In the News
April 15, 2021
This post by the National Organization for Women cites RepresentWomen's By the Numbers data. Read an excerpt below.
Where women’s advancements in government certainly have made some great strides, even in 2021 only 13 out of 193 governments are run by women. These numbers are not just low for heads of government, but women also only make up 20.9% of the speakers of parliament. Findings from the IPU also show that where the increase of female ministers spiked in the last few years, in 2021 this progression has slowed tremendously with only marginal increases. The same was found to be true for women in parliament, with only slight gains in this field as well. Further, there has actually been an increase in the number of states where women hold no government positions at all.
The United States is also an offender of this lack of representation. While comprising 51% of the population in the United States, women only represent 24% of the Senate and 27% of the U.S. House of Representatives. This trend continues for state elected officials, where women only make up 30%, and state legislative seats, where women make up 31%. For local governments, disproportionate under-representation is even starker. In cities with over 30,000 individuals, women only make up 23% of mayors. These statistics illustrate that even though women make up the majority of the U.S. population, they are disproportionately represented in every aspect of the political system. Biden’s Administration is a step in the right direction for female representation, with 48% of his proposed cabinet picks being women. Even so, we must again not conflate these wins with equal representation and remember that there is still a long way to go to ensure that women in the United States, and across the world, have equal representation in the government sector.
Read the complete post here.
