ABSTRACT
Using sex as a variable to count women state judges, show large variations, and identify patterns tells us a great deal. But it can lull us into a false sense that the instances are the same, that each case is somehow commensurate with every other, or similar in important ways. We understand much more if we go beyond simply studying women and also explore gender. Thinking about gender as a social process—the process of assigning meaning and significance to sex differences—makes visible how judicial selections are moments where the meaning of gender is constructed by selectors, women judges (and their opponents), advocates, and the media. Understood this way, the differences between cases of women firsts may be more illuminating than the similarities.
