavily involved in trying to end this stalemate. Although we span the ideological spectrum, we are used to working together in a collaborative way.”

Female senators in the United States are certainly not in lockstep politically, but their custom of monthly meetings and their history of collaborating across party lines on other projects set the tone for constructive bargaining to end partisan gridlock. Indeed, women in the U.S. Senate have a track record of crossing party lines to develop legislation that promotes their shared interests. The Airline Passenger Bill of Rights Act (Barbara Boxer, D-CA and Olympia Snowe, R-ME), legislation to provide health care to the first responders to the attacks of September 11, 2001 (Lisa Murkowski, R-AK and Kristen Gillibrand, D-NY), and legislation amending the tax code to meet the needs of stay-at-home moms (Barbara Mikulski, D-MD and Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-TX) are just a few of many examples. Senator Mikulski describes these bipartisan feats and others as “the power of two women building a coalition to accomplish a mutual goal.”

This kind of collaborative behavior is not unique to the United States. As women gain access to parliaments worldwide in record numbers, legislative collaboration appears to be on the rise. Stories of women working together to accomplish bipartisan goals appear in popular media and academic discourse across the globe.

Collaboration is an essential component of democracy. It is widespread across legislatures, but some legislators have more incentives to collaborate than others. In particular, legislators who are not in positions of power – such as women – can use collaboration to attain political power and influence the policy-making process. Perhaps this is why most scholarship emphasizes the competitive aspects of democracy, paying little attention to collaboration. When we focus primarily on privileged groups – those groups who designed institutions to benefit themselves – we overlook this aspect of democracy. It is only as we focus on groups that face structural barriers in institutions that the need for collaboration becomes apparent.

Although the incorporation of underrepresented groups into political institutions highlights aspects of the democratic process that are typically overlooked, these underrepresented groups still must function within existing institutions. As such, we can see how institutions structure their distinctive motivations. Patterns of collaboration vary among female legislators because not all women have the same opportunities to work collaboratively. Generally, women's collaboration is more likely to unfold where party leaders exercise weak party constraints over legislative behavior. By contrast, when party leaders exercise strong constraints over legislators’ behavior, women's legislative collaboration is likely to be foiled.

In this concluding chapter, I address questions about how this book's contributions can advance future studies of legislative collaboration beyond women's marginalization, women's rights legislation, women's representation, and collaboration among other historically excluded groups. With respect to legislative collaboration, my theory argues that women are largely motivated to collaborate in an effort to overcome their marginalized status in the legislature and influence the policy-making process. As women make gains in the legislature and begin to achieve equal access to power, will collaboration cease, or is there room to think about collaboration beyond women's collective marginalization? Where the study of women's rights is concerned, what can the theory advanced here help us understand about the progression and success of women's rights agendas? For example, are some institutions more prohibitive to the advancement of women's rights? If so, what can be done to overcome these challenges? Next, I consider the implications of my findings for institutional design.

Party discipline is key to understanding legislative dynamics. In Chapter 2, I argued that women have incentives to collaborate more frequently than men with female colleagues to exert their influence on the legislative process. Nonetheless, not all women have the same opportunities to collaborate. In particular, some institutional contexts – such as the extreme party discipline described in the quote above – permit party leaders to constrain legislative behavior and disincentivize legislators from behaving independently of their political parties.

In the case of Jujuy, a deputy describes one such environment in which political parties exercise absolute control over legislative behavior. “In the majority party, there are four or five who lead and direct the issues. The rest have to support them. They can present projects, but [party leaders] don't encourage it.” Given that women are typically absent from leadership, they likely wield very little influence in the chamber. Women may even be discouraged from introducing new issues to the legislative agenda or collaborating with female legislators in their own political parties. Instead, they are expected to toe the party line and provide unwavering support for party leaders. As the deputy from Jujuy sees it, “[Party leaders] end up eliminating the possibility for debates that enrich and cultivate different views – even debates within [their own parties].” Moreover, when political institutions give party leaders substantial control over legislators’ behavior, party leaders have very little tolerance for behavior that may be viewed as disloyal. In such environments, party leaders do not allow any disagreement from rank-and-file members. “Legislators can be very angry or even opposed to their part[ies], but the party discipline is very strong. There are legislators who are part of the majority party who have not opened their mouth[s]; they don't speak.” She indicates that legislators do not openly challenge party leaders. When legislators disagree with party leaders, their only option is to abstain from the discussion. In Chapter 2, I explained that strong party constraints of this nature limit women's legislative collaboration. Nonetheless, such uncompromising party discipline is not constant across all Argentine settings; rather, there is considerable variation both between and within legislative chambers.

Evidence from Argentina shows that women entering male-dominated legislatures face structural barriers and have limited ability to exert influence on the policy-making process. As a result, women have strong incentives to collaborate in order to overcome such barriers, exert influence in the chamber, and gain a voice in the policy-making process. Despite the many benefits of collaboration, its prevalence varies between legislative contexts because not all women have the same opportunities to collaborate. In Argentina, women facing weak party constraints are more likely to collaborate than their male colleagues, and their propensity to do so increases as women's numeric representation increases. By contrast, women facing strong party constraints have limited opportunities to collaborate with other women. Instead, these women behave more like their male colleagues and collaborate less frequently. The effects of strong party constraints are mitigated by other factors; notably affiliation with the executive's party, seniority, and women's issues legislation motivate collaboration among women.

