The Monkey Cage reports on research that finds that women congressional leaders are more likely to sponsor pork-barrel legislation.
We find that congresswomen secure roughly 9 percent more spending from federal discretionary programs than congressmen. This amounts to a premium of about $49 million per year for districts that send a woman to Capitol Hill. Finally, we find that women’s superiority in securing particularistic benefits does not hurt their performance in policymaking: women also sponsor more bills and obtain more cosponsorship support for their legislative initiatives than their male colleagues.
This may be because women have to work harder to get re-elected than men. They have to spend more time credit-claiming and position-taking. Pork-barrel legislation is a form of credit-claiming.