Experts warn women’s progress in politics is slowing

By The 19th

Women continue to make record-breaking progress in politics – most notably with Vice President Kamala Harris becoming the first woman of color at the top of a major party presidential ticket. However, an annual report by RepresentWomen, a nonprofit organization that supports institutional reforms to help women enter public office, found that progress has been inconsistent.

The report, called the Gender Parity Index, tracks gender representation across local, state and federal offices.

“The 2024 Index reflects our complex political landscape, suggesting progress in women’s political representation may stagnate or even backslide,” according to the report.

Overall, the United States lags behind most established democracies. Women are still underrepresented at every level of government, holding under one-third of all elected positions despite accounting for more than 50 percent of the total national population. In the last year, the number of women congressional candidates has fallen by 20 percent in the House and 26 percent in the Senate. And a record number of incumbent women are not running for reelection.

When zooming in on states and localities, there are wins and losses. For example, this past year saw two milestones: Louisiana elected two new women state executives and Indiana elected nine new women local officials. Meanwhile, New Hampshire backslid, according to the Index, which calculates scores based on the number of women holding elected positions in federal, gubernatorial, statewide executive, state legislative, mayoral and county seats. New Hampshire was the first state to meet the Index’s benchmark for gender parity in 2015 and then again 2020, losing it in both 2018 and 2024. While the report does not spell out reasons for the change in grade, it shows a notable gap in statewide executive office: No woman has held an elected seat in that branch since Sen. Maggie Hassan completed her term as governor in 2017.

According to RepresentWomen’s report, obstacles to gender parity include “funding and support disparities from political parties and other major donors, media bias, unfair voting systems, imbalanced caregiving and responsibilities and lack of mentorship networks.”

Some of those disparities were visible in the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers University’s latest analysis of campaign finance for congressional candidates nationwide, part of which was released on Monday. Kira Sanbonmatsu, the senior scholar who leads the project at CAWP, said that men and women are raising money for congressional campaigns in different ways.

“Men running for Congress are more likely to contribute to their own campaigns,” Sanbonmatsu said in a statement. “This funding mechanism may be less accessible to women due to gender differences in income and wealth – particularly to women from historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups.”

Women candidates across political lines also tend to raise more of their funds through contributions of $200 or less. Among incumbent women seeking reelection, both Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia have the highest proportion of funds from small contributions, at 70 percent.

“We know that money doesn’t buy elections,” Sanbonmatsu said. “At the same time, women candidates need resources to run effective campaigns.”

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This article originally published in the August 19, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.