Women's Suffrage and the Size of Government

I only caught a brief excerpt from today's Rush Limbaugh program, but he was reading some bits from - I believe - How Dramatically Did Women's Suffrage Change the Size and Scope of Government? It is a freely available 75-page pdf whose abstract reads as follows.

This paper examines the growth of government during this century as a result of giving women the right to vote. Using cross-sectional time-series data for 1870 to 1940, we examine state government expenditures and revenue as well as voting by U.S. House and Senate state delegations and the passage of a wide range of different state laws. Suffrage coincided with immediate increases in state government expenditures and revenue and more liberal voting patterns for federal representatives, and these effects continued growing over time as more women took advantage of the franchise. Contrary to many recent suggestions, the gender gap is not something that has arisen since the 1970s, and it helps explain why American government started growing when it did.

Interesting points were raised by Rush, but I haven't caught the whole thing.

Two other links for me to follow up on this with:

• More People think that Women's Suffrage Helps Explain the Growth of Government (John Lott's blog post)
• Female Voters Give Themselves a Bad Name (American Thinker)

Update: This must have been the item that Rush was reading on air: Is There Really a Bias Against Women in Politics? History Suggests Otherwise