In the News
January 27, 2016
This article was originally published in print in The Daily Mississippian by Taylor Bennett. It cites RepresentWomen's Cynthia Richie Terrell and the 2015 Gender Parity Index. Read an excerpt below.
Cynthia Terrell, Project Chair for Representation 2020, said women are an important voice to have at the table moving beyond the topic of traditional women’s issues.
“I think the realization has been in the last few years that, ‘Wow, women are equally important to the conversation about the economy and transportation and the environment and education and so forth,’”Terrell said. “So, in terms of the legislative agenda, when we’re missing half the population, literally, it means that the best and the brightest aren’t there to participate in those conversations.”
Terrell said some recent studies have demonstrated women are more equipped and more open to work across the partisan aisle.“
And that’s particularly important I think in 2015 when we see so many deep partisan divides at the state legislative level and in congress,” Terrell said. “Women have demonstrated an ability to share leadership on committees and sponsor each others’ legislation and compromise and be able to push legislation forward that’s needed again, at the local, state and federal level.”
Terrell said she thinks youths are often thought of as more open-minded, accepting and forward-looking and it may be particularly true of the millennial generation.
“I would say we need to connect the structural changes, which we’re proposing, to that aspiration which young voters may feel,” Terrell said. “If we continue to stay in our current voting systems and recruitment processes, it’s going to be pretty hard for those aspirations of young people to become a reality."
Access an online version of the print paper here.
