Taking a Deeper Dive Into Gender Balance in U.S. State Legislatures

United States Capitol House Chamber during social distancing in 2020

The 117th U.S. Congress has been touted as the most diverse in history with 142, or 26.5%, women members of Congress, of which almost 36% are women of color. When you look at the breakdown in absolute numbers, however, women of color comprise just 9.5% of all members of Congress even though they represent more than 20% of the U.S. population.

We decided to drill down and take a look at state legislatures, which create a platform for women to be heard in the public dialog and often serve as one of the early stepping stones to higher office.

At first glance, it doesn’t look too bad: in 2021, more women are representing their constituents in state legislatures than ever before at almost 31%. That’s certainly better than the U.S. Congress, but digging into the trends on the actual pace of progress over the past 50 years tells a pretty disappointing story.

There have been significant gains in some years, such as the 2018 midterm elections, but, prior to that, the curve remained relatively flat for 26 years!

Further, realizing an increase from about 20% to about 30% women in state legislatures has taken 28 years. At that rate, we’ll reach gender parity in about 56 years, or in the year 2078.

Looking at office holders who are women of color yields more disappointment. Women of color held 4.8% of state legislatures in 2010. Eleven years later? That number is now a paltry 7.5%, which is 2% lower than congress and far from representative of the population of women of color in the U.S.

A breakdown of U.S. state legislatures in aggregate, in fact, gets the worst GenderAvenger rating possible:

We encourage you to see how your own state is doing on parity in 2021 by checking out the state-level data collected by the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers.

You can also see what letter grade your state gets for overall parity of elected officials, including members of Congress, state legislators, and major local-level offices by visiting RepresentWomen’s Gender Parity Index. I was shocked to learn that my home state of New Jersey gets a D, as do many, many others. In fact, according to the site, “New Hampshire remains the only state to achieve an ‘A’ ranking since RepresentWomen started the Gender Parity Index in 2014”.

While it will be some time before the next nationwide elections in 2022, this is a perfect opportunity to learn more about some of the structural changes that have proven to have a positive impact on the success rate of women and people of color in running and winning elections. The efficacy of ranked choice voting, for example, has become a hot topic of discussion in New York City, which will implement this system for its upcoming mayoral primaries in June and mayoral election in November.

According to RepresentWomen’s research:

Over the last decade, 19 cities and counties have used ranked choice voting to elect sitting city officials, including 13 mayors and the city councilmembers in 14 jurisdictions. Over the last decade (2010-2019), women have won 48% of all municipal ranked choice elections. As of April 2020, nearly half of all mayors (46%) and 49% of all city council seats decided by RCV are held by women.

Ensuring that there is a level playing field for all qualified candidates, regardless of gender or race, means understanding and advocating for reform. Otherwise, we’ll be waiting for decades to have true representation of all Americans.