Weekend Reading

As summer comes to a close, we lost two amazing women: Gloria Steinem and Dolly Parton. In kicking off this week's Weekend Reading, we honor these two extraordinary women, leaders, and role models, and carry their torch forward as we keep marching for women's wins in today's races.

This week's Weekend Reading comes from the desk of Peng Gao, RepresentWomen Communications Fellow. As we conclude Women's Equality Week, we're celebrating the wins of women's representation and the mark women are leaving through leadership rooted in compassion and empathy.

This week's Weekend Reading on Women's Representation was written by RepresentWomen's Communications Fellow, Livia Follet. Read to learn more about why she is so passionate about increasing women's representation and political power, and discover other stories from women across the globe.

In this week’s Weekend Reading, we look back ten years to when Hillary Clinton made history by becoming the first woman to land a major party’s presidential nomination. Eight years later, Kamala Harris became the second. Yet women still haven’t walked through the door to the highest office. Together, we follow what happened nationwide to scrutinize the barriers holding women’s political power.

This week, we mark the 54th anniversary of Title IX, a milestone that reminds us representation has never been a question of women trying harder. It has always been a question of whether we are willing to build the systems, the rules, and the pathways that finally let the talent we already have come through.

Primary season is underway, and the data is already telling a story about where women stand. This week, we dig into what's working, what isn't, and what's at stake as the rules of our democracy continue to be rewritten.

This week's edition covers the anniversary of the 19th Amendment's passing in the Senate, the state of the primaries, international women's news, and more.

From the Bahamas to Colombia, this month's elections tell a story about what's possible when the rules change for women.

From Seattle salons to city halls across the country, women are building the movement for a more representative democracy. From Analilia Mejia's landslide win to the women redesigning cities in Montreal, Barcelona, and Paris, this week's reading is full of proof that when women lead, everyone benefits.

Representation without power is not enough. In our first dedicated international edition, we travel from Pakistan to Namibia to Peru to make the case for why changing the rules is the only path to changing the outcomes, and look to lessons from the world to reach these goals faster.

This week's Weekend Reading, written by RepresentWomen's Communications Director, Alana Persson, is dedicated to RepresentWomen founder Cynthia Richie Terrell on her birthday. She has spent four decades asking who is missing from the table and changing the rules until there is room for them.

On the 109th anniversary of Jeanette Rankin's swearing-in as the first woman ever elected to Congress — four years before most American women could even vote — we reflect on what her legacy teaches us about this moment: that the rules of democracy are not fixed facts, but deliberate choices, and that different choices yield a more inclusive, representative, and peaceful world.

As Women's History Month draws to a close, this week's edition captures both the weight of how far we still have to go and the momentum building nationwide — from a Democrat flipping Trump's backyard in Florida to ranked choice voting advancing in Los Angeles.

As Women's History Month draws to a close, this edition traces the arc from suffragists who fought to be remembered to the women making history right now — from Illinois to New Hampshire to the halls of Congress. At a moment when women's political power is under renewed threat globally, the wins and the warnings in this week's reading have never felt more connected.

Women's political power has never been accidental — it has been built through generations of organizing, reform, and determined leadership. This week's edition, anchored by RepresentWomen's 2026 Democracy Solutions Summit, makes the case for why designing better systems is the only path forward.

With the Democracy Solutions Summit just around the corner, this edition looks at the primary season's mixed results for women, Trump's overwhelmingly male endorsements, and the growing momentum behind ranked choice voting in Los Angeles and beyond.

From the SAVE Act's quiet assault on women voters to the record-breaking performances of American women Olympians, this edition — anchored by a preview of RepresentWomen's 2026 Democracy Solutions Summit — makes the case that the rules we design determine the outcomes we get.

Democracy is not symbolic — it is structural. This Black History Month edition, anchored by the legacy of Dorothy Height and Shirley Chisholm, examines the systems shaping who holds power in America and what it will take to make representation durable rather than exceptional.