This update from the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) and the Higher Heights Leadership Fund outlines the status of Black women in American politics in the fall of 2019.

Gender disparities in American politics were not upended in a single cycle, but the 2018 election marked sites of progress as well as persistent hurdles for women candidates. Evaluating the 2018 election in the context of both past and present offers key insights into the gendered terrain that candidates will navigate in 2020 and beyond. In this report, CAWP combines its unmatched data with a review of the latest research on gender, candidacy, and representation to analyze an unprecedented year for women in American politics, identify sites for both destruction and durability of barriers to women, and offer a guide for gender and

As an educational and research center concerned with increasing the contribution women can make to the American political system, the Center for the American Woman and Politics decided to hold a series of conferences for women already in public life, who could address themselves to questions about women’s political participation on the basis of personal experience. This report deals with the first such conference, which was made possible by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The Conference for Women State Legislators brought together fifty women officeholders from twenty-eight states. At the time, out of a nationwide total of