A decade of using data to advocate for parity in USA’s politics: Lessons from RepresentWomen’s experience
In conversation with Courtney Lamendola and Steph Scaglia, part of RepresentWomen’s research team
In August, RepresentWomen, a USA-based organisation working on improving women’s political representation, released the tenth edition of its flagship annual publication, the Gender Parity Index (GPI). The index assesses and tracks women’s representation in elected office at the national, state, and local levels of government in the USA.
The USA scored 26.9 on the index for 2023 (the index spans from 0 to 100, and a score of 50 represents parity). A decade ago, when the index was started, the score was lower at 18.3. While progress has been made, it has not only been slow, but also uneven across states and over time, the report notes.
#WomenLead interviewed Courtney Lamendola and Steph Scaglia, members of the RepresentWomen team who worked on putting together the report. Lamendola is the director of research and Scaglia a research associate at RepresentWomen.
In this interview, they take us behind the scenes and give us a glimpse into what goes on into preparing the index, which findings stand out for them, why this index was launched, and how much it has been able to achieve. Read on:
Could you tell us about the Gender Parity Index?
Courtney Lamendola: The Gender Parity Index (GPI) is a measurement and evaluation tool that tracks women’s representation in elected office at the national, state, and local levels of government in the USA. We assign a score to each state according to the number of women in office at a fixed point each year (April 2023); states can earn between 0 points if no women are in office and 100 points if women hold all offices. Each state is then assigned a letter grade and ranking according to their score, with states that receive at least 50/100 points (parity) earning an A, 49-33 a B, 32-25 a C, 24-10 a D, and 9-0 an F. Each state receives a “report card” (at the end of the report) that shows where they have made the most progress and where they still have room for improvement.
The index usually takes 6-8 months to put together each year, with the first few months spent inputting data and approximately four or more months spent interpreting the results and drafting the report. While data on women’s representation in national and state government is readily available thanks to the Rutger University’s Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), we usually collect data on the mayors of cities with populations of 30,000+ and county executives in the five largest counties in each state by hand. Finding reliable information on women’s representation at the local level is the biggest challenge since some localities don’t update their websites regularly, and finding self-reported data on the gender or race of local electeds is particularly difficult.
You have just released the tenth edition of the index. Would you give us a brief overview of some of the most significant findings of this year’s edition?
Courtney Lamendola: Two states, Maine and Oregon, have achieved an “A” for the first time in this year’s GPI. This is also the first year we have had two “A” states simultaneously. As exciting as this is, we also wanted to offer a note of caution. New Hampshire used to be the top-ranked state in the GPI and achieved an “A” grade between 2015-2018 and again in 2020; in this year’s report, it reached a “B” grade and ranks 10th out of all states because its score has dropped over the last few years, following the departure of a few high-profile women from Congress and state executive office.
The GPI uses a weighted formula that awards additional credit to states that have elected women governors in the last three elections. As a result, states that have women governors tend to perform better than other states in the GPI - six of the top ten states in the 2023 GPI have women governors, including Maine (1st), Oregon (2nd), Michigan (3rd), New Mexico (4th), Iowa (7th), and Massachusetts (9th). The flip side is that when these governors leave office, their state scores drop after every subsequent election where a woman is not elected. This is part of the reason why New Hampshire, which has gubernatorial elections every two years instead of every four, has lost so much ground over the last few years, while other states have surpassed it following the 2022 elections, where 12 women won gubernatorial elections, breaking the previous record of nine.
Looking back at the ten years of the index, what are some of the most striking findings for this period, as seen through your indices?
Steph Scaglia: When looking at the past ten years, the GPI does a great job of showing exactly how unstable progress toward parity in governance is. Progress has been made; the number of "F" states has gone from eight to one, and the number of "B" and "C" states have both gone from five to 12. But, the number of "D" states has consistently hovered around 30 and dropped to 23 just this year. The number of A states has varied between one and zero, with the exception of two in 2023. The index somewhat combats the headlines often displayed after each election cycle that emphasize how much progress women have made and how many records have been broken. It reminds us that although it is important to celebrate progress, we cannot leave reality behind. Only two states have gender-balanced governance, and that is far from sufficient.
The index somewhat combats the headlines often displayed after each election cycle that emphasize how much progress women have made and how many records have been broken. It reminds us that although it is important to celebrate progress, we cannot leave reality behind.
Let’s get a little into the history of the index. Could you tell us why it was launched all those years ago? What was the immediate motivation? Was there any inspiration for this, and what was your hope while launching it?
Courtney Lamendola: As Cynthia Richie Terell, our executive director, has said a few different ways over the years, the Gender Parity Index helps establish a baseline for women’s representation in the United States. Before making suggestions for improving women’s representation, knowing how well women are represented is essential. I would add to this by saying that the GPI gives us a chance to re-assess the status of women’s representation each year; because we now have ten years’ worth of data, we are better equipped to comment on which states have made the most visible progress. In turn, this commentary helps to point us in the right direction when we try to figure out what combination of rules and systems works best and worst for women in politics and what needs to change to help elect more women in the United States.
True solutions are those which allow women not just to run and win in a single election cycle but to serve and lead and allow other women to do the same.
