Fatma Tawfik is the International Research Manager at RepresentWomen. Driven by her passion for politics, international relations, gender equality, and human rights, Fatma pursued her education and graduated with a political science degree from Bani-Suef University in 2020. After gaining some professional experience, Fatma plans to return to school to continue her studies. After grad school, Fatma hopes to work as a professor teaching international relations, while continuing to raise her voice against gender inequality and the importance of women empowerment. Fatma's dream is to become a role model for women and girls, especially, girls from developing countries so they can pursue their dreams and fight for them.

Alissa Bombardier Shaw is the Development Manager at RepresentWomen, where she has been a member of the team since 2022. She previously served in communications and program and partnerships roles, bringing a cross-functional perspective to her leadership of the organization’s fundraising strategy and donor engagement.

Alissa is deeply committed to social justice, fair representation, and gender equality, and she channels that passion into advancing RepresentWomen’s mission to increase women’s representation at every level of government. Originally from California, she is now based in Washington, DC.

Alissa holds a Bachelor of Science in Political Science with a concentration in Data Analytics from the University of California, San Diego. Her writing has appeared in Ms. Magazine, DemocracySOS, and LA Progressive.

Katie Usalis serves as RepresentWomen's Programs and Partnerships Director. In this role, Katie focuses on developing and overseeing program strategies that activate and equip changemakers to advance structural solutions to the representation crisis in U.S. politics. She holds a Master’s degree in International Development from the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (Barcelona Institute of International Studies).

Before moving to Spain, Katie lived and worked in Myanmar for several years where her passion for social justice and human rights led her to serve as a Program Manager and regional Inclusion Advisor for partnerships across Myanmar and Cambodia. She brings unique experience working in diverse contexts and across language barriers to develop program strategies specifically aimed at removing cultural and institutional barriers to equity. Naturally inclined to systems thinking, she is skilled at turning big visions into tangible strategies, building impactful relationships, and is passionate about the value diversity brings to our work. She strongly believes that fair political representation is a structural catalyst to better policies and a more sustainably just society. In her free time, she loves rock climbing and going on adventures outside!

RepresentWomen is a close-knit research-based advocacy group that works to increase women's representation and leadership by identifying and promoting systems-based reforms to the recruitment processes, voting systems, and legislative practices used in the United States so that more women can RUN, WIN, SERVE & LEAD! To achieve our goal of reaching gender parity for women in politics, RepresentWomen partners with allies across the country and political spectrum who help to amplify our work by putting what we've researched into practice.

RepresentWomen imagines a democracy where political parties, PACS, and donors commit to intentional actions to ensure that more women are recruited to run. These voluntary targets mimic the quotas that are used in over 100 nations to fuel the election of women candidates.

See all of our PAC profiles!

What can political parties do?

Political parties in many states and localities play a significant role in deciding who runs for office - they must be challenged to be deliberate about the number of women candidates they recruit.

Local, state, and national political parties should establish Gender Parity Committees to assess the status of women’s representation and determine targets for the recruitment of women candidates. In addition to this, political parties should not just recruit and support cis- and white women, but to commit to representing the diversity of the American population. 

An annual report should be prepared by the local or state party on the status of gender-diverse representation in its own leadership, in the candidates supported, nominees, and general election winners in the most recent elections, and its plans to further this diversity in upcoming elections.

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What can PACs do?

Political Action Committees (PACs) play decisive roles in recruiting, endorsing and funding candidates - they must be challenged to be intentional in the number of women candidates they recruit, support, and fund. 

Many PACs underfund women candidates overall, because they focus their funding on incumbents, most of whom are men. While women-oriented PACs like EMILY’s List and VIEW PAC already are committed to supporting female candidates, other PACs should intentionally and deliberately commit to contributing a certain share of their funds to female candidates. You can find some of our PAC case studies above, or in our Resources Library.

