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Elucidating the fact that committee consideration is the most common source of legislative demise in Congress, Woodrow Wilson aptly noted that "[t]he fate of bills committed [referred to committee] is generally not uncertain" (1885, 63). "As a rule," continued Wilson, "a bill committed is a bill doomed. When it goes from the clerk's desk to a committee-room it crosses a parliamentary bridge of sighs to dim dungeons of silence whence it will never return. The means and time of death are unknown, but its friends never see it again" (ibid.). Scholars have since identified neglect as the means by which most bills meet such a mortiferous fate, and the winnowing stage of the legislative process as the time at which it occurs.
Winnowing--the prefloor legislative process by which Congress determines which bills are selected to receive formal committee consideration--plays an essential role in congressional agenda setting because it influences every subsequent stage of policymaking (Krutz 2005, 314). Of the thousands of bills introduced in every congressional session, only a select few receive committee attention. Agenda setting allows legislators the opportunity both to define problems and establish policy alternatives (Baumgartner and Jones 1993; Kingdon 1995). Particularly for minority representatives, agenda setting provides legislators a unique opportunity to exert individual influence over the policymaking process, since it is through bill sponsorship that minority legislators are the least constrained by seniority, committee position, and demands of party loyalty (Swers 2002, 127). Thus, it is at this critical agenda-setting stage of the legislative process where the link between descriptive and substantive representation may be the most remarkable (Bratton and Haynie 1999; Swers 2002).
A nuanced understanding of the winnowing process is, as Krutz states, "undeniably essential" (2005, 314). Congressional scholars, however, tend to overlook winnowing, focusing instead on later stages of lawmaking, such as floor debate and roll call voting (Krutz 2005, 315). Consequently, detailed analyses of subtler factors that might influence the small percentage of bills that move forward past this critical stage of the legislative process have been all but ignored. One such factor is gender. To be sure, scholars have sought a better understanding of how gender influences legislative behavior, particularly by examining the legislative effectiveness...