then seven skeletons, the epilation of the human fossils. >> now, a look at how gender and race affect the presidential election. the trump cabinet choices and the 115th congress. the university of minnesota humphrey school of public affairs hosted this discussion shortly after the inauguration. speakers include authors and academics from case western reserve university and the university of minnesota. this is about an hour and a half. >> has all of us know who are here in the united states, or even from abroad, during the fall of 2016, we had campaign that was permeated by issues of gender and race and class.

we had a woman at the top of the democratic ticket for the first time. we had a billionaire at the top of the republican ticket who had a discourse of strong populism. also in this campaign we saw differences from campaigns in the near past in that sex and race entered into the discourse in new and different ways. sexism and racism in particular were overtly discussed by candidates in ways that were perpetrated by candidates in ways we had not seen in previous campaigns. that's not to say previous campaigns did not have sexism and racism, but rarely did we hear those comments coming from the candidates themselves.

in part, due to the campaign and how gender and race played into the campaign, we expect gender and race to play large roles in the 45th presidential administration. we already see, for example in terms of policy, donald trump promising to make an executive order to build a wall along the u.s. mexican border. we also saw responses from civil society with regard to gender and gender equality and it was between three and four million people marching across america for gender equality. we already see important dynamics of race and gender. all of this comes into a political context that has been one of increased polarization.

the panel today takes on that dynamic and interrogates gender and race and partisan politics and what we might expect in the 45th presidential administration. i have three esteemed analyst. i will introduce them now. they will each present for 15 minutes and then will open it up to discussion. the panelist we had is in a logan, professor of sociology at the university of minnesota. i asked her to start off the panel because her expertise is in electoral politics and campaigns in particular. she is known for her book called at this defining moment, barack obama's candidacy and the new politics of race.

she is in a research project that look specifically at the 2016 campaign and young people's perspective of gender and race in that campaign. she is a professor at case western reserve university. she is the cornerstone master professor and chair of the department of political science. professor beckwith is known for her work on women's movements and gender and party leadership. this book compares the cabinet appointments in seven industrialized countries. and the implications of the process for the presence of women in those cabinets.

the third speaker will be captain pearson, associate professor of political science here from the university of minnesota. she is an expert in u.s. congressional politics she has been published widely in this area with her most recent book in 2015, party discipline in the house. she will give us some background and what we might expect in the future as we move into this congress and this administration. now i will turn it over to

professor logan. >> hello. i'm being timed and i will also try to tie myself. here we are five days after the inauguration. to discuss the recent presidential election in the new administration and i'm excited to be part of the conversation. thank you for inviting me. what i will do is prevent some preliminary results from a study that my research team and i are working on at present. the dynamics of race, immigration and gender in the presidential election. the study is still in progress, we are still conducting interviews. therefore we have not begun to conduct in-depth analyses of the data but there are few trends i can point out and some fascinating stuff coming up in the interviews and i will share

that with you. what i will do in the time that i have is provide some background on me, the genesis of the study, discussed the study design and i will give you an overview of the sample. do not expect a lot of analysis trends. we do not trend yet but we have interesting stuff. i would like to acknowledge six members of my research team here so thank you for coming. i am a sociologist here at the university of minnesota. i've been here for about 12 years. i study race relations in the contemporary u.s. i was drawn to look at gender and presidential politics during barack obama's run for the white house and i started to parallel

studies on race, blackness, gender and obama in 2007 and 2008. the first was based on analysis of newspaper articles, blogs and other forms of public commentary where pundits, reporters and bloggers debated the racial meaning of obama's candidacy and his presidency for the u.s. and for whites in particular and black politics et cetera. they asked what kind of black person is he? what does this mean for the u.s.? this is really exciting. i wrote a book based on an analysis of this which came out in 2011. at the same time i started and study called youth speak which is parallel to the work i'm doing and presenting today. rather than focusing on the news media and online platform, it was based on an in-depth interview with college students. i found as i was doing my media -based research on the election

i was having all these interesting conversations from people on what it meant to them. i wanted to talk to individuals in their everyday lives and try to capture some of that. the result of these interviews was presented in a number of presentations, papers, some of it was articles and some of it was incorporated into the book as well. >> i wasn't planning to study race and politics again in 2016. i moved on to some really interesting work but as issues of race, immigration and gender become more and more central to the 2016 election and to the candidacies of trump and clinton, i was drawn to study these issues again. i've become really fascinated with presidential politics as a medium for looking at the

transformation of racial discourse because of the very intense and focused manner in which elections refractometer station about race and gender and immigration. it seemed to me pretty early into trump's candidacy he was running on a white nationalist light platform and this was resonating really strongly with his supporters and when he started blowing his opponents out of the water, one after the other with his rhetoric on muslim and mexicans and terrorism and calling to build a wall and in spite of or maybe because of his very critical comments about women personalities and their physical characteristics, i was like ok okay, there's definitely something here to make sense of and parse through. i have been working on and thinking about race gender and

immigration in the election since late last spring so i did an article for a british publication and for a blog founded by the former president of the asa joe fagan, i did a talk at the ias here at a panel looking at gender race and religion in september and i was interviewed by the washington post for a story about the meaning of the slogan make america great again and also by usa today, a few days after the election on the proliferation of hate speech and racist graffiti in the u.s. or what they called kkk like on saturday night live last weekend. anyway, in this time i started to put together the president's study, his perspective on the 2016 presidential election, and i mention there was all this

stuff coming out about race and immigration and gender and trumps rhetoric in particular seemed to really strongly resound with the supporters and strongly repel those who were opposed to him including the press in general and i wanted to make sense of this. how do we go from our first black president to someone who seems to be running on a white national platform? the members of the press were developing their own views of what was happening and what explains it so some of it might be based on one in-depth profile of an individual person they sat down with over the course of several days or maybe they did interviews with a bunch of different people at a rally, but i wanted to look at this more systematically using in-depth interviews with a large sample of respondents, and i wanted to trace how different ideas and sentiments were or were not connected in their minds and to explore points of contradiction or conflict in their worldviews

