Women’s Leadership and Representation in the Senate Judiciary Committee

During my first week on the Hill, I attended a Judiciary Intellectual Property Subcommittee hearing on patent eligibility. It was one in a series of 3 on the topic over the course of a week or so. Each of the 3 days had 15 witnesses, for a total of 45. The topic wasn’t one that I was particularly interested in, but I was aiming to attend as many Judiciary hearings as possible for the project.

Immediately after the hearing began, I noticed something. All of the panelists were male. They were questioned and then the panelists switched out. This time, the panel was all white. The panelists switched out one more time that day and, in that third panel, all 5 of the witnesses were white and male. I was stunned – I have spent much of the last several years studying women in politics and I have never heard of such a phenomenon – an intense homogeneity in expert witnesses. I decided this would be the topic of my presentation – the selection of expert witnesses.