See State Legislative Representation in New Ways

The Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, is unveiling new resources to better understand women’s representation in state legislatures around the country. These resources, Women as a Percentage of State Legislative Caucuses and Representativeness of Women State Legislators by Race/Ethnicity and State, offer novel details regarding women officeholders in state legislatures and provide additional insights into opportunities and obstacles to political equity. These resources join our roster of data products on women as candidates, officeholders, and voters and will be updated regularly.

Women as a Percentage of State Legislative Caucuses examines women’s representation within Democratic and Republican caucuses in every state legislature in the country. This resource offers compelling new evidence regarding partisan differences in women’s representation in American politics; women are near, at, or beyond parity in Democratic caucuses around the country, while Republican women continue to be underrepresented at significantly steeper rates than their Democratic peers.

• Women are 48.4% of Democrats and 20.1% of Republicans in the nation’s state legislatures.
• Democratic women are at or above parity with Democratic men in 27 state legislatures.
• Republican women fall short of parity with Republican men in every state, holding one-third or fewer of Republican seats in 47 state legislatures.
• Women are 50% or more of Democrats in 54 of 99 state legislative chambers nationwide.
• In contrast, women are 50% or more of Republicans in just 1 of 99 state legislative chambers nationwide. (Women are exactly 50% of Republicans currently serving in the Nevada State Senate.)

Representativeness of Women State Legislators by Race/Ethnicity and State compares women’s representation in state legislatures to their share of the population, with representation-to-population comparisons by race and ethnicity for each state as well as in aggregate nationally.

• Asian American/Pacific Islander women's state legislative representation falls short of their proportion of the state population in 48 states.
• Black women's state legislative representation falls short of their proportion of the state population in 37 states.
• Latinas' state legislative representation falls short of their proportion of the state population in 47 states.
• Native American/Alaskan Native/Native Hawaiian women's state legislative representation falls short of their proportion of the state population in 43 states.
• White women's state legislative representation falls short of their proportion of the state population in 48 states.

Find all of CAWP’s resources about women in state legislative offices – including state-by-state information, our state rankings, current and historical representation, and state legislative candidacies over time – at the State Legislature section of our website.