as well, and the best way to do this is through in-depth interviews. all right. early in the fall of 2016 i began to assemble my team of research assistance. there are currently 20 of us all together, mostly sociology graduate students and advanced undergraduate students and we proposed college views on the election. :

at the university of minnesota which is a mostly leaning liberal campus and is university which is a christian evangelical college that lanes more conservative. it's about half and half. i can tell you more about the uniqueness of doing research later as well. we were especially interested in seeing an oversample of certain student populations, including black students, first-generation immigrant students, first and second generation, asian-american students, muslim

students, students are right and conservative leaning students and, therefore, we conducted targeted recruitment indifferent student groups. we conducted professors and number of different departments around the university and a bethel. and recruited from 15 different courses so far. we posted fliers around campus. as a mature before we're still collecting data and not formally began the analysis but i'm going to tell you some things about the sample and present some quotes from a few of their interviews. oh, my goodness. so so far with 85 interviews completed. 68 at the u of m and 17 at bethel. this table is separat separatedt i'm just going to give you a combined data. students at the u are generally liberal or left-leaning whereas bethel will close to a 50-50 split. so for our sample is just over

half white, overall 55% due to our strong oversampling for students of color. about one-fourth of a student art of african descent and there are about 10% latino, 7% asian and and 7% other races. all right, so the study questions. after we ascertained basic demographic information on the respondents, including their primary political and religious affiliation, we asked questions that broken into a number of categories. they include, how do you feel about the outcome of the election? what does it outcome tell you about the country or the american people? what explains why trump one? can you provide us with several adjectives to describe hillary clinton or donald trump? there are lots of questions about race such as trump's campaign slogan was make america great again, what does that mean? does it has specifically anything to do with race, gender or immigration? what explains his strong support

among the white working class and a noncollege educated whites? why did so many white evangelicals vote for trump? i'm going to skip over some of these other questions. asked them about specific populations of color, latinos, black voters and et cetera. we also say most critiques of trump racists have come from the left. does the left itself have a race problem or is is mostly a problem on the right? about a third on the study are about gender. we asked do you think gender or patriarch works and trump's favor in election? we asked a similar question about hillary witten. is the u.s. ready for a female president? what kind of model of masculinity or manhood does trump represent? as he present a strong bottle of christian manhood? fatso be asked of the bethel students. in closing we asked things like how do you think the country will change under the trump administration?

what are your greatest hopes and fears for yourself or for other groups of people, and what we do next as a country, how do we move forward from here? i am very low on time but i'm just going to present you with some quotes from a few of the respondents. so first we had scott who is a conservative white male at the u. what do you think of the outcome of the election? he estimate middle-class background. he was happy with the republican sweep all level of government except trump. and he doesn't like another case of the election was a resounding success other than the fact that donald one. i never wanted to vote for him but i just like there is a a republican at the presidential helm so that we can get supreme court appointments and potentially a ridiculously huge republican majority in the supreme court for years or decades to come. when asked him what is the election -- the outcome tell you about the country or the american people?

he says i think more than anything it tells us that the forgotten part of america is being brought into the national spectrum, like the flyover state. i think a lot of the poor people that have been snuffed over, people who didn't have a voice are starting to voice again. but i do think there were some racist sentiments when it comes to the muslim ban and then like the wall. i think the wall is the stupidest thing that people got swayed by donald. why did trump when, in your view? the flyover states did it for him. another reason i think donald one is hillary wha was just an l candidate. the democrats have obama, as like a cool black guy, he's like going on social media in visiting youtube and doing all these cool things and connecting with your people. i think the democratic party made a mistake when the replaced a cool, charismatic black guy with a white old lady, if that makes any sense, who wasn't very charismatic and many people like myself would see her as robotic.

>> i asked him or our interviewer asked him do you think there are any groups that would be particularly disadvantaged under the trump administration? he says muslims and hispanics are definitely going to be at a disadvantage. when you started perpetuating the idea that every muslim is a terrorist, that had a definite impact. i think a lot of prejudices are going to be coming forward, but they won't be disenfranchised politically. no policies will come forward that will put them at any disadvantage. same as gave people. there will be more prejudice and the public populace that they won't be at any disadvantage in terms of policy. there was a liz, a democratic socialist and a white female lesbian at the u briefly said that she cried for two hours after the election was finalized. she said she was not at all a strong supporter. mostly just against trump. as to what the election says

about the country for her, she says it clearly shows the country is far more racist than she even thought. and that people like her must be a lot more passive than she thought. here's an interesting thing about her. in terms of adjectives to describe hillary clinton she says she's experienced and highly intelligent she's also not really trustworthy. she's a one percenter and she doesn't connect with young voters. as for trump she says he is selfish and 1% of your quit after important was gender in the election and she says in some ways i think gender did hurt hillary. but at the same time i've heard a lot of white women use that to derail other more pertinent issues. trump is a disgusting and misogynistic man, let me get that out of the way. we had some serious antiwoman sentiment in this country.

