Ashley English is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas.  Prior to joining the faculty at UNT, she earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Minnesota and her Master's in Public Policy with a Concentration in Women's Studies from the George Washington University.  She is currently working on a new project examining the degree to which women and their intersectional identities were represented and empowered in the work of the Biden administration's Gender Policy Council.

Dr. English is broadly interested in women’s representation in “unconventional” sites through the policymaking process, with a special focus on women’s representation, gendered policy implementation, rulemaking, and women’s organizations.  Her most recent work has examined the effectiveness of American equal pay laws.  Her forthcoming book chapter (with Lanie Richards, Meredith Niezgoda, Season Hoard, and Sydney Smith), "The Less Things Change, the More They Stay the Same,” uses quantitative and qualitative analyses of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data, media reports, and federal equal pay cases between 2000 to 2021 to show that the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act did not effectively improve equal pay enforcement women or empower women to advocate for more effective enforcement.  Following the US Women's National Soccer team's 2019 World Cup win, Dr. English's 2021 Social Sciences Quarterly article "Is it a Four Star Movement? Policy Transformation and The US Women’s National Soccer Team’s Campaign for Equal Pay” revealed that the team's equal pay lawsuit received a great deal of media attention and laid the groundwork for future change. However, the team rarely used their case to call for changes in how American equal pay laws are enforced so their case did little to close the gender wage gap for American women in the short run.

Prior to her work on equal pay, Dr. English published a series of articles that provided the first comprehensive analysis of women's representation in the rulemaking process. That work revealed that comments from large national broad-based women’s organizations frequently downplay the concerns of women or color, LGBTQ+ women, poor women, and women living outside of traditional families, particularly during high-profile policy debates. In contrast, intersectional women’s organizations (i.e. those that represent women of color and/or low-income women) play a critical role in the process, as the voices of women of color and poor women would have been left out of the debate without their participation. Dr. English also examined how the rise of PACs, Super PACs, and "dark money" groups has impacted female congressional candidates by producing gender differences in outside groups' television ad campaigns.  Her work has appeared in Politics & Gender, Political Research Quarterly, Electoral Studies, French Politics, Politics, Groups, and Identities, and the Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, and books published by Oxford University Press, DeGruyter, Temple University Press, and Edward Elgar.

Prior to entering academia, Dr. English worked as a researcher at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research in Washington, DC for four years. She also received her MA in Political Science from the University of Minnesota in 2013, her MA in Public Policy with a Concentration in Women’s Studies from The George Washington University in 2010, and her BA in political science from Williams College in 2004.

Research Interests
  • ​American Politics
  • Gender and Politics
  • Interest Groups and Social Movements
  • Political Representation
  • Public Policy
  • Bureaucratic Politics