A decade of using data to advocate for parity in USA’s politics: Lessons from RepresentWomen’s experience

#WomenLead interviewed Courtney Lamendola and Steph Scaglia, members of the RepresentWomen team who worked on putting together the 2023 Gender Parity Report and posted this article on Substack. Read an excerpt below:

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.

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.

Read the full article here.

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