I had the pleasure of working with the amazing young women pictured above who were part of the RepresentWomen team in 2020!
Dear friend,
I am writing to report on what the RepresentWomen team accomplished in 2020 and to ask that you consider supporting our work in 2021 to lay the groundwork for serious and sustained progress toward gender balance in politics in the coming decade.
Here are highlights of what we accomplished in 2020:
We researched the structural barriers that women face as candidates and the best practices to get more women into office - faster, and published a number of reports & briefs, including:
- PACs & Donors report & case studies
- Ranked Choice Voting report
- International Women's Representation report & dashboard
- Women and the presidency brief
- Women in executive leadership brief
- Women's representation on Tribal Nations report
- Incarcerated women's rights and representation report
- U.S. House expansion brief
- Gender Parity Index report
- District design brief
We communicated about our research via digital and traditional media with a targeted audience of allies, journalists, academics, advocates, and elected officials. This work included:
- countless posts on social media platforms including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook & Instagram
- numerous op-eds (here is a sample) and background conversations with journalists
- my weekly blog on Ms Magazine
- updates to our website (that we maintain ourselves)
- a chapter in The Best Candidate: Presidential Nomination in Polarized Times.
We collaborated with partners in the democracy reform and women's representation movement, with campaigns for voting system reform, with the ReflectUS Coalition, and with state groups around the country. Here is a testimonial from Jen Simon at the Wyoming Women's Action Network:
Right now, I am working with several partners in Wyoming on two policy briefs--one about women's representation and one about women's economic impact in Wyoming--and I would be unable to complete this work without RepresentWomen's research and materials.And it is not just in my policy work that your research is indispensable. I use it with Cowgirl Run Fund--Wyoming's first PAC dedicated to electing more women from across the political spectrum--as well as refer to it in media interviews on a regular basis. I use it in my Equity State column in the Jackson Hole News&Guide. I use it for essays and policy briefs for the Wyoming Women's Action Network.I truly cannot imagine trying to work in a gender justice policy space without the groundwork that you and your team provide.
We modeled inclusion in 2020 through work with a diverse set of allies who span the ideological, racial, age, and geographic spectrum. I am determined to make sure that RepresentWomen board members, interns, staff, and strategic advisors reflect the diversity of American women.
We celebrated the centennial of suffrage with our 2020 calendar of women leaders that we sent to every woman member of Congress, women on the Supreme Court, women governors & mayors, women college presidents, friends, and family. We hadn't anticipated that the calendar would be so popular - we had to order more copies to fill all the orders and have enjoyed a wonderful array of thank you notes from many happy recipients!
Can we count on your support? I hope that you will consider making a donation to RepresentWomen to support and expand our young, diverse team and help us to build our capacity to advocate for the systemic strategies that research tells us are the building blocks of a truly representative democracy.
Equality can't wait.
Many thanks,
Cynthia