Campaign-funded childcare addresses barriers that women face in politics. It levels the playing field so more women can run, and if combined with structural reform like ranked choice voting and legislative rule changes that modernize government work places, more women can win and lead. This could lead to important policies like universal affordable childcare and paid leave.

RepresentWomen's founder and executive director, Cynthia Richie Terrell, explains why the Supreme Court leak on Roe vs. Wade is problematic. The underrepresentation of women in congress and in state legislatures makes the directive that state legislatures should hold the decision-making power a complete farce.

This was originally published in The Fulcrum on 4/15/2022. Last month, Texas kicked off the midterm season with another batch of high-profile races going into a runoff — 23, to be exact. What’s so wrong with this? Two words: time and money. Both of which women candidates generally have less of. Ranked choice voting is a proven, powerful, and persevering solution.

It’s official. It’s done. History has been made. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is the first Black woman to be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice of the United States of America. She is also …

Originally published in Ms. Magazine on 2/22/2022. Cynthia Richie Terrell is the founder and executive director of RepresentWomen and a founding board member of the ReflectUS coalition of non-partisan women’s representation organizations. Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is the executive director of Ms. partnerships and strategy, and the women and democracy fellow at the Brennan Center. This piece features quotes from 20 women experts in democracy reform to answer two questions: 1) "What is your dream for democracy in the U.S., rooted in the cause for which you advocate?", and 2) "What is something—or a few things—you’re shocked aren’t already common practice in U.S. democracy in 2022?"

Originally published in TheWrap, 3/23/2022. Katie Usalis of RepresentWomen, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for more women in office, talks about the use of Ranked Choice Voting by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to select Oscar nominees, to award Best Picture, and to elect its Board of Governors. Ranked choice voting is the best and easiest way to ensure representative outcomes that reflect majority support, and should also be used in US political elections.

Originally published in Ms. Magazine, 3/21/2022. Amid the war on Ukraine, Alisha Saxena and Kaycie Goral of RepresentWomen, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for more women in office, share research about representation in Post-Soviet States, and the intentional strategies in the region that have bolstered representation which are often overlooked or outright rejected in U.S. politics.

Originally published in The Fulcrum, March 9th, 2022. Katie Usalis of RepresentWomen, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for more women in office, shares that thanks to the data collection work of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, we know there are continued global trends towards gender balance. Also exciting is that the Americas lead the way in the race towards gender balance, with 34 percent average regional representation! This is thanks to the intentional steps Latin American countries have taken to remove structural barriers to representation.

Originally published in The Fulcrum, Sept 13, 2021. Alisha Saxena and Kaycie Goral of RepresentWomen, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for more women in office, share that the American Immigration Council reported that roughly 44.7 million first-generation Americans lived in the United States earlier this year. Within this population, there were approximately 2 million more women than men. Despite making up about 14 percent of the U.S. population, first-gen Americans, specifically first-gen women, are hardly represented as a community within our political bodies.

Cynthia Richie Terrell, the founder and executive director of RepresentWomen, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for more women in office, said that Biden's commitment early-on to picking a female running mate is an example of how men can wield their privilege to help change the underrepresentation of women in politics. "It's an important reminder that executives have a lot of power to accelerate progress to parity,” said Terrell. "It really begins to crack the egg of sexism, and all of a sudden people see that women can also be in positions of power."