Women Still Deeply Underrepresented in Municipal Office

Women continue to hold less than a third of all municipal offices nationwide, according to new data from the Center for American Women and Politics, a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. While women’s share of seats in mayoral and municipal council offices increased from 31.5% to 32% since the release of CAWP’s 2022 data on women in municipal office, they still fall well short of their share of the overall population. These numbers are not an aberration: women hold less than a third of seats at every level of office we track, including Congress (28%), governorships (24%), statewide elective offices (30.3%), and state legislatures (32.7%).

The top five states for women’s representation in municipal offices in 2023 are Arizona and Alaska (both 45.1%), Nevada and Colorado (both 44.3%), and Oregon (43.2%). Since 2022, Hawaii has dropped out of the top five, and Nevada has moved up. The bottom five states for women’s representation in municipal offices in 2023 are North Dakota (20%), Mississippi (20.3%), Nebraska (20.8%), Wyoming (21.4%), and South Dakota (21.8%). South Dakota joined the bottom five this year, displacing Indiana.

Our 2023 Women in Municipal Office fact page includes an interactive map showing women’s share of municipal offices in all 50 states, as well as a sortable table that shows this percentage, state rankings for women’s representation in municipal offices, and rank change from 2022. A second table compares women’s representation in municipal office to their representation in state legislatures.

This data includes information about mayoral offices and members and officers of the municipal legislative branch of incorporated cities and towns with populations over 10,000, per the U.S. Census. It should be noted that there is a great deal of variance between states in how many cities and towns are included in this data. Hawaii, for example, dropped seven spots in our rankings since 2022, when it was the number one state, but that ranking is based on just a single municipality that is both incorporated and has a population greater than 10,000: Honolulu. Meanwhile, Alaska, tied for the number one spot this year with Arizona, has just six eligible municipalities, compared to Arizona’s 51.

Learn more about women in municipal office in 2023, and find out how your state ranks, at our 2023 Women in Municipal Office fact page.