Blog
Footnotes
State Candidates and the Use of Campaign Funds for Childcare Expenses
*Updated as of August 2019. Please check our permanent page on this topic for the most up-to-date information. In May 2018, the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) ruled that Liuba Grechen Shirley, a congressional candidate from New York, could use campaign funds to cover her...Read more
Numbers Matter. Here’s Why.
When Serena Williams lost the Wimbledon final last weekend, some on-screen analysts and news outlets led with the number six — noting that this is the sixth time that Williams has lost a major final. They chose that number over 23, the number of major finals that Williams has...Read more
Q&A: Hallie Meisler Discusses Her Ambitions as the 2019 Katherine K. Neuberger Intern
Every year, the Center for American Women and Politics supports an internship through the Rutgers-Eagleton Washington Internship Award Program that provides financial assistance to interns in the nation’s capital. This is made possible due to the generosity of Susan N. Wilson in...Read more
Republican women’s underrepresentation is a state problem, too. …Unless you’re in Alaska.
The drop in Republican women’s representation in the U.S. House – down to 13 women who hold just 6.6% of all Republican House seats – garnered national attention amidst what was otherwise perceived as a “year of the woman” in American politics. But the problem of Republican...Read more
What We’re Watching: Second Time’s the Charm?
At the end of the 2018 midterm cycle, our friends and collaborators at the Barbara Lee Family Foundation published a new research memo, Relaunch: Resilience and Rebuilding for Women Candidates After an Electoral Loss , that looked at voter perceptions of losing candidates and...Read more
Shirley Chisholm’s Birthday Gift: Support Black Women Candidates
Fifty years to the day that Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Congress, five new Black women won seats in the U.S. House. In January, they will join 17 other incumbent Black women representatives, two Black women delegates, and one Black woman...Read more
Why Electing More Women to Congress is a “Big Thing”
In this record-setting year for women candidates, all eyes are on the campaign trail. But what happens when women are elected? In our new book A Seat at the Table: Congresswomen’s Perspectives on Why Their Presence Matters (Oxford 2018), we use personal interviews we conducted...Read more
This is what a legislator looks like. Catch up.
Just under a month ago, Ohio State Representative Emilia Sykes filed a complaint with the Ohio Department of Public Safety for over two years of disparate treatment by security officials at the Statehouse. More specifically, Representative Sykes – one of ten Black women in the...Read more
The Gender Gap in Voting: Setting the Record Straight
Media reports frequently confuse the women's vote and the gender gap , actually reporting on the women’s vote but calling it the gender gap. To clarify: the gender gap in voting is the difference between the proportions of women and men who support a given candidate, generally...Read more
Women are less than a quarter of all U.S. House candidates this year, but that's still record-breaking.
The 2018 election has been widely touted as the next “Year of the Woman.” The number of women seeking congressional office is indeed at an all-time high , with 468 women running for the U.S. House and 51 running for the U.S. Senate. According to the Center for American Women and...Read more