WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 05: President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address in the ... [+]
Democrats are making more gains than Republicans when it comes to equal representation between women and men holding elective office, according to new data from the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
Gender parity in political officeholding does not guarantee parity in political power, but recognizing partisan differences in women’s political representation is important to understanding both present circumstances and future opportunities for advancing gender equality in U.S. politics. At CAWP, we calculated women as a percentage of all Democratic and Republican state and federal legislators to illuminate these differences in progress toward gender parity in representation.
Women hold 28% of congressional seats in 2023, but that number masks the fact that women are 41% of Democratic and 15.4% of Republican members. Likewise, while women are 32.7% of all state legislators, they are 48% of Democrats and 20% of Republicans. In fact, Democratic women are at or above parity with Democratic men in 26 state legislatures.
In contrast, Republican women fall short of parity with Republican men in all states, holding one-third or less of Republican seats in 47 state legislatures. This partisan divide in gender representation helps to explain why women have ever achieved parity with men across parties in only two state legislatures nationwide (Nevada and Colorado).
The relationship between political representation and political power is influenced by party control, with the potential effects of parity among Democrats tempered in state legislative chambers where Republicans hold the majority. But parity among Democrats is not constrained to Republican-majority chambers. Women are 50% or more of Democrats in 60% of Democratic-controlled (12 of 20) and 62% of Republican-controlled (18 of 29) state houses. Across all Democratic-majority state houses, women hold 52.8% of seats; they hold 47.8% of seats across all Republican-majority houses. While women are a slightly smaller percentage of all Democratic state senators, they average about 45% of Democrats in both Republican- and Democratic-controlled senates.
Democratic women not only hold arguably more power as rank-and-file members of Democratic-controlled chambers, but current data demonstrates that they are also more likely than their Republican counterparts to hold top legislative leadership positions when their party holds the majority. Of 20 Democratic speakers of state houses nationwide, seven are women. In contrast, just one Republican woman serves as a house speaker across 29 Republican-controlled houses. Women hold the top leadership post (president or president pro-tem) in seven of 20 Democratic-controlled and three of 30 Republican-controlled state senates.
There is no simple explanation for the partisan disparity in women’s political representation, but there are multiple factors that likely contribute to it. First, the support infrastructure for women—from targeted financial support to gender-specific programs to recruit and train women to run—is more robust among Democrats than among Republicans. This relates to a second reason for party difference, whereby Republican derision of “identity politics” presents hurdles to creating and sustaining targeted efforts to achieve gender parity.
Other partisan divides in beliefs—from demands for representation to beliefs about gender roles and progress—yield differently gendered terrain for Republican and Democratic women to navigate, whereby more traditional perceptions among conservatives of gender and/or perceptions that women’s success comes at the expense of men can conflict with putting women in positions of power. The success of Republican women, especially in recent elections, demonstrates that these hurdles are neither insurmountable nor immutable, but they still create distinct conditions for the conservative women considering candidacy. Finally, women are more likely to be Democrats, creating both a larger pool for recruitment among Democrats and greater pressure on and incentive for the Democratic Party to represent its most reliable voters among its candidates and elected officials. By the measure of party affiliation in the electorate, gender parity may actually fall short of fair representation for women among Democratic officeholders.
As I have written before, parity in numbers does not necessarily equate parity in political power and influence. And a single-axis analysis of political parity—in numbers or power—too easily ignores the diversity among women in elective office. Partisanship is a key axis of diversity that has significant implications on the priorities and perspectives that women bring to their public service. That is why understanding women’s presence and power within parties matters as an indicator of where and how their representation matters for policy agendas and outcomes.