that was not the basis of his platform. it's just who he is. all the xenophobia racism, that's not about gender. i think white women should be careful. it's all about gender. it's all about sexism, it's all massage to be. i don't. i think a lot of women especially straight white women, which is not me, it's like the white feminist tendency is to reduce everything to man versus woman. they don't want to look at other issues such as race. i wanted to be a few quotes from todd, a conservative evangelical at bethel. he says that make america great again was a genius slogan that in his view had absolutely nothing to do with race, immigration or agenda. vicki said it was a fill in the blank kind of thing. when we asked him why didn't the access hollywood tapes significantly damage trump's support among white women? he said because they didn't trust the media, they found was something that was fake or made

up. trump may or may not have said. it didn't matter because it was coming from the media. you couldn't trust the source. when asked him, does trump present a model of christian manhood? he said not at all. i would not classify them as a christian whatsoever. i would say that i think in the religion would want trump to be known to be affiliate with them. i think muslims, hindus, anyone would be appalled by trump identifying as one of them. on the issue of the nature of race relations in the u.s. today, he said they were very tense. it was not the 1800s or the 1950s, that things were still for a bed. he says lot of people are pushing for it to be equal but who you are pushing against his people are willing to push back. he says a lot of the race problem is coming from the media. media. the media is causing as to focus on race and that they are there for causing racial divisions by making us think that everything is racial whether or not it really is.

and he says if you want to go away from race and racism when you to stop talking about race. how important was race in the recent election, in your view? he said it was nonexistent. could have cared less. i thought trump was racist so it hurt my moral estimation of income but as far as auto policy level or really any other characteristic, i mean, no. i'm whitesell really didn't really didn't matter to me. for me it was a non-issue, other than the fact that he was a racist in my mind. [laughing] >> you've described trump as a racist and pointed out that he espoused a lot of a racist views. do you think people that voted for him were implicitly or explicitly motivated by racism as some have claimed? he says i think that's very much a false statement. now i could name a kind of races that voted for trump because he also wanted muslims out of the country. so yes, that is a true

statement. however, he won a lot of votes and there are just not that many racist in this country. i think that's not possible. i don't think that's a valid point. so therefore no, you cannot possibly say that. it has no background at all. so some contradiction to bear, right? and lastly, i'm going to give you a few quotes from michael who was a black male, independent who described himself as lower-class. how did you feel about the outcome of the election? i wasn't surprised. a lot of people were surprised that i wouldn't say i was happy but i was not worried and i wasn't surprised because i understand the level of racism that exist in our country and i live in that reality. a lot of white liberals particularly don't live in that reality. when the election happen and people were surprised it's because you are not paying attention. you were not paying attention to what people have been telling you the whole time, that america's a very scary place to live if you're a racial minority, particularly if you're a muslim or if you're a poor racial minority.

what adjectives would use to describe hillary clinton? he said adjectives, o jesus. i'm afraid because i don't want to be to connected. the problem is unforced to acknowledge i'm sexist because i'm a male. i think she would've been a great candidate. i think she's a professional business savvy, untrustworthy. i don't think that's sexist. i think that's legit. a bit untrustworthy, successful, a product of the times and a pioneer trendsetter. then i said because i did it again, were there other interviews they came to mind you did want to use? he said evil in such a horrible person, how she is portrayed in the media. he said he would like some of these characteristics -- characterizations were sexist and use when to back off of them but he says overall she just wasn't likable. she will sit whenever she needs to say just to get a vote. it's like pandering and you can't do that. now as for adjectives to describe donald trump, he says he smart, sensationalist,

arrogant, full of bs, so dishonest. he said even for his supporters he is not authentic either. then i simply don't think he meets most of the stuff that he says? not even half of it. he knows better. there's no way he can run a country the way he wants to run it. and it's funny because he knows that, and trump supporters know that but they get a certain feeling when they speak -- when he speaks and they like that. they can't tell you why they voted for him by collective feeling that they get. so what he says, it's not feasible. it's not applicable that he can get you elected. and lastly i asked him why do you think that donald trump one? he says he was restoring the narrative that the country was built on which is white supremacy. i think he won because of sexism, to be fair but trump is the perfect president because look at what this country was founded on, which is the exportation of other peoples bodies and brains and that's what his narrative was. trump is perfect what they want when you look at it, can we be surprised that this man one?

let's go back to the white liberals. he's really concerned about white liberals. more than anyone. he says i feel like they are the most important factor. we haven't made any progress as a nation and they are the only ones i want to talk to. they are the worst sometimes. they are the worst because we're the ones that have a white friend or a muslim friend but they're not actually working to address these issues so we're not making progress. he says were not making progress, donald trump being president doesn't surprise me. disparities are still there. that's what if you like the real problem is and him are interested in having a conversation with them because they think they want to help. so i'm done. thank you. [applause]

>> when i was in high school i went to get state university high school and they marched us from the high school over to the gymnasium at kent state university to see hubert humphrey give a campaign speech when he was running for vice president in 1968. i've never forgotten that it was a really impressive time, expensespresso maker of august interest in politics so that was terrific but i was hopping mad because i was only i think at that time, i was probably still 16 and couldn't vote. and so i was infuriated that it wouldn't be of the castle because it would have voted for him. his record on civil rights alone was sufficient to have persuaded me even at that young age. i want to thank christina for inviting me to.

really wonderful to be here. i also just as a little shout out so to say to the fulbright commission. i was a fulbright scholar for six months in january to june 2014. today is robert burns birthday, so i have to say it. [laughing] i want to talk as fast as he can about a research project with claire, and susan husak university of calgary. we are interested in how this happens. how is it that overnight a new prime minister, liberal party candidate justin trudeau can appoint a gender parity can but, when a half our men and half are women overnight instantaneously coming straight into office. that's a large cabinet by the way so to be able to find 15 women while in a nation of 35 million people that shouldn't be too difficult here we have a lovely tony abbott also liberal party but on the right in australia when he came in office after his first election he

managed to only appoint one woman, julie bishop, ms. bishop was the only woman to enter cabinet as of the foreign minister that was the lowest number since 1998 of women in cabinet and australia. that was john howard for the liberals in 1990. she constitutes 5.5% of the cabinet and australia. in 2015 with the canadian cabinet and a toy 13 only two years prior we had the australian cabinet. we wanted to ask a couple of questions about the impact of gender and the process of gender that might help explain this. why does women's inclusion in cabinet vary across selectors, presidents and prime ministers across democracies come within the same democracy across selectors? we wanted to know that a particular how is the process of cabinet formation gender -- that's probably a big mistake so let me take this back for a moment. he wanted to know why these

