Women Running

Our mission is to reform the institutions and structures that hold women back from running for office rather than forcing women to change. Increasing the recruitment, training, and funding of women candidates will be more effective in getting women elected at every level of government.

Below are suggestions on how to dismantle these barriers for women who want to run for office.

Setting targets to level the playing field

Recruiting women to run for office is one of the central challenges to achieving gender parity in the United States. RepresentWomen challenges political parties, PACS, and donors to commit to intentional actions to ensure that more women are recruited to run. These voluntary targets mimic the quotas that are used in over 100 nations to fuel the election of women candidates.

What Can Parties Do?

What Can Political Parties Do?

Political parties in many states and localities play a significant role in deciding who runs for office - they must be challenged to be deliberate about the number of women candidates they recruit.

Local, state, and national political parties should establish Gender Parity Committees to assess the status of women’s representation and determine targets for the recruitment of women candidates. Pressure from party members may also work to make parties recruit more women candidates and to hold them accountable for their action - or lack of action as the case may be.

An annual report should be prepared by the local or state party on the status of women’s representation in its own leadership, in the number of women candidates, nominees, and general election winners in the most recent election, and its plans to recruit women for upcoming elections.

What Can PACs Do?

Political Action Committees (PACs) play decisive roles in recruiting, endorsing and funding candidates - they must be challenged to be intentional in the number of women candidates they recruit, support, and fund.

Members of PACs and endorsing groups, especially those with member-driven priorities, from the Sierra Club to organized labor, the faith community and the Chamber of Commerce, should set targets for intentional action in endorsements and political giving. While women-oriented PACs like EMILY’s List, Susan B Anthony List, and The WISH List already are committed to supporting female candidates, other PACs should intentionally and deliberately commit to contributing a certain share of their funds to female candidates.

PACs should be encouraged to discuss and propose targets for their giving for all levels of elected office. With public pressure, equal funding for male and female candidates may become a value proposition for PACs. The PAC environment is highly competitive and they are always looking for new ways to look different from other PACs to appeal to donors.

infogram_0_copy_pacs_who_gave_the_most_to_women_candidates_total_dollars_in_2016-8PACs: Most to Women//e.infogram.com/js/dist/embed.js?Dnhtext/javascript

What Can Donors Do?

Individual donor contributions are crucial to the success of women candidates for every level of office. Money is not only required to run a campaign, but often times, fundraising is the first test of a candidate’s viability. Donors must also be challenged to set targets for the number of women candidates they support or the proportion of their total donations that go to women candidates. Donors may choose to set their own targets for support of women candidates or work in concert with others to make their pledge public. Influential donor pledges to support women candidates will help to build public pressure for increased support of women candidates.

PAC & Donor Spending on Women Candidates

PAC and Donor Spending

With the support of a Network Grant from the Democracy Fund, RepresentWomen (formely Represenation2020) teamed up with the Center for Responsive Politics and Common Cause Education Fund to research PAC and donor giving to male and female candidates and to devise strategies to challenge them to set targets for the percentage - or overall amount - that they give to women candidates.

The full report can be found here.

This collaborative project includes:

data analysis of PAC and donor contributions
qualitative interviews with PAC leadership
outreach to individual donors
consultation with a politically diverse group of experts

The Balanced Bench Project: Women in the Judiciary

Often when we discuss the underrepresentation of women in politics our conversations focus on the legislative and executive branch. In order to have true gender parity for women in government, we need to remember to talk about the judiciary. Women, especially women of color, continue to be underrepresented in both elected and appointed judicial positions. As a result, RepresentWomen created the Balanced Bench Project, an exploration of women’s representation in judicial positions.

Blogs

Women’s Underrepresentation in the Judiciary by Grace Knobler

Women are Underrepresented on the Courts by Evelien van Gelderen

Introducing the Balanced Bench Project by Katie Pruitt

Infographics

Maryland

Texas

California

Legal Strategies to Advance Gender Parity

Legal Strategies

RepresentWomen and Hogan Lovells are working together to investigate legal strategies to improve women's representation in all areas of politics through Hogan Lovells's Empowering Women and Girls Initiative and in conjunction with their three-year Clinton Global Initiative "Commitment to Action."

We are investigating how PACs, political parties, and the government can take deliberate steps to improve women's representation at all levels of elected office, through researching:

PAC donation rules
PAC spending decisions
Gender parity targets for political parties
Gender parity rules to improve women's representation in elective office.

We are developing model language to be used by PACs, political parties, or any government entity to improve women's representation through intentional actions.