It’s Been 298 Years and Counting Since a Woman Led Pa. Will That Matter In the Election?

This article by Zoe Greenberg and Julia Terruso was published in The Philadelphia Inquirer. It quotes RepresentWomen's Courtney Lamendola and references the 2024 Gender Parity Index.

Read an excerpt below.

Fifty years before the Revolutionary War, Hannah Callowhill Penn led the colony of Pennsylvania, first while her husband, William Penn, suffered a series of incapacitating strokes, and then alongside a group of trustees after he died. Though “but a woman” — as she once described herself — for 14 years she settled boundary disputes, appointed and replaced government officials, and navigated relations with the Crown. She died in 1726.

Since then, for 298 years and counting, Pennsylvania has never again had a female leader; voters have never elected a woman as governor or as U.S. senator. The question in this heated election season is whether Pennsylvania’s record offers clues — or warning signs — about the state’s current willingness to elect the nation’s first female president.

“Pennsylvania is a solidly D-range state,” said Courtney Lamendola, the director of research at RepresentWomen, which publishes an annual gender parity index. Before 2019, Pennsylvania regularly ranked 49th in gender parity nationwide, repeatedly receiving an F.

Read the full article here.