differences exist. what we decided first to do was to set up the research design that we would examine, look at the inclusion of women in cabinet by doing comparative case study approach. we would do an analysis that was feminist, institutional and said if we look at the rosenthal in establishing what it meant to form a cabinet. what rules constrained both formal and informal, and that we would get data and information however we could both quantitative and qualitative. we began first by identifying the rules. we wanted to examine the formal and informal rules at the levels of both the political system and also in the selectors political party and by selectors meet the president or the prime minister who does the choosing. these rules determine the rate of action that constrain or empower the selector and also affect the range of choices that the selector might have for

people who aren't included in cabinet in terms of both eligibility, former rules that say you can't i may not serve and also in terms of qualification. what do you need to bring to cabinet as an individual to the together a collective cabinet that makes some sense? we wanted to ask about the informal rules. formal rules are written, public and visible. there is no discretion that the selector has. these roles have clear sanction for violation and the sanctions are legally enforceable. changing these roles requires formal action but infomercials are slightly different. these are not written, not public. probably need of some of these things up where you can see them as a bit. they are not written, not public but they are visible to insiders. they vary across or within party in terms of substance and application. they vary across time. they are subject to discussion but they also have sanctions for their violation, even though the

sanctions cannot be imposed through legal enforcement. so we developed a model. we wanted to see a formal and informal rules interacted in terms of two sets of actress. the first are the selectors, those who make the choices, those who are empowered to act or constrained to act both by formal rules and informal rules in the political system and in the political party. we wanted to ask who would be eligible to be a minister, who would be qualified to be a minister asked what is the set from which he selector would be likely to form his or her cabinet? we collected data for seven advanced democracies, some more industrialized than others with various political systems and parties. you will see them listed here. we have two presidential systems. we have two continental

parliamentary systems and three westminster parliamentary systems, and they have a variety of political parties but the major political parties and i'll be aligned on a left-right dimension and by and large two parties define the polls of the party system. we looked at appointments only from initial cabinets. we collected data on all cabinet appointments from the date of the appointment of the first female cabinet minister. you can see some data. that training was an early actor in 1933, franklin roosevelt appointed frances perkins as i'm sure you know as a secretary of labor, a position in which she served for four full term so she was appointed in initial cabinet. we saw with the first appointment of a woman, collected data on every single cabinet member in every single cabinet for every single one of the seven countries in our data set. we also collected information about the process of cabinet appointment, and we looked at pairs of elections in each of

these countries that were consecutive, that involve a change of party government. and so for some of these, these are new governments. barack obama can into office in 2009. some of these are second terms or even third terms. for example, georg george w. bus a second term that begins for appointment purposes in 2005 so please forgive the air. we collected that data as well and the data in the process of cabinet appointments that we collected data do with the following. the database from two national newspapers for every case in our sample or in our little universe. we're not making massive generalizations. this is a theory building, a hypothesis producing process. we did staff members, legislative persons and country expert specialist as well as members who are staffed in embassies. finally we turn to political biographies and memoirs.

so these are the various things that we employed to collect our data. so we found some interesting things. i'll get to gender and also if i can be fast to get to race. the first thing is formal rules exist but they have very little constraining impact on the selector, even in the united states which is a case where there is a powerful second actor for cabinet appointments. the president may nominate but if the senate says no, the person may not be cabinet secretary even in these cases this formal role does not act as a major constraint on the selector. senate members by and large of the senate gives the president what he wants in terms of cabinet. there are very few exceptions. this has been true across time. it's even more true when the party of the president controls the senate as we are saying even now. secularly find and informal rule are the primary shapers of the cabinet process. -- secondly. and finally rules about

qualifying we found are the most important there we found three major rules about qualification and we identified qualification as the informal rules which make someone eligible -- not eligible. that makes someone selectable, that makes someone to use the term -- what makes the person potentially ministerial material and a potential appointee. we find that all the rules about qualifying criteria are written, excuse me, informal and unwritten. finally we find in the application of qualifying informal rules, the selector puts together a cabinet not by choosing individuals, but rather by choosing individuals in the context of forming 18. 18. so a cabinet is formed as a team rather than as a set of individuals. no single individual possesses all the qualifying criteria but the cabinet collectively

includes them all. so what do these qualifying criteria we identified three? the first is political experience and policy knowledge. they should not be a big surprise that someone has experience in government, in policymaking for the political experience necessary to get things done. secondly we found affiliation qualifications. the rules for affiliation are this is some who is in your personal network, not necessarily a friend. the rule for affiliation qualification and now that is employed by selectors in the seven countries is a point primarily from your own political party and don't appoint strangers. appointing enemies is fine, boris johnson as a foreign minister in great britain and theresa may his cabinet but don't appoint strangers. finally, the representation of what we call representational criteria. this is membership in a politically relevant sociodemographic group. every country in our sample has

representational criteria as qualifying for me to cabinet although the number of criteria and the type of representational criteria vary. representational criteria that we sent in other cases occluded region, race, ethnicity, religion or language, sex, and party or party faction. sex as a cartoon for qualification in everyone of our cases. see only representational category that appears across all countries. all countries have a requirement that cabinets now cannot be all-female. and although that category exist for all countries, the magnitude and number varies substantially. lelet's see, so surely have -- yesterday for a moment. all the cabinet appointments look like a cross time. some are across zero. you can see this trajector trajs primary support for women but not consistently and not in all countries. australia has the flattest line

and is the worst case. and goodness, i'm not getting further in my presentation in terms of what's on the screen. so i will just talk in that case and see where i can get from here. i won't even bother about this. so let me give you some examples. race and ethnicity are clearly important representation of criteria into our cases, the united states and canada. ethnicity is an emerging representational criteria in the united kingdom. religion which has been a primary qualifying criteria in germany is declining in importance and significance. and in australia, chile and spain, never was a mention of race, religion or ethnicity as well as representational criteria for canada the primary criterion is region. you cannot have a cabinet appointed that is not occluded

minister that represent a mystical province in candidate and one that doesn't represent toronto or québec. it is the case for a canada and u.s. that all white cabinets are no longer acceptable. see would also want to say because i would want to share, i can't show you some of these things. i'll talk about some of this later in regards to response to question but if you want to say in the united states race and ethnicity have become more important as has gender obviously. although gender, let me be clear, gender has been an up or greater in all of these cases because the original qualification was appointment. that was informal role. that will has been changing as countries have established what we refer to as a concrete floor. ..