In this chapter, I draw on a series of case studies from across the world in order to expand my analysis and to demonstrate the generalizability of my theory beyond Argentina. I evaluate data from four national parliaments: the Rwandan Chamber of Deputies, the U.S. Senate, the Uruguayan Congress, and the South African Parliament. In doing so, I examine countries that have different legislative contexts than the ones found in Argentina, thus providing broader tests of how other legislative contexts constrain or facilitate women's collaboration.

I present this set of case studies to facilitate the exploration of how institutional arrangements structure women's collaboration outside of the Argentine provinces. As I explain in Chapter 2, electoral institutions that concentrate power in the hands of party leaders and foster strong party loyalty constrain women's collaboration. By contrast, electoral institutions that allow legislators to act independently of political parties impose fewer constraints on women's collaboration. Whereas the Argentine provinces enabled me to test these expectations for both women facing strong party constraints and women facing comparably weaker party constraints (i.e., closed-list PR systems with large district magnitudes and closed-list PR systems with small district magnitudes), these four additional cases allow me to examine collaboration in legislatures across the full range of party constraints.

In 2012, a group of eight female deputies from across the political spectrum in Mendoza worked together to develop legislation that would create a Special Prosecution Unit for Crimes of Gender. The unit would exist within the Ministry of Public Prosecutions and be staffed with personnel trained to assist female victims of violence against women. Although there is a strong national law addressing violence against women, many provinces are not equipped to enforce the law because they lack the resources and infrastructure to provide victims with assistance. To address this challenge, one deputy explained, legislators needed to learn more about the “kind of problems public officials encountered when they wanted to assist the women.” To this end, the deputy spearheading the project in Mendoza brought together a number of experts from different branches of government, including specialists from the provincial courts, the provincial executive branch, the municipalities, and nongovernmental organizations such as the National Institute Against Discrimination and Xenophobia. Female deputies interested in addressing violence against women met with these experts on multiple occasions to identify the challenges the experts faced when implementing the national legislation, to develop solutions, and to fine-tune the proposed legislation.

The project, cosponsored by eight female deputies, was officially proposed in May 2012 and is making its way through the legislative process. The deputy leading the project explained: “This project has been going for one year and I am fighting to sanction it. We have a bicameral system. So it is necessary for it to be approved by both chambers. I have been fighting for the house's approval.” In May 2014, the project finally advanced from the General Legislation and Constitutional Issues Committee but did not go to a vote on the house floor. In the meantime, female deputies collaborated with female senators in the Bicameral Committee for Gender and Diversity in the Mendoza Legislature, and arranged for a female Senator to introduce the same bill in the Mendoza Senate. The legislation was approved in the Senate on May 27, 2015 along with three other bills designed to address violence against women.

In the previous chapter, I showed that factors that vary widely between legislative chambers are important for explaining when women collaborate. Patterns of collaboration also vary within chambers. For instance, many women explain that they are more likely to collaborate with female colleagues when working on women's issues legislation. When asked if women work together, a female deputy from Entre Ríos responded: “Yes, above all partisan differences. We all represent the different parties. We tend to think the same way and agree on the same things, because we believe in this process of generating and carrying out women's rights.” Similarly, in Río Negro, women look beyond partisan divisions in order to achieve common goals. As one deputy reflected, “we work together, we work with our colleagues in our party, and with other parties.”

Collaboration among women on women's issues legislation ranges from crafting legislation to participating in debates, organizing meetings, and contributing to discussions about policies. To illustrate, a female deputy explained that in Salta, legislators from all different parties get together to address women's issues. They establish relationships with women outside of the legislature to get input on the development of legislation designed to promote women's rights. When asked how women have made progress over time, she responded: “With a lot of fight and with the unification of women presenting projects in the chamber. There were women in the chamber who took charge and fought for their projects to be approved.” Women from across Argentina maintain that collaboration has important implications for women's abilities to influence the policy-making process.

In addition to women's issues legislation, I posit that other legislative contexts that vary within chambers also influence when women collaborate. Specifically, three factors that vary significantly within the Argentine legislatures should influence women's collaboration: 1) affiliation with the governor; 2) seniority status; and 3) women's issues legislation. In this chapter, I empirically investigate how these three factors structure legislative collaboration.

In 2009, Linda Suarez became the first woman to be elected vice president of the legislature. This powerful leadership position is the highest legislative appointment and the third-ranking position in the province – below only the positions of governor and vice-governor. In recent years, a few talented, well-connected women have risen to the top ranks of politics in Argentina. Ask most male politicians in Argentina and they will tell you that, without a doubt, women now have equal opportunities in politics; after all, Argentina has elected a female president. Similarly, many politicians from Vice President Suarez's province boast that a woman holds the top position in the legislature, frequently citing her as proof that women are on even footing politically in the province.

One would expect that Vice President Suarez would be very proud to serve as the first female vice president in her province and that she likely views it as an accomplishment and a testament to her hard work. Yet, when asked if she was the first woman to hold such a prestigious appointment in the legislature, Vice President Suarez had a surprising response:

Where many people use her position to illustrate their opinion that women have equal access to power, Vice President Suarez views her experience as exceptional and not representative of women's status in politics. Instead, she suggests that female legislators face a number of obstacles and disadvantages. In this chapter, I empirically evaluate women's marginalization in the Argentine provincial legislatures. I compare women's and men's access to leadership posts and powerful committee appointments in the legislatures to evaluate whether women and men have equitable political power.

It is important to assess women's access to political power in order to answer one of the central questions in this book: Why do women collaborate? Recall, my theory contends that women collaborate more than men because women face structural barriers that restrict their ability to exert influence in the policy-making process.