Lawmakers Interrupt Janet Yellen More and Use Harsher Language Than With Male Fed Chairs

Why Study Hostile Sexism in Congressional Hearings?

Hostile sexism—antagonistic behaviors such as interruptions and aggressive language—shapes access to power and the quality of political scrutiny. James Bisbee asks how widespread those behaviors are among U.S. legislators by examining interactions with the chairs of the Federal Reserve, a high-profile example of a powerful, nonpartisan public official.

What James Bisbee Analyzed

Bisbee analyzes verbatim transcripts of every congressional hearing attended by the Fed chair from 2001 through 2020. The dataset covers multiple chairs and hearings across committees and chambers, allowing direct comparison of how members of Congress interact with different occupants of the same institutional office.

How Sexism Is Identified

The study treats Janet Yellen’s tenure as a bundled treatment and focuses on legislators who interacted with both Yellen and at least one male Fed chair. This within-legislator comparison controls for stable member-level traits and isolates changes in behavior associated with encountering a woman in that role. Text-analysis tools, including topic models, are used to measure the substantive content of hearings, and separate linguistic measures capture interruptions and aggressive language to distinguish hostile behavior from substantive disagreement or changes in tone.

Key Findings

• Legislators who faced both Yellen and male Fed chairs interrupted Yellen more often and used more aggressive language toward her.
• The greater hostility toward Yellen is not explained by differences in the topics she discussed or by detectable differences in her verbal tone, as measured by topic models and tone metrics.
• Having a daughter is associated with reduced hostility toward Yellen among legislators.
• Elevated hostile behavior appears across male and female legislators and across party lines when a woman occupies a novel position of power.

Broader Implications

These results provide carefully identified evidence of hostile sexism in congressional interactions with high-ranking officials and contribute to broader literatures on gender roles, legislative behavior, and the barriers women face in public office. The findings imply that procedural dynamics—who speaks and how interruptions and aggressive language are deployed—matter for equality in political deliberation and oversight.