in many cases, especially with obama's second additional cabinet, the number dropped to three. four is not confirmed. three is 20% representation in cabinet but it's a low number. many other countries have more. i know i only have zero minutes left but i do want to say a couple of things about the concrete floor and why it's important. it's important for women, and i will talk about race and the women which is not the focus of our research project, but it's really important in the united states for cabinet appointment.

it's important because it establishes women's inclusion in the representational criteria used to form cabinets. concrete floors, once established can silence merit. concrete floors exist in canada for coalition partner and government and these provoke little opposition. when it comes to appointing women to cabinet from kong creek floors and promote discussion of merit. once the floors begin to rise, arguments about this person is not meritorious begin to disappear. we think about the concrete floor as recasting arguments about merit and cabinet appointments, not as about merit but rather a form of tactics or strategies in a political struggle over political

representation in women's inclusion in government and we anticipate as numbers have been appointed, arguments about merit will diminish. secondly, concrete floors for women inclusion shape strategy. one of the interesting strategies for us is if there is a concrete floor that's relatively high, you can use that for to leverage the next selector. one of the things we found is if you can exact a promise from the prime minister or the president that he or she will appoint at least a higher number, and in many cases just make them promise to appointed gender parity appointment, they do that and this is the unusual component, it's quite different than being elected to parliament. the selector is fully empowered to select and there is a range of qualified and eligible persons from whom you do not need to choose a large number. there are virtually no. [inaudible]

this means a selector who promises to appoint a gender parity cabinet can do so and increasingly there is no penalty for doing so. in this regard, we need to pay attention to the ways in which gender might differ from race and it also, one more thing i wanted to say. i have to leave it at that. in any case, we found a variety of interesting findings thus far to the current appointments of a new cabinet under a new president. thank you very much.

>> thank you for having me. i'm delighted to be here to talk about race, gender and polarization in the 115th congress. we are a few weeks in in a few days in to the trump presidency and we face considerable uncertainties. political science research sheds

light on the context that we face and informed predictions about the roles of race, gender and partisan identity. where a member of congress is situated is extremely important in assessing their ability to get their voice out there. i want to take us back to election night 2016. even before that, remind you that for most of the election cycle, when discussing congressional elections, analyst focused on the potential damage that trumps candidacy would cause for republican house candidates. what they lose control of the senate? many suggested yes. what would it look like in the house. paul ryan declined to campaign

with trump and said explicitly he would focus on getting his house republican colleagues reelected. trump won and congressional republicans avoided significant losses. in spite of their misgivings about trump, some republicans felt some unexpected gratitude. republicans continue their majority party control of both the house and the senate and most of the membership remains constant. democrats gained six house seats, not the 20 they would've needed to take over the chamber and two senate seats. only nine incumbents running for reelection lost we are entering the hundred and 15th congress in a highly partisan and highly polarized environment.

they are deeply divided on many policy issues. party unity is consistently high and we expect it to be so and it has been for the last decade. here are party unity scores for the average republican member in the house and senate and the average democratic member in both the house and senate. you can see on votes that divide the two parties, members on average but with their party and against the other in the high '80s, low '90s. i would expect to see no difference in the congress ahead. electoral competition is also very important in understanding this. it important to understand congressional behavior. it's not that they are just divided on issues, they are, but they also vote against one another when the issues are deeply divided. when the issues are procedural or non- ideological.

the two parties today are teams fighting for majority party control and to understand congress is to understand this dynamic. in 1994, house, the republicans won the house for the first time in 40 years. ever since then, even though sometimes it's been more distant, the two parties have been engaged in politics fighting for control of the house in the next election. the dynamic has been similar for the senate which they control even more frequently than the house since 1980. so again, the 115th congress, just like those that preceded it, we expected to be partisan and polarized. this also means party leaders continue to exercise great power over the agenda and over their members lives, especially in the house of representatives. so, house majority party leaders have power over the agenda. they set the agenda and it is very difficult for minority party members to get their items on the agenda.

in the majoritarian house, even if they do they are likely to lose. additionally, party leaders reward loyalty. all members, regardless of or race have incentive to be loyal to their party because after all, my research has shown party leaders reward members for their loyalty in rollcall voting and other behavior when it comes to determining what committee they are on, how much money they get although seat safety matters there as well and whether or not their bills and amendments are considered on the house floor. minority party members in-house have very little power and very little influence. majority party leaders in the senate have less power than they do in the house in large part because it takes 60 votes to get much of anything done in the senate. minority party senators have more options the minority party members doing the house but their power is still more limited. turning now to the total number of women elected to congress. the number didn't change between

the 2016 elections and today. the number was 100 for women going in and we have 100 for women serving in the current congress. the house and the senate numbers changed slightly. the senate added one woman for a total of 21 women, a historic high and the house went from 84 women in the last congress 283 women today. it's extremely important to have descriptive representation in the house of representatives. this is the branch of government closest to the people and women comprise 51% of the american population. increasing women and racial and ethnic diversity brings legitimacy to the house. women are not monolithic and are diverse in their own experiences and views. women do bring different perspectives and different views to the chamber. women in congress have discussed their own experiences during important welfare reform debates. i've discussed recovering from

