PIs: Margaret T. Bower, Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University; Amanda Sahar d’Urso, Postdoctoral Fellow, Dartmouth College
Grant Amount and Grant Fund: $4,068, Rita Mae Kelly Fund
Project Abstract: This research project aims to elevate and examine the decision-making factors that mobilize Latinas to support policy agendas led by advocacy groups. Advocacy groups are important actors for communicating and engaging people in the policymaking process, especially people of color and women. Latinas, cis or trans women that identify as Hispanic or Latinx, are a unique group when it comes to supporting policies. They are marginalized across at least two axes of their identities: gender and ethnicity. Latinas can additionally be marginalized by their native language, citizenship status, and income-level. Marginalization across these multiple categories can position Latinas between several policy issues at one time such as immigration, poverty, and gendered violence. In this project, we examine different underlying causal mechanisms to help explain when and why Latinas are mobilized by certain policy agendas. Conducting a conjoint experiment that focuses on Latinas as a unique group, allows us to thoughtfully consider what aspects of a policy agenda are most important to them.
In the future, we hope to build on this research by similarly teasing out these differences among other multiply-marginalized groups of women such as Black women, Asian-American women, and LGBTQ women.
In an increasingly diverse U.S. polity, teasing out these experiences is exceptionally important for ensuring that policymaking equitably represents all people, especially groups like Latinas, that hold multiple marginalized identities.