Women's Representation

In 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution guaranteed suffrage for American women, the culmination of a struggle for voting rights going back for decades. Nearly a century later, women are the most underrepresented "minority" group in the United States -- as of 2011, women are less than 18% of U.S. Congress, barely below the international average of 19%. The percentage of women in state legislatures has little different than it was in the 1990s.

Electing more women to legislatures is not only a matter of fairness. Practically speaking, the presence of women in legislatures makes a qualitative and quantitative difference in the types of legislation that are proposed and passed into law. In a study comparing legislation in major democracies, Dr. Arend Lijphart, former president of the American Political Science Association, found that countries with proportional representation -- which generally elect a much higher percentage of women than the U.S. -- have enacted more laws that benefit women and children.

In the United States, for examples, women have beeen heavily outnumbered in Congress, but have played key roles in advancing legislation long overlooked by their male colleagues, including gender equity in education, child support legislation and laws for prevention of violence against women. 

The Role of Proportional Voting

Research shows that the number one predictor of women's success in national legislative elections, among a range of political and socio-economic variables, is the presence of proportional voting systems instead of winner-take-all voting rules. Although proportional systems do not guarantee more women's representation, women in countries with proportional voting on average earn double the share of representation of women in countries that use winner-take-all.

One reason is that when parties nominate several candidates for multi-seat districts, they are more likely to nominate more women. With party-based forms of proportional voting, a party (or national law) may in fact require a certain percentage of women candidates.

Furthermore, in a more competitive electoral environment due to proportional voting, parties are more likely to be ready to be responsive to what voters want to see. When voters want more women candidates to run, parties are more likely to take action, especially if smaller parties and individual women candidates seek to take advantage of voters' interest.