childbirth, dealing with breast cancer and many other issues that are generally specific to women and in fact, research shows that women are more likely to sponsor bills that deal with issues that disproportionately affect women. women are more likely to prioritize these issues, whether at sponsorship, cosponsorship, offering amendments. my own research has shown women in both parties are more likely to discuss the policy implications of legislation for women and when giving one minute speeches on issues that members choose, there are considerable differences between democrats and republicans in the policy position. these differences have actually become more pronounced. i will get to that in a minute. it's also important to note that women's demonstrated focus on women's issues defines, in a variety of ways, by different

scholars does not come at the expense of other issues. in congress after congress they have found that women actually sponsor more bills than men do. they are better at bringing more money back to their district. they are more likely to be effective according to a complicated algorithm figured out by some political scientist. women are also more likely to deliver speeches on the house floor. this comes as no surprise. women come to the u.s. congress with more preparation than men, although men and women win, at the same rate, women have previous experience more likely and for democrats, raise more money. what about partisan differences. 54% of women voted for hillary clinton but the gender gap between republicans and democrats, when it comes to representation is much more pronounced.

women in both parties may be more active legislators on issues that disproportionately affect women, but today they are on opposite sides of debate especially in house of representatives. they are very unequal in terms of their composition of women. 32% is comprised of women and 33% of senate democrats. compare that to just 9% of the house republican conference and 10% of the senate republican conference. so, many fear women, many fewer republican women in congress than in the electorate. the republican party leadership in the house and the senate is almost entirely white and entirely male. kathy mcmorris rodgers was renamed as house republican conference chair so not a top position but a leadership position in the house. mimi walters was named as a sophomore representative.

that's it. only two republican women will serve as committee chairs. virginia foxx and susan brooks in the house and two republican women will chair senate committees and susan collins. on the house senate democratic side, patty murray from washington who was first elected in 1992 will be the democrats number three leader. this dynamic, in terms of the proportion of women in each party in congress has been shifting since the 1980s. for republicans the percentage of women has remained remarkably can't and constant but for others it's been a slight downtick in this election. >> among democrats, the women's caucus is more racially diverse than other in the 115th congress. women of congress are better represented than ever with 38 women of color, 38 democrats

serving in the 115th congress. of the 14 nonincumbent women elected, nine or women of color. the number of women of color in the senate has quadrupled to four. she will be joined by catherine and kamala harris, the first black woman to save and serve in the u.s. senate in nearly two decades and tammy duckworth of illinois. one more note on women in partisanship in congress. women in both parties, research has found has been more likely to talk about women and more likely to prioritize issues that disproportionately affect women. i want to emphasize that the women who have been on opposite sides of these issues, for example during the debate of the affordable care act, we saw women in both parties were disproportionately likely to speak about the role, amendments dealing with abortion, but in

all of the speeches the women were on different sides of these issues. while women may be more active, democratic and republican women today are very divided on these issues. going back to the 1990s, women in the republican party were more likely to be on both sides of these issues. today with increased partisan polarization, a dynamic has changed. women in both parties are very partisan. we also see this in their speeches and in their voting. women in both parties are just as likely, in some cases more likely to vote along party lines and to give speeches attacking the other party. turning briefly to race and representation in congress, in part because of the election of the women i just talked about, racial and at neck diversity in congress is at its highest point yet.

by comparison these same groups comprise 38% of the nation's population. the gap between the u.s. population is bigger than it was during the 1980s. white men are minority within the democratic caucus in the house. just as research shows women are more likely to prioritize issues that disproportionately affect women, we see the same dynamics among after americans, hispanics and asians in congress, in part because their efforts to sponsor

legislation and in part because of the efforts of the tri- caucus, the congressional black caucus, the hispanic caucus and groups where members get together to look out for the collective interest and do a better job than their democratic collies and looking out for the interest of their particular group. turning to the house republican leadership, of course most powerful group inside the house of representatives. it's a pretty white male group aside from kathy mcmorris rodgers. they are overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male. only a quarter of all the women in houston republican. the house freedom caucus, a group of about 40 conservative republicans who differ a little bit on ideology and greatly when it comes to strategy is an all white and all-male group. when it comes to house

democrats, nancy pelosi was reelected for her eighth term as democratic leader. she survived a challenge by tim ryan from ohio with the caucus vote of 134 - 63. this is not quite a record, but almost a record in terms of her longevity. she has done this by being a fears partisan, by bringing democrats together and raising records amount of money. she is an interesting example of gender and partisan dynamic inside the house of representatives. on one hand she goes against conventional wisdom that women perhaps do a better job of reaching across the aisle. there's really no reaching across the aisle when it comes to minority leader nancy pelosi. on the other's hand, research has shown she did a particularly good job of building consensus within her own party across various ideological groups. it's also clear she embraces and celebrates the diversity inside

the democratic caucus that is evident both in terms of the leadership and you would never see a press conference that had nancy pelosi in it if she went surrounded by a diverse group of democratic members. in the senate, very briefly, as i mentioned, record diversity in its membership but not party leadership. on the other hand, democrats had patty murray as their number three but the dynamics for republicans in the senate are different and different in terms of how they will deal with the trump presidency. just as women in the house are just as partisan if not more so than their male colleagues, the institutional setting is different and collaboration is valued. in fact, susan collins two more moderate senators have the opportunity to be key players in the 115th congress because they are among the republicans who might be most likely to the

fact and because they are both legislatively active. just today news came out that senator collins is looking to compromise health care bill. cosponsored with another republican but it does suggest that because of the 60 vote senate where you need 60 votes to get most everything except for reconciliation past that some of the more moderate senators including women and moderate democrats might play a more significant role. my time is up and then some. thank you we will now go to questions. we have the room until 4:00 o'clock. i would like to start off with the first question and then they will walk around with a wireless microphone serratia hand and get her attention. i want to start with the question for karen beckwith.

