Op-Eds
August 2, 2024
Excerpted from Is Progress to Gender Parity In Elected Office Stagnating? in The Fulcrum by Courtney Lamendola and Steph Scaglia:
This week, RepresentWomen published our 11th annual Gender Parity Index, a comprehensive measure of women’s representation at the national, state, and local levels of government. Our findings show progress toward gender balance is slow and possibly even stagnating.
The Gender Parity Index, launched in 2013, awards each of the 50 states a score (0-100), letter grade (A-F), and ranking (1-50) based on that state’s proximity to parity. A perfect score is 50/100. Eleven years ago, 40 states earned “D” grades (<25.0 points) or “F” grades (<10.0 points), and the remaining 10 states were split evenly between “C” grades (<33.0) and “B” grades (<50.0). No state earned an “A” until New Hampshire got one in 2015-2018, and then again in 2020. This year, Oregon and Maine received “A” grades for the second time, but the case of New Hampshire shows the importance of tracking representation over time.
Despite Oregon and Maine’s success, the majority of states earned “D” grades, and the remaining 22 states earned “B” and “C” grades. For the first time ever, no state received a failing grade. Louisiana, the only state to receive an “F” for eight years straight (2016-2023), made major gains, electing its first woman attorney general, Liz Murril, and second woman secretary of state, Nancy Landry.
Read the complete article here.
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