Better gender balance in representation

In 2020, U.N. Women, the United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, published a policy brief highlighting the role of women leaders in combating the Covid-19 crisis. It showed that women leaders were more likely to be “collaborative” and “coaching” and ultimately more effective. As U.N. Women put it:

It is noteworthy that in 2019 — prior to the pandemic — nearly half of the world’s population (47 percent) believed that men made better political leaders than women. Today, lower COVID-19 death rates and effective virus containment policies in countries led by women are disproving the discriminatory social norms driving these beliefs.[1]

The policy brief also highlighted the continued lack of gender balance in positions of power around the world and how that likely exacerbates the disparate impact that Covid has had on women, for example increasing pay gaps, unpaid childcare burdens, and even gender-based violence. In other words, women have led the way in Covid mitigation and, at the same time, suffered the brunt of less effective policies. This dynamic — women being disproportionately impacted by poor policies and women leaders stepping up to improve policies — plays out in many policy areas and in many arenas aside from policymaking. Women are often put on the frontlines of economic and physical hardship, and we do better with their voices in leadership.

The United States is not a leader in women’s representation. As of January 2023, 71 countries have a larger proportion of women in their national legislatures than the United States.[2] The United States is missing important voices and perspectives in legislation as a result, and we all suffer for it. Our lackluster response to the global pandemic is but one example. Improving gender balance in leadership must be a priority, and opportunity for improvement lies in the structure of our elections.

Proportional representation elects more gender-balanced legislatures

Two electoral structures can significantly improve gender balance in legislatures. The first, and most effective, is the use of quotas or other affirmative gender balance targets. Many countries have such affirmative measures to one degree or another. The most common measures are to set aside a certain number of seats for women in the legislature or require or incentivize political parties to nominate more women.

Gender quotas have always been politically challenging in the United States, where they clash with a culture that valorizes meritocracy (as an aspiration anyway), but even if they had broad support, there is no clear legal mechanism to implement them. Setting aside a certain number of seats in the U.S. Congress would require a constitutional amendment, a goal that is effectively impossible in our polarized politics. The other solution, requiring or incentivizing political parties to nominate women, only works if the political parties control whom they nominate. But in the United States, nominations are determined almost exclusively by voters via primary elections.

The other electoral structure that can significantly improve gender balance is proportional representation. Countries that elect proportionally elect more women. As of 2021, 21 countries elected national legislatures comprising more than 40 percent women. Of those, 14 (or two-thirds) use a form of proportional representation. Almost all of those also have some form of gender quota. Of countries without gender quotas, those with proportional representation have about 1.5 times the proportion of women elected to their legislatures than those with winner-take-all.[3]

Women win at higher rates in multi-winner districts

Some of the benefit that proportional representation has for women may have little to do with proportionality. Research shows that women win at higher rates in multi-winner districts, even under winner-take-all rules. 

Take, for example, the nine U.S. states that still elect their state legislatures in multi-winner districts: Arizona, Idaho, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Washington.[4] As of March 2021, women won at higher rates than the national average in seven of them. In fact, women’s representation in states with multi-winner districts has, on average, outpaced the same statistic in states with only single-winner districts consistently since 1976.

These stats may be skewed by other aspects of the states that use multi-winner districts. However, even within the same state, women win at higher rates in multi-winner contests than in single-winner contests. Maryland, West Virginia, and New Hampshire (a blue state, a red state, and a purple state) each elect some state legislators in multi-winner districts and some in single-winner districts. Women win at higher rates in the multi-winner districts across all three states, as Figure 20 shows.

One reason has to do with candidate recruitment. In a single-winner district, each party wants to run the candidate most likely to win. In a multi-winner district, each party wants to run the slate most likely to win the most seats. When running multiple candidates in a single contest, diversifying the team likely draws support from more voting blocs. This principle is familiar in presidential elections, when a nominee seen as young and progressive, like Barack Obama in 2008, might seek a running mate who is older and moderate, like Joe Biden.[5] In multi-winner districts, this incentivizes parties to actively recruit women candidates: An all-male slate might lose some votes to voters who may support their policy positions but feel uncomfortable voting exclusively for men.

