Commentary from The Century Foundation: Women’s Underrepresentation in Politics: No, It’s Not Just an Ambition Gap
Last week, the New York Times Editorial Board ran an editorial discussing women’s representation in government. In it, they lamented declining numbers of women council members in the New York City Council and the underrepresentation of women in local and state governments nationwide.
They are correct in their assessment of the underlying problem: Roughly 25 percent of America’s large city governments are comprised of women; at the state level, women also make up about one quarter of their governing bodies, on average. And the statistics shrink even more at the federal level: women’s representation hovers at 19.4 percent of the House of Representatives and 21 percent of the Senate.
Indeed, the United States champions itself as a beacon of democracy, yet nearly a century after granting its women citizens the right to vote, it clocks in behind ninety-eight other countries with regard to women’s participation as representatives in elected government bodies. . .