How We Measure Women’s Representation Matters
Originally published by Kelly Ditmar for Forbes
The refrain “representation matters” is shorthand for advocacy rooted in the argument that those in positions of leadership, visibility, and power should reflect the full range of diversity of their audiences and/or constituencies. In politics, representativeness—especially by gender—is often assessed in aggregate and single-axis ways; women are over 50% of the population, so a representative government would mean women achieving parity with men among elected officials. But determining how well women are represented in elected office means employing more complex and intersectional measures.
Previously, I wrote about the importance of understanding women’s political representation within party caucuses, demonstrating how women have reached parity with men in many states’ Democratic – but not Republican – legislative caucuses. And even then, high levels of Democratic representation matter differently in states with Republican control, limiting the influence of Democratic women legislators.
New data from the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers University provides another opportunity to complicate our understanding of how well women are represented in state legislatures by state, gender, and race/ethnicity. By comparing the proportion of women by racial/ethnic group in each state’s legislature with the proportion of women of that race/ethnicity in the population, it shows that the dominant reality for women across racial/ethnic groups is underrepresentation. However, there is important variance in where and to what degree women of different groups face representational disparities in state government.
CAWP reports that Black women’s state legislative representation falls short of their proportion of the state population in 37 states, Native women’s state legislative representation is less than their proportion of the state population in 43 states, Latinas’ state legislative representation falls short of their proportion of state population in 47 states, and both Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) and white women’s state legislative representation is below their proportion of the state population in 48 states.
State-level and race-specific data provide more clarity in identifying gaps in representation and better guidance for targeted interventions. They also reveal where the gaps between political and population representation are largest for each community of women. For example, Black women are 20.5% of Mississippi’s state population–the highest in the nation–but they are just 5.7% of state legislators. In contrast, Black women’s state legislative representation is nearly equal to their proportion of state population in Georgia and Maryland, both states that rank in the top five nationwide for Black women as a percent of population. California ranks second in the nation for AAPI women as a proportion of state population at 9.4%, but they hold just 2.5% of state legislative seats; this marks the largest disparity in representativeness for AAPI women nationwide. The largest gap between Latina representation in state legislative and state population is in Texas, where Latinas are 19.8% of the state population—the second highest in the nation—and 11% of state legislators. In contrast, Latina representation in California’s population—which matches Texas—is equal to their representation in the state legislature. Native women’s political underrepresentation is starkest in states with the highest shares of Native women in their populations, including Alaska and Oklahoma.