As co-founder of Higher Heights for America, Kimberly Peeler-Allen has spent the better part of a decade trying to boost black women in politics. Despite her efforts, Peeler-Allen found herself feeling frustrated by the sluggish pace of change. When she turned to fellow advocates working to elect women to office, she heard a similar concerns. “Even with all the resources that have been put into electing women, we haven’t seen the gains that we have all hoped to have seen,” Peeler-Allen recalled. “So we said it’s time to try to do something different.”

There’s a surge of Democratic women running for office in Maryland this year — and party officials say they want to make sure it stays that way. New rules in place for the June 26 primary mean Democratic voters in 17 counties, some for the first time, will vote separately for men and women who are seeking central party positions.

I wanted to respond thoughtfully to Ed Kimmel’s Seventh State blog about the Maryland State Democratic Central Committee’s recent decision to adopt new rules to achieve gender balance by popular election on our county and state central committees.

Two local state representatives know that as women in the male-dominated Pennsylvania legislature, they need to be on their A-game all the time.

There’s no easy way around it: Women are vastly underrepresented in elected and appointed political positions. According to research from RepresentWomen, a nonpartisan initiative committed to achieving gender parity in office, the U.S. has fewer women in legislative positions than in 98 other countries in the world. Things aren’t much better on the domestic front, either. According to the group’s 2018 Gender Parity Index Report, women have progressed less than 40% down the road to equal representation, a figure that’s slowed in recent years.

The United States has fallen behind most established democracies with respect to women’s representation in politics. Women remain underrepresented at the federal, state, and local levels. The current uptick in women running for office, while encouraging, is unlikely to close this gender gap. To accelerate the pace of progress, U.S. reformers could learn from European experiences and push for measures that tackle broader institutional barriers to equal political representation.

Pennsylvania ranks second-to-last out of all 50 states — ahead of only Mississippi — in electing women to representative positions in government, according to an organization called Representation2020. The Maryland-based initiative ranked every state in the U.S. this year and gave the commonwealth an F, with a “gender parity” score of 6.5 out of a goal of 50 points.

U.S. Congressman Don Beyer (D-VA) today introduced the Fair Representation Act, a bill which would enact a series of measures designed to reform congressional elections. “The Fair Representation Act is designed to restore the faith which so many Americans have lost in our political system,” said Rep. Don Beyer. “This bill would ensure that every voter has their voice represented in Congress, and make real progress towards bipartisan focus on getting results for the American people.” Rep. Beyer was joined by Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Jamie Raskin (D-MD), co-leads on the bill, as well as speakers from FairVote and Third Way. “The Fair Representation Act is the most comprehensive approach to improving congressional elections in American history,” said Rob Richie, the executive director of FairVote. “It creates an impartial, national standard that gets at the core of FairVote’s mission: Giving voters greater choice, a stronger voice, and a representative democracy that works for all Americans.”

A new study gives South Carolina a “D” grade for gender equality in elected office. That poor grading comes with the Palmetto State ranking 23rd in the nation for gender parity. “Gender parity is defined as the point at which women and men are equally likely to hold elected office in the state,” the study says. The study was put together by Representation 2020, which is part of FairVote, a voting advocacy organization. They looked at gender parity amongst elected officials in all 50 states, giving each a score between zero and 100 with 50 meaning a state has reached gender parity in elected office. South Carolina scored 20. Among the reasons given for the low score and grade are the fact that the Palmetto State has no women elected to Congress and that only one woman holds any of the eight statewide offices, that being Molly Spearman, superintendent of education.

A recent study released by Representation2020, a group that advocates for reforms in the recruitment process, voting systems, and legislative practices so that more women would enter public office, suggests that the big picture hasn’t changed much, with the federal government dominated by mostly men. According to the gender parity index, or GPI, which rates women’s electoral success at the local, state, and national levels, the 2017 report finds that women are underrepresented across the board. Since the Northern Mariana Islands is not a state, it did not get a formal gender parity score, but the GPI Report still tracks their progress toward parity. “Unfortunately, their progress is only marginal. The Islands have never elected a female delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives or a female governor,” a statement from Representation2020 said.