PACs should set funding targets for cis-women, transgender folk, and nonbinary candidates as well as increase those targets every election cycle until our elected bodies reflect the gender diversity of the population. With public pressure, equal funding for male, female, and genderqueer candidates may become a value proposition for PACs. The PAC environment is highly competitive and they are always looking for new ways to look different from other PACs to appeal to donors.

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What can donors do?

Individual donor contributions are crucial to the success of women candidates for every level of office. Money is not only required to run a campaign, but often times, fundraising is the first test of a candidate’s viability. Overall, individual donors are less likely to be women, and women who do donate on average give less than men. This can have a gendered outcome for candidates and campaigns.

Donors must also be challenged to set targets for the diversity of the candidates they support of the proportion of their total donations which go to cis-men. Donors may choose to set their own targets for diverse donations to work in concert with other to make their pledge public. Influential donor pledges to support cis-women, transgender folk, and nonbinary individuals will help to build public pressure for increased support for gender diversity in elections.

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Our Research

RepresentWomen teamed up with the Center for Responsive Politics, to analyze the data collected on PAC and individual donations during the 2018 election with a gender lens. Our analysis can be found in our report, "PACs and Donors: Agents of Change for Women's Representation" the follow up to our 2016 report "Individual and PAC Giving to Women Candidates."

Our findings include:

• Individual donors are less likely to be women.
• It takes more money to win as a woman.
• Republican women are a particularly underfunded candidate demographic.
• Intentional action must be taken by PACs and donors to level the electoral playing field.

Download 

Party Rules

Since women earned the right to vote 100 years ago, political parties have been looking for ways to engage women in the political process. Both the Democratic and Republican national parties have enacted gender balance rules to attempt to achieve gender parity amongst their state delegates to national conventions. Following these national policies, some state parties have established guidelines for choosing who to send to their state conventions, requiring gender balance at local levels. The team at RepresentWomen has worked with the pro-bono team at Hogan Lovells to research each state party’s rules. 

State political parties in all fifty states have rules that govern their chair and executive committee. Some of these states, such as Alabama and Arizona have rules that specifically call for gender balance in their party. RepresentWomen has compiled party rules pertaining to gender balance for all 50 states and written a brief on the role political parties have to play in improving the diversity of our elected officials.

Download 

Go to our Resources page for more information, tools, and resources on gender balanced funding and recruitment targets. 

Our winner-take-all voting system disadvantages non-status quo candidates. Ranked choice voting can be used in both single and multi-winner contests to address the barriers non-status quo candidates face. Multi-winner ranked choice voting, or proportional ranked choice voting, combines:

• ranked choice voting - voters rank candidates in order of preference.
• multi-winner districts - districts represented by more than one person. 

Proportional ranked choice voting (PRCV) is a form of proportional representation with a long history of use in the United States. Currently, many jurisdictions have adopted the PRCV system for local use. 

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What We Have: Winner-Take-All Elections

Most of the U.S. uses single-winner, winner-take-all elections. This means everyone in a community votes for their favorite candidate. The candidate with the most votes wins the election and represents the whole community, even if they have failed to win a majority (50%+1) of the votes.

Our research (see below) shows this type of election disadvantages women - especially women of color. It will take multiple generations for women to reach parity if we keep this antiquated system.

Here is how winner-take-all elections are disproportionately bad for women candidates:

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Here is how PRCV elections help level the playing field for women candidates:

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What We Need: Ranked Choice Voting

Under ranked choice voting, voters rank candidates in order of preference. They mark their favorite candidate as first choice and then indicate their second and additional back-up choices in order of preference. Voters may rank as many candidates as they want, knowing that indicating a lower ranked candidate will never hurt a more preferred candidate.

Candidates do best when they attract a strong core of first-choice support while also reaching out for second and even third choices.

When used as an "instant runoff" to elect a single candidate like a mayor or a governor, RCV helps elect a candidate that better reflects the support of a majority of voters. When used as a form of fair representation voting to elect more than one candidate like a city council, state legislature, or even Congress, RCV helps to more fairly represent the full spectrum of voters.