i would like her to follow up on observations on how the trump administration selection and cabinet selection process compares to what you've seen historically as patterns in the united states and comparatively too other countries. >> thank you for that question. >> so, our new president has promised to be different in different indeed he is. at least in regard to cabinet appointments. one of the things that we note, if we think about these criteria for qualification for appointment to cabinet, experience for criteria, affiliation of criteria and representational criteria, it's very interesting to me that he is violating all three in terms of previous practice but let me start and i will be as quickly as i can. these are policy expertise and political experience.

of his various nominees, he has to who have no policy or government expense whatsoever. there's every reason to believe that all of these nominees will be confirmed because the president has his own party in the senate and even without that it would be difficult for people to turn away his nominees. two who have no experience, usually experiential criteria are the grounds on which presidents make their case for their nominees. in the case of rick perry, former governor of texas who has been nominated to have the department of energy, there is an argument that's being made, at least in the press that expertise is not necessary. abraham who was the previous secretary of energy under george w. bush has argued you really basically learn on the job. it's all about nuclear energy. it's not about being from an oil-rich state for example so the public claim that you don't really need experience is fairly extraordinary in terms of express shall criteria.

again these are the grounds on which appointment battles are cast. the person is experienced and qualified in this regard but experience appears to count not for very much and by the way the top four very important positions, the big beast they call them in germany, the big 4r secretary of state, secretary of treasury, secretary of defense and attorney general. these are consistent across our seven cases. it's very important. of the four appointees, only the candidate, only the nominee for attorney general has a degree beyond the college degree. this is unusual. it's a set of nominees for the most important positions, highest up in the line of succession should something happen to the president and their actually undereducated. it's quite astonishing to see that's the case. so this is really different. in terms of the affiliation criteria is also different. some of the appointees and nominees that our new president has put forward to the senate

were actually his opponents throughout the campaign. i suggest you take a look at some of the things that betsy devos had to say about trump during the campaign. there were only three early endorsers and campaigners for him. i want list them but i want to say something about representational criteria. he drop below the concrete floor of the united states and only nominating to women. he only nominated to people of color for the cabinet. this puts them below the three precedent and it puts him at parity with jimmy carter who only a appointed to persons of color in 1977. for representational criteria, this is also quite different. at the same time it's clear that

people are attentive to this. the last nomination was made for sonny perdue to be the secretary of agriculture because he was the last nominee in the line of nominations, there are reports that there was some discussion about the overly white male-dominated nature of the list of nominees. there is some encouragement to consider women for that position and there are some women who were on the list of potential department of agriculture secretary, but that was decided to nominate purdue. in this regard, we can see almost all of the qualifying criteria that previous presidents have used and really established across time are now being violated, if i can use such a strong word and there have been some distinctions in terms of pushback and criticism in the media from people in his own party. in the same time they are not

sensitive enough to this but sensitive enough that president trump has said that there will be more appointments of women and people of color at subcabinet ranks to which i can only say thanks a lot. [laughter] >> hello, another question for professor beckwith. i was wondering, in your research did you find if there was a woman as a selector, did that affect the gender makeup of the cabinet? >> that's an interesting question. we only have two in our data s set. we found it makes no difference. it's not that women do badly, but that men do just as well. many of the gender parity cabinets that we find our mail appointed so we didn't find much difference in terms of selector.

here's what else we found. we found political party doesn't make much of a difference. once the concrete floor is established, selectors appoint two and above that floor. it's also interesting, if you aggregate by party, it's generally but not exclusively across our cases at the same party, once it comes back into office and can reappoint, does better than it did previously. if we look at the data in the aggregate, it looks like this long slope but by party it's this punctuated increase. left parties tend to do a little bit better in this pattern than right parties. the same is true for movers. right wing parties are often the first movers and jumping the women in cabinet, but once jumped, all parties move they

move in the same direction with few exception. political system makes no difference and party system appears to make no difference either. >> if i could add, this should give us some hope about strategy because it means that we should be able to leverage whoever the selector is. it's not a promise, but if we can make the person promise and we can point to what his or her party has done in the past, it increases the opportunity for more women in cabinet. let me just say one more thing, it's important to have women in cabinet. i'm not thrilled that margaret thatcher was prime minister of britain, but it's important that women are in public office because if we are missing in public office and that includes the military, it means we are second-class citizens. we are literally subordinate as citizens in the political system. that needs to be changed. >> other questions from the audience?

>> i will track this question to director pearson. i was going to speak to some of the changes in the parties, are they shifting how they recruit candidates? is that part of why we are seeing diversity in the parties are what are some of the other things that are taking place? >> thank you for that question. the answer i think is partially unknown and complicated, but you are referring to the big increasing growth of democratic women in both the house and senate and actually the same dynamic is true in state legislatures compared to the smaller numbers of republican women. this dynamic is repeated in terms of women's candidacies, not just to get selected. starting at the level of primaries for the u.s. congress and i did some research with jennifer lawless that goes back several decades and shows that with a few exceptions in most

election cycles, women and men win their congressional primaries at the same rate as well. it's not just that they win general elections at the same rate but increasingly, democratic women actually stand a slightly better chance of winning their primaries compared to democratic men. republican women and men, about the same. if there was a republican woman running in all districts, i suspect these results would be different because experimental research suggested that women, republican women face challenges in primaries because of stereotypes that women are more liberal than men and that can be problematic for republican men and helpful for democratic women. i think we see some evidence of helpfulness for democratic women. it's also the case that democratic party network, and that includes the democratic party, party gatekeepers,

leaders, they tend to be more active in recruiting democratic women so that's not to say there are some public in groups recruiting women, there are but there's more of an emphasis among the democratic party and interest groups in mobilizing women to run. it's also true we are not seeing big increases in the number running in either party. gender parity in congress is a long way off despite the fact that when women do run they tend to run at the same rate. those results are because at least democrats raise more money and they have more experience. it still the case that in order to do as well in politics, they have to do better. >> i will ask professor logan a question.

