Women Can Win
The giant gender gap in U.S. politics and how the 2020 election can change our perception of capable leaders
“Simply having female leaders changes the norms about who can lead and what qualities are necessary in leadership.” — Gwen K. Young, CNN
Where are all the women?
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Women’s Suffrage Movement in the United States. Since 1920, women’s role in politics has steadily grown, but women today still only hold 24% of Congressional seats. So 24% of politicians represent 51% of the U.S. population, by gender.
Women now serve in high-ranking positions across many levels of government. Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the House in 2007, Hillary Clinton won the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, and now Kamala Harris is on the 2020 Vice Presidential ticket.
This year more women are running for positions in the U.S. Congress and state legislatures than ever before.
Although there has been progress made towards gender equality, there’s still a long way to go in achieving gender representation in U.S. politics that’s reflective of our population. There are still more than two male politicians for every female politician.
Next month is a major election and we have a chance to move the needle towards equal representation. The text and graphics below explore the gender gaps that exist in U.S. politics and what the path toward equal representation can look like.
Who is leading U.S. Congress now?
Currently, the U.S. Congress is still overwhelmingly male, with women making up only 26% of the Senate and 23% of the House of Representatives. Representation swings widely across the country, with state’s congressional delegations ranging from 0 to 75% women.
In pre-election 2020, there are only two states that have all female U.S. representatives and six states that have all women U.S. senators. Compare that to the 16 states that have no female U.S. representatives and 30 states without female senators.
1993 was proclaimed the “Year of the Woman” after female legislators flooded the Senate in response to Anita Hill’s testimony to a toxic all-male Judiciary Committee in the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.
2018 brought another record breaking year, with more women filing for and winning Senate nominations than ever before. Yet, the U.S. Congress is still overwhelmingly male.
Over half of the ‘United’ states still have no female senators. You have the power to close the gender gap with your vote this election.
Even more barriers to overcome
Republican women are sidelined
Democratic women significantly outnumber Republican women in Congress, holding 20% of Congressional seats compared to their 4% of seats.
These partisan differences are reflected geographically across the U.S., as traditionally conservative southern states have consistently lagged behind other regions in cultural gender equality.
Women that run as Democrats are more likely to be promoted by the Democratic party as a whole and are often seen as demonstrating more progressive values than male counterparts. They are also more likely to stay in office and receive more support from groups like Emily’s List.
In contrast, Republican women don’t receive the same amount of support, leading to fewer candidates and lower retention rates. Republicans often haven’t made electing women a priority, due partly to resistance to identity politics, lower retention rates, and fewer resources.
“The Republican Party is failing women and acting against its own best interests in this regard — women outvote men. It is strongly to their advantage to include more women as candidates, and it is in the country’s best interests to have women within both parties.” — Shauna Shames, Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers
American women vote at a higher rate than men have for four decades.
Women of color are pushed out of political elections
Women’s political progress has not always benefitted all of the women who fought for it.
When the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, it only guaranteed the right to vote to White women, even though Black, Asian, Native American, and other minorities also fought for women’s suffrage.
The legacy of that inequality lives on today even as women’s role in politics has been steadily growing. White women account for the majority of women in national politics. Women of color still do not have their fair share of representation.
Statistics show that women of color are doubly disadvantaged by their location at the intersection of gender and race inequality. We must support our female candidates of color so that they can have the political voice they deserve.
Change is gonna come
Why does the world need more women in politics? For one, women in government tend to work in more collaborative and bipartisan ways. Women substantively advance women’s rights in areas such as pay equity, preventing violence against women, and healthcare access.
Female leaders are often perceived as exhibiting more transformational leadership and are evaluated as more effective than male counterparts.
Globally, this has been demonstrated by female heads of state like Jacinda Ardern and Angela Merkel who have proactively confronted the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping infection and death rates in check.
Other countries get it. Half of the countries in the world now use some form of gender quotas for public elections. The U.S. is not one of them. As a result, women in U.S. politics are underrepresented.
During turbulent times, there are qualities exhibited in female political leaders that may be more important than ever — good conflict management, the ability to listen, empathize, show tolerance, and encourage the sharing of power and information. This 2020 election cycle, we have the opportunity to change our trajectory and elect more women into office than ever before.
In the 20 years between 1998 and 2017 the percent of women in Congress steadily grew an average of 0.4% per year. At that rate — about four additional women per two-year election cycle — we will not reach political gender equality for nearly another 70 years.
But in 2018 women ran and were elected in record numbers, with a 3% increase from the previous annual rate! If we continue at the average rate seen since 2018, adding 14 women per two-year election cycle — an average annual rate of 1.4% — we can reach overall gender equality in our U.S. Congress by 2040. But why wait twenty years?
In next month’s general election women are breaking records again: 318 women are running for U.S. Congress. Record numbers of women of color are running for U.S. Congress across party lines.
Twenty years is still too long to wait to achieve equal gender representation in politics, and we certainly cannot slip back to our pre-2018 abysmal rates of female representation in Congress. The 2020 November election is the next big opportunity to break records and move closer than ever to gender equality.
Colophon: an homage to suffragettes
The design strategy for our ‘Women Can Win’ data visualization and research exercise was inspired by the imagery, colors, and typefaces ubiquitous in posters and media materials of the Women’s Suffrage Movement.
"Purple is the color of loyalty, constancy to purpose, unswerving steadfastness to a cause. White, the emblem of purity, symbolizes the quality of our purpose; and gold, the color of light and life, is as the torch that guides our purpose, pure and unswerving.” —The Suffragist, Vol. 1 №4, published on December 6, 1913
Simplified, purple, gold, and white signify loyalty, life, and purity, respectively. We chose to incorporate both purple and gold in our graphics to harness the two colors referred to as "unswerving," ensuring that the gender equality efforts and vision these women set on course continue to expand and prosper.
