A Conversation with RepresentWomen's Cynthia Richie Terrell: Why Is the U.S. So Far Behind on Parity in Elected Office?
Founder and Executive Director of RepresentWomen, Cynthia Richie Terrell
With U.S. election news so inescapable right now, I jumped at the opportunity to shift focus from the horse race coverage to speak with Cynthia Richie Terrell, founder and executive director of RepresentWomen, about a critical topic of interest to the GenderAvenger community: Why is the U.S. so bad at ensuring our elected and appointed officials are as diverse as its population?
The 2018 midterm elections made headlines when a wave of women entered the House of Representatives. In reality, both chambers of congress are still in “thunderstorm of inequality” territory according to the GA Tally — and clearly not for a lack of women candidates.
Terrell is well-versed in voting systems in the U.S. and abroad and sees a much deeper problem than funding and training women candidates:
There are a lot of different recruitment rules and voting systems used around the world that really elevate the voices of people in more effective ways. My international travel combined with a lot of experience with the US electoral system and its deficiencies made me realize that we have to address the structural barriers in the electoral system so that more women can run and win.
So, where does the U.S. rank in representation globally? In a comparison of the lower chambers, it comes in at #87 with just over 23% women congress members.
“In June of 2020 the U.S. ranked 83rd for gender parity in the lower house; however, most recent rankings for October 2020 the United States has fallen in the rankings to 87th place.” —RepresentWomen, “Achieving Gender Parity: Systems Strategies Around the World”. October 2020.
Twenty years ago, the U.S. had just 13% women representatives and ranked 48th. Terrell says that there’s a reason other countries are moving up the ranks as the U.S. falls:
Many other nations are doing more innovative, interesting things around changing systems and the U.S. is stuck with our antiquated system and we’re falling further and further behind. Even if women pick up 20 seats in the House, that would put us at about 70th worldwide, right next to Afghanistan.
Terrell is careful to note:
It’s not that the women in Rwanda (#1) or Denmark (#24) or Bolivia (#3) are somehow more clever or better trained or that there is a more developed pipeline of candidates in those countries; they just have different rules. In some ways, that’s the good news. Changing systems is easier relative to changing human behavior and innate bias. The predominant conversation in this country has been about preparing individual women to run but if we want to reach gender balance in politics in our lifetimes, then we must invest in systems strategies as well.
photo credit: Jennifer Griffin, via Unsplash
More nuggets of hope: “We have a long legacy of addressing structural inequalities with structural solutions. Suffrage itself was a structural change. The Voting Rights Act was a structural remedy, as was the Americans with Disabilities Act and Title IX. We realized we had to change rules and laws so that women could participate on an equal playing field in education and athletics.”
So, what are some of the structural changes that will make a difference?
Terrell identified four buckets of work based on RepresentWomen’s research in the U.S. and around the world:
“Interventions so that more women run in the first place, which might include getting PACs to set targets for the amount they give to women candidates and getting political parties to recruit more women to run
Dismantling our winner-take-all voting system, which protects incumbents. It doesn’t matter how many qualified women run if incumbents are being re-elected at the rate of 85%
Policies that help women serve effectively once they win, such as childcare on site, timing of sessions, proxy voting, etc.
Interventions so that women can lead, such as setting diversity targets for the appointments process in the cabinet and on campaign teams to put women in positions of power”
Looking more deeply at which women are least represented, those groups include younger women, lower income women, Republican women, indigenous women, disabled women, and women of color. Terrell notes that “women of color are doing relatively well in the Democratic party, but there are large swaths of the country where women of color certainly are not represented. Women’s representation is really strong in the coastal states and we can’t reach parity without representation in the middle of the country.”
As to what has inspired her during this campaign season, she notes the creativity of individuals and organizations, like GenderAvenger, in broadening and deepening the conversation in terms of intersectionality:
I think that’s a really hopeful sign. I think we need a strategy that is pragmatic and ambitious, but I really appreciate all of the energy people are bringing to the conversation. Even though we don’t have a woman at the top of a ticket, I think there has been a fast learning curve in the press to not create a double standard for women candidates. Six women running for the Democratic presidential nomination meant there was a normalization of women’s leadership that accelerated progress in that regard.
So, what can Avengers do to advocate for long term structural change?
Look out for ballot measures that support things like ranked choice voting, district design, and rules for legislatures.
Learn about the political process.
Understand the data and become more sophisticated about what is going on at all levels of government and in the rest of the world.
Raise awareness!
And while you’re at it, advocate for a gender-balanced cabinet for the president-elect, whoever it is!
Terrell says:
Unless we set up the expectations properly, news stories about record numbers of women running doesn’t translate into record numbers of women winning due to the polarization in congress, the winner-take-all voting system, and incumbents, largely white men, getting reelected. It's much better to temper those expectations so it doesn’t feel like the women candidates have failed us.
Indeed!