Change the System to Get More Women in Politics

One hundred years ago, the first woman took her seat in Congress. Jeannette Rankin was elected before women in America had the right to vote, but she fought for women's suffrage until it was granted in 1920. A Republican from Montana, she became infamous for voting against American participation in both World Wars. She was a woman not afraid to speak her mind even when the consequence was losing her seat, which she did after both of her anti-war votes. When she was elected she said, "I may be the first woman in Congress, but I won't be the last." And while 325 women have since followed her into Congress, I doubt she would be very happy with the state of women's representation in America today.

Women in the U.S. increasingly outnumber men (we are 51 percent of the population), but we are stuck when it comes to representation in politics. Women made no gains in Congress this election cycle (women hold 104 out of 535 seats), and the number of women governors has fallen from an all-time high of nine in 2007 to just four serving in 2017. At the state and local level, women have been stuck at under 25 percent for decades. Until now, those of us working to elect more women bemoaned the glacial pace of increasing women in politics. This year we are forced to confront the fact that forward progress is not inevitable.

Although the U.S. was among the earlier countries to give women suffrage, we have not kept pace. Starting with New Zealand in 1893 (where women were unconditionally granted the right to vote, but not to run), to Saudi Arabia, (where the right to vote and run was granted just two years ago in 2015), most countries in the world have come around to the idea that women should have the right to vote and run for office. There are just four countries today who have no women serving in their governing bodies (Yemen, Qatar, Vanuatu and Micronesia), although quite a few have less than 5 percent. In 1997, the U.S. ranked 41 out of 177 countries based on women's parliamentary representation. Today we rank 104 out of 193 countries, trailing far behind Rwanda and Bolivia who have surpassed the 50 percent mark for women in their parliaments. It is not a coincidence that of the 46 countries that have over 30 percent representation by women, 40 have gender quotas.

Clearly, our strategies to increase women in politics in the U.S. are not working. Gender quotas, however, are the third rail of American politics, and they are rarely discussed as a viable option. And so, during a conference I attended recently in Brussels with women's political activists from the United States and the European Union, the American delegation dismissed out of hand the idea of quotas as un-American. "We didn't think we could make it work in Ireland either," said Michelle O'Donnell Keating, co-founder and chair of Women for Election. She stood up and talked about the fight in Ireland to enact 30 percent quotas for women candidates to the Dali. Today, 5 years after the quota was passed into law, Ireland is still below 30 percent women in parliament, but the number of female candidates has greatly increased. In 2011 there were 86 female candidates, and in 2016 there were 163. And the percent of women elected has risen from 15 percent in 2011 to 22 percent today, a 40 percent increase.

How did Ireland make this happen? In part it was a well-orchestrated campaign by civil society groups to get party quotas into the public consciousness. As she explained it, they had tried everything else. What I find most interesting about Michelle's story is that before she began her campaign for quotas in Ireland, she came to the U.S. and met with organizations such as Running Start, the White House Project and the Women's Campaign School at Yale to learn what we were doing in the U.S. to move the ball on women in politics. And while I'm sure none of us advocated for quotas, she took what she learned from her U.S. counterparts and, as she says, 'copied and customized' to fit Ireland.

Now, Ireland has moved up to 80 on the list of women in power while the U.S. falls further down the list each time I check. It is time for America to rethink our tactics on electing more women and to reconsider structural reforms, such as quotas, that make such a difference in the rest of the world.