Steph Scaglia: This is my second time working on the Gender Parity Index, but the value of doing this exercise over a decade immediately becomes clear. For example, the 2023 index devotes several pages to state-specific case studies. Part of this is not just because those states are interesting in 2023 but because the impact of previous systems-level changes (or lack of changes) on women’s representation becomes much more apparent over ten years. The impact of redistricting, term limits, ranked choice voting, women’s leadership and training organisations, etc, is something that may help year-to-year, but whose true impact matters in the long term.
At RepresentWomen, we care about increasing women’s representation in government quickly and efficiently but also sustainably. True solutions are those which allow women not just to run and win in a single election cycle but to serve and lead and allow other women to do the same.
And looking at it now, do you feel you have been able to achieve that?
Courtney Lamendola: I’d say the GPI met our original goal. Of course, when RepresentWomen started in 2013, our original name was “Representation2020,” reflecting our hope that we might achieve parity in time for the Centennial of Suffrage. By 2018, when we separated from FairVote, formed a board, and became “RepresentWomen,” we knew it would take much longer to achieve this goal.
The GPI isn’t designed to estimate how long it will take to achieve parity, but it has helped us to identify a few roadblocks. In state legislatures, for example, nearly half of all Democratic legislators are women, up from 33% ten years ago; meanwhile, just one-fifth of all Republicans in state legislatures are women, which is a much smaller improvement from where they were ten years ago (17%). This suggests that, to achieve gender balance in state legislatures, either the Democratic Party will need to become the party of women and elect significantly more women than men, or the Republican Party will need to elect more women and make up for lost ground. Meanwhile, at the national level, recent estimates suggest it may take as long as 118 years to achieve gender parity. Overall, I think the U.S. has a lot of work left to do, and I don’t foresee a future where we’ll have been so successful that we can retire this project unless we adopt new strategies to accelerate progress.
Steph Scaglia: As an add-on to my previous answer, I do think we approach our ultimate goal of gender-balanced governance every day. The Gender Parity Index allows us not just to survey women’s representation now and over time but to benchmark what works, what doesn’t, and what ought to be done in the future to ameliorate women’s political participation.
Of course, gender parity will take time. But that does not mean we should stop striving to make it happen now. We’re lucky; the solutions to achieving gender-balanced governance already exist. Ranked choice voting, gender-balanced appointment rules, multi-winner districts, etc., have all been tried and implemented at least once either in the US, across the globe, or both. However, change is hard, and RepresentWomen research allows us to do two things: show that change is not just needed but possible.
If someone else wanted to develop a similar index for their country today or in the near future, what advice would you like to give them based on your own experience?
Courtney Lamendola: If it is possible to partner with universities, research institutions, or government agencies that have the means to centralise data collection on who is in office, that will save you a lot of time and effort. Part of the reason why the GPI is a half-year project and not a 12-24 month project is that we can count on CAWP and other institutions to provide timely and accurate information about who is in elected office. That is the first step.
The GPI is designed to weigh that information in a way that makes it easier to see the bigger picture of what representation in each state looks like at all levels of government. Some of the considerations the original authors had to weigh when designing the formula included making fair comparisons between states with fewer representatives in Congress than others since 13 states have two or fewer representatives. In contrast, states like California have as many as 52. To assess progress in states with smaller delegations, we look at the winners of the last three elections to more accurately gauge how likely it is for a woman to be elected to Congress from that state.
The next best piece of advice that I could offer is to connect with elected officials and show them how well their state or region performs in your index. Some of the best feedback we have received comes from elected officials who page to their state, pull out a red pen, and make suggested edits, helping us to fill in the gaps on what rules and systems have the most significant impact on electing women that aren’t obvious to us, based on the information we found in our research. While the formula has stayed the same since 2013, we have made changes to the format and presentation of our findings over the years based on the feedback we have received, and I’m sure the index will continue to evolve in the future to adapt the needs of our partners and present new findings.
Some of the best feedback we have received comes from elected officials who page to their state, pull out a red pen, and make suggested edits, helping us to fill in the gaps on what rules and systems have the most significant impact on electing women that aren’t obvious to us, based on the information we found in our research.
Steph Scaglia: I certainly would echo what Courtney has said – data gathering takes time, and partnerships are a huge advantage. Another challenge we face every year is pinning down which case studies we deem the most important. Although not every state experiences drastic changes (either increases or decreases) in score over time, that doesn’t mean diving into their story isn’t just as interesting. In theory, an in-depth index could be created for each of the 50 states and be just as big a project. Especially as reforms gain popularity across the country, analysing their impact at the local, state, and federal level becomes not just increasingly interesting but increasingly complex.
Looking forward, how do you see this index shaping up, and what are your hopes with the work that you are doing with it?
Steph Scaglia: In the future, I’m excited to see how the numbers, which the index provides a comprehensive summary of, will continue to compare against our systems-level analyses. RepresentWomen has been championing ranked choice voting and multi-member districts from the start, two reforms that have been linked to increases in women’s representation in governance both in the US and in other countries. We’ve expanded our research over the years and recently found that a twin-track approach, which combines systems-level changes with candidate-focussed support, is a much more effective route to achieving gender-balanced governance in our lifetimes.
This interview is part of our ongoing series that aims to understand the work being done by different initiatives working to close the gender gaps in politics in different parts of the world. The interviews are not meant to be an endorsement of any individual, initiative or political viewpoint.