Most states used to elect their legislatures in multi-winner districts, but the practice has been receding. In part, this is because today’s multi-winner legislative districts are exclusively winner-take-all, which results in patent unfairness. Under winner-take-all rules, even a narrow majority can win every seat. It’s bad enough when narrow partisan majorities can shut out other viewpoints, but it becomes particularly noxious in places with racially polarized voting, where people of color can be shut out of representation and have no political recourse when their government ignores (or abuses) their communities.

Critically, any new adoption of multi-winner districts should exclusively use proportional voting methods in order to avoid the stark partisan and racial unfairness of winner-take-all elections in multi-winner districts. Any proportional voting method would improve women’s representation, but there is reason to think proportional ranked choice voting may be particularly effective. Evidence from the large number of elections with single-winner ranked choice voting suggests that rankings can play a role in boosting gender balance.

Women win at higher rates with ranked choice voting

When New York City adopted ranked choice voting for its municipal primary elections, the new system (coupled with a large number of vacancies due to term limits) led to the election of a women-dominated city council. Of the 51 members, 31 (61 percent) were women, as shown in Figure 21. Nearly half (25) were women of color. As of January 2021, women comprise 51 percent of city council positions elected by ranked choice voting nationwide, and about half of cities with ranked choice voting have achieved or exceeded gender parity.

This pattern extends to executive offices, traditionally those with the greatest gender imbalances. As of July 2020, women held only 22 percent of mayoral offices in the 1,376 cities with populations greater than 30,000, yet they held half of mayoral offices in cities that elected their mayors with ranked choice voting.

Women were elected mayor for the first time ever in Oakland, California, Portland, Maine, and Sandy, Utah, with ranked choice voting; Benton County, Oregon, elected its first woman to the post of county executive with ranked choice voting; and the state of Maine sent its first woman to the governor’s mansion after she won a contested Democratic primary election conducted by ranked choice voting.

These descriptive statistics might merely show that places inclined to elect more women are also inclined to adopt ranked choice voting. But this is no coincidence, according to research comparing cities with ranked choice voting to control cities without it. Cities that adopt ranked choice voting are more likely to elect more women, and particularly more women of color, compared to otherwise-similar cities that keep single-choice elections.[6]

Women may do better in ranked choice elections for several reasons. One is that research shows that ranked choice voting reduces negative campaigning, rewarding more issue-oriented campaigns that can earn second-choice support from their opponents.[7]

In The Gender Gap in Political Ambition (2022), the Center for Effective Lawmaking highlights research showing that women are significantly more deterred by several aspects of campaigning compared to men. The single greatest difference relates to “enduring a negative campaign,” which 38 percent of women identified as a deterrent for seeking office, compared to 20 percent of men.[8]

Negative campaigning may be particularly harsh — and particularly effective —  when targeted at women, as it can draw on a long history of gendered tropes and stereotypes. Deterring negative campaigning in general could therefore go a long way toward creating a campaign environment where women can compete on more level footing.

Most of the American experience with ranked choice voting comes in its single-winner form. However, the history of proportional ranked choice voting is also informative. Cleveland became the first U.S. city to adopt proportional ranked choice voting in multi-winner districts (not just citywide) in 1921, which came on the heels of women winning the right to vote. Cleveland elected at least one woman to its city council every cycle until it abandoned proportional ranked choice voting in 1933, when it again elected a council comprising all men.

Proportional ranked choice voting can improve gender balance in the U.S. House

Under the Fair Representation Act’s modest multi-winner district rules, using current apportionment, 415 members of the U.S. House would be elected in multi-winner districts that elect at least three winners. With the added benefit of ranked choice voting across all congressional elections, the Fair Representation Act could lead to the largest increase in the proportion of women elected in U.S. history.

With more voices at the table, and a more reflective legislature, the United States would be better positioned to take on the complex problems facing the country today. As described earlier in 1.5, gender-balanced legislatures perform better on a variety of metrics than those that are disproportionately men. Most large, modern democracies require political parties to nominate women or set aside seats specifically for women to counteract the many hurdles women face in politics, from expectations of unpaid labor, particularly caregiving, to voter bias stemming from gender-based stereotypes. Such measures may be necessary to achieve full parity. In their absence, proportional ranked choice voting can certainly propel the United States higher than 72nd place internationally, where it sits as of January 2022.

Gender imbalance in the U.S. House is not a foregone conclusion. We do not have to accept our poor standing in women’s representation. A more balanced Congress is needed, is possible, and would be better for all of us.