i'm really interested in how the media and college student perception of the candidates was affected by this disbelief and what the media is reporting on regardless of source and across social media and from big news sources, just not trusting information that's coming across. how does that affect the sexist engendered and racist rhetoric that was going on in the campaign? >> so, what i have seen so far is the comments about distrust of the media and not believing the media were coming from our conservative respondents. it was just a general theme that reflected some of the stuff you hear in the wider discussion of conservative points of view. it was interesting for me to hear from some of the liberal respondents.

i think it was michael that i quoted at the end who is talking about how he had been influenced by some of the perspectives given on hillary clinton on youtube, on social media and that was influential as well and he had to step back because he realized some of those portrayals were very sexist. that is one of the things we will look at as we go into this. not just looking at the role of the mainstream media where the print media but also looking at the role of social media and what they say about how social media influences their views. thanks for the question. >> the issue of legitimacy has been constant since the campaign began and for me, as a feminist, it has been a nightmare that hillary clinton was treated on equal ground with someone who was so unequal in terms of experience, capability, representation et cetera.

the only dialogue that has been represented is john lewis who was brave and said that he did not feel that president trump was a legitimate candidate. and so, i'm wondering, in your research, have you found anywhere else in the world this unbelievable dynamic of a highly competent qualified person regardless of personality being overtaken by, in this case, a woman being overtaken by a man who is so illegitimate and inexperienced and in capable of being a leader of the democracy? >> i can say a little bit on that in terms of that issue is coming out a little bit in terms of why trump one or why he was supported by the people who voted for him. it seems like both of our

liberal students believe that people didn't really vote for him based on the issues or the policy things, the ideas that he had but more based on this feeling or what he seem to represent. the idea that he was antiestablishment, the fact that he wasn't part of washington, the fact that he was not politically correct, the idea that he was all these things, that he was not all the things he said politicians needed to be and he was all the things that were said to disqualify you as a candidate, these were things that made him very appealing to his supporters and i remember at the beginning of the election, having some people saying how is he doing so well when he obviously knows nothing or how is he doing so well when he keeps saying all these things that they say this will clearly render him illegitimate where it

will sink his candidacy. it didn't. it made it stronger. i think that the fact that he was the anti- candidate candidate had a lot to do with what was appealing about him to his supporters. it was clearly not a coinciden coincidence. there was kind of a rejection of these criteria that we use and we think of as qualifications and i think that shows up in some of the cabinet appointees that you were mentioning. they were undereducated and under experienced and underqualified, but still, they are the choice of the day. >> i do just want to say one other thing, even with supporters who were persuaded to vote for the new president, more numbers of people were not persuaded. it has to do with where his supporters were and not how many they were. today, we are concentrated in states that allow them to win in

the electoral college. more people actually voted for hillary clinton. i find that very interesting. in regard to legitimacy with cabinet, they provide legitimacy to an appointed president who can point to his cap next or her cabinet for the united states only. they can say i have appointed this many persons of color. those numbers vary dramatically, and in terms of what we mean by person of color starting with jimmy carter who appointed the first women of color, patricia harris in 1977 and she served throughout the entirety of his administration. issues of legitimacy rights in cabinet around the criteria established in the past. it will be interesting to see the level of which is cabinet is finally welcomed or not. >> this is sort of a different take on legitimacy, but throughout the nominating contest, not very many

republican elected supported trump. they supported no one or other candidates and that goes against what political science know about electing candidates. those with the most endorsements is the one that tends to get the nomination and that's not what happened here. >> jeb bush initially. >> but then. [inaudible] and then a lot of republican electors just sad about. at the time it was a breakdown of the party nominating contest but once he got the nomination, it sort of gave him a legitimacy that was certainly questioned during all the campaign events for most republican voters, nine out of ten never went away. nine out of ten who voted partisan voted for trump. >> we have time for one more

question. >> i want to thank you for being here. i appreciated what you all had to share and i'm sorry we didn't have an hour for each of your presentations. i did want to ask quickly, professor logan, i know you don't have any analysis of your research but are there any things that are standing out, whether they are shocking, surprising or anything that's resonating form what you've seen so far. >> there are a few things i have noticed. one is, i might've mentioned this that the hillary clinton supporters, all the liberals didn't have a lot of negative things to say about her even if they didn't want to say it. they would say hate to say this but she was untrustworthy or she was pandering. the support was very tepid by most of the people who voted for her were voting against trump more than anything. it was also interesting to find,

we had a question adjective to describe hillary clinton and donald trump that the conservative students also had very negative adjectives to describe trump. most of them were not trump supporters but they were not liberal so they either voted third-party or grudgingly voted for trump but they described him as a liar, manipulator, non-christian, sexist and racist. still, they didn't love him but he was better than hillary clinton who was the worst thing of all time. that is something that i found interesting in that there were so many very strong negatives for each of the candidates from the people we interviewed on both sides of the spectrum and they use similar terms and adjectives like describing them as liars and manipulators and untrustworthy on both sides. >> thank you all for coming and

thank you to our panelists. >> it's true, we could have had an hour for each. >> congressman drew ferguson sat down with c-span for a freshman profile interview. the georgia republican represents the third congressional district. before being elected he was a dentist and then the mayor of his hometown of west point. he talked about his family, his legislative goals and how we got lucky and picking his office on capitol hill. >> congressman ferguson, you are from west point georgia, born and raised. what is it like. >> it's remarkable community. it's a mountain town and something i'm proud of and the progress ima