Click through our RCV dashboard to learn more about how RCV impacts representation outcomes:

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What We Need: Multi-Winner Districts

The U.S. uses single-winner districts to elect the House of Representatives, which means each congressional district has one Member of Congress. Some state legislatures and city councils use multi-member districts, where multiple people represent the same district. We propose that all legislative bodies adopt multi-member districts to better represent the opinions, diversity, and values of their constituents. 

Compared to winner-take-all elections, ranked choice voting in multi-winner contests allows more diverse groups of voters to elect candidates of choice. This promotes diversity of political viewpoint as well as diversity of candidate background and demographics.

Multi-winner districts increase women's representation for two key reasons:

• Voters are more likely to balance their ballots.
• Political parties seek to appeal to as many voters as they can, by recruiting more women and people of color to run.

Amy (2002), Zimmerman (1994), and Troustine (2008) find that in the multi-winner environment voters are more likely to vote for male and female candidates to balance their choices, meaning parties have more incentive to run female candidates. This leads to more recruitment and support of female candidates, and therefore more women in office.

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What We Can Do: The Fair Representation Act

The Fair Representation Act (HR 3863) gives voters of all backgrounds and all political stripes the power to elect House Members who reflect their views and will work constructively with others in Congress.

Under the Fair Representation Act, there will be more choices and several winners elected in each district. Congress will remain the same size, but districts will be larger, each electing 3, 4, or 5 winners. Voters will be free to rank their choices without fear of "spoilers." No district will be “red” or “blue.” Every district will fairly reflect the spectrum of voters.

Voters are clamoring for change. The Fair Representation Act is effective, constitutional, and grounded in American traditions. It will ensure that every vote counts, all voices are heard, and everyone has an equal opportunity to serve in elected office. 

Read the Bill  Learn More 

Our Research

Memo: Ranked Choice Voting and Women's Representation

Released: January 2023

The following memo presents an update to our 2020 analysis (see below) of voting systems in the U.S. and their impact on women’s representation. 

Overall, we have found that women continue to fare better in jurisdictions that use ranked choice voting than in cities with plurality voting systems. Of the 30 cities that use ranked choice voting to elect their executives (mayors), 12 (40%) are currently represented by women. In the 41 cities that use ranked choice voting to elect their legislatures (councils, boards), almost half of all electeds (137 of 282, or 49%) are women.

RCV remains one of the most promising tools for advancing women’s representation in the United States.

View the Memo

Why Women Won in 2021: New York City Report

Released: September 2022

In 2022, we released a report on the outcome of the 2021 elections in New York City. RepresentWomen partnered with The New Majority NYC (formerly 21 in '21) to study 1) the impact of term limits, matching funds, ranked choice voting, and candidate-focused strategies on women's representation, 2) how these factors worked together to bring NYC a majority-women council for the first time in history, and 3) what it will take to maintain and build upon this success story in the future. 

View the Report Executive Summary

Election Reform & Women's Representation: Ranked Choice Voting in the U.S.

Released: June 2021

In 2021, we published an article in Politics and Governance on the history and impact of single- and multi-winner ranked choice voting on women’s representation in the U.S. In addition to revisiting some of the research from our 2016 and 2020 reports, this article allowed us to dig deeper into the available literature on ranked choice voting and identify knowledge gaps that should be addressed in future research. 

Read Our 2021 Article

In Ranked Choice Elections, Women WIN

Released: July 2020

Our 2020 ranked choice voting report, "In Ranked Choice Elections, Women WIN" provides a thorough review of ranked choice voting in the United States and how it is impacting women's representation in the cities that have implemented it. From 2010-2019, 19 cities and counties used ranked choice voting to elect their city officials, including 13 mayors and the city councilmembers in 14 jurisdictions. In that decade, women won 48% of all municipal elections.

Read Our 2020 Report

Go to our Resources page for more information, tools, and resources on ranked choice voting and multi-winner districts.