Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation in politics, on boards, in sports and entertainment, in judicial offices and in the private sector in the U.S. and around the world—with a little gardening and goodwill mixed in for refreshment!
In This Edition:
Milestones: Charlene Mitchell became the first Black woman presidential nominee (1968); Sandra Day O’Connor was nominated as the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court (1981); 14th Amendment was ratified (1868); Wyoming joined the Union and its state constitution granted women suffrage (1860); Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan formed the National Women’s Political Caucus (1971); Geraldine Ferraro is nominated for vice president (1984).
Birthdays: Molly Yard, ERA supporter and former president of NOW; Anjelica Huston, actor; Cindy Nicholson; Megan Caska, RepresentUS; Amanda Farías, New York City Council member; Sarah Hanzas, Vermont secretary of state; Wanda Vázquez Garced, former governor of Puerto Rico; Jhumpa Lahiri, novelist; Isabel Martin Lewis, first woman astronomer to work at the U.S. Naval Observatory; Nellie Gorbea, former secretary of state of Rhode Island; Betty McCollum, member of Congress; and my daughter Anna Richie.
What the Women in My Foyer Remind Me About Democracy
Every day, I glance at the portraits hanging in the front entrance of my foyer—women from the earliest days of my lineage descended from those who arrived on this soil more than a century before the Declaration of Independence was signed. And though I never knew a single one of them, I greet them like family every time I pass. Most days it’s a quick, familiar smile. The last few weeks, though, I found myself stopping more frequently in front of them, their faces stirring something in me I couldn’t quite name until I attended a recent gathering.
Scanning from frame to frame, I saw women who came before they could vote or own property, before they were fully recognized as citizens at all.
I was at a memorial service two weeks ago for a dear friend and fellow Quaker, Jean Harrison, and what was shared shed light on why I have been looking at the paintings through a different lens in recent weeks. One of Harrison’s loved ones spoke about a custom in Latin America, where directions are still given by landmarks that no longer exist: “Turn where the old restaurant used to be,” even though its doors closed years ago. It isn’t the restaurant people are really pointing to, she said, but the mark it left: an entire community that kept orienting itself around a place long after the place was gone.
She went on to remind everyone in the Meetinghouse that people can become landmarks in the very same way. It is not that we remember every detail of them, but that the impact they made on those around them outlives them, becoming something a whole community continues to navigate by, long after they are physically here. That’s how I’ll think of Jean Harrison, and everyone else in my life who has died, from now on: not gone, exactly, just no longer needing to be present to point the way.
It was this reframing that helped me to fully understand why I had been pausing in my foyer recently. Perhaps unconsciously, in the weeks leading up to this nation’s founding, I found myself lingering over these portraits, seeing these women as landmarks that guided me forward in a new light. Scanning from frame to frame, I saw women who came before they could vote or own property, before they were fully recognized as citizens at all. And beside them, the countless women who came after these hard-fought rights were won: my grandmother, my mother, all the way down to the faces of my daughters, the women of today.
Looking at this collection, it is not lost on me what it cost generations of mothers and daughters alike just to get this nation closer to the representative democracy it claimed to be from the start.
That cost was paid in persistence, in women tirelessly demanding an equal seat at the table, despite the barriers in their way. Their unflappable courage and determination are the thread that runs through this entire country’s story. American democracy has endured for 250 years because women who were never meant to have a voice in it insisted on having one anyway—women like Abigail Adams, Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Fannie Lou Hamer, Alice Paul, Patsy Mink, Shirley Chisolm, Lani Guinier and countless others whose names we may never fully know.
Last week’s celebration belongs to all of them, and it is because of them that this work now rests with us.
That work is far from finished, and nowhere is it more visible than in the very document we’ll spend this weekend celebrating with barbecues and fireworks. The Declaration of Independence created a democracy that excluded women and people of color alike, Indigenous peoples most of all: the same people who were both the first to live on this land and the first to build the democratic framework we now claim as our own invention.
… What we call American democracy was never ours to invent in the first place.
It saddens me that we give so much credence to a document penned by and for white men alone, while all but erasing the Great Law of Peace, created by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy—the true template for collective decision-making, checks and balances, and even for the idea of a two-house Congress. In my view, this Indigenous form of democracy is much closer to the one we still strive to create: one in which women hold real power and decisions are made with the well-being of future generations in mind.
I spent the Fourth of July in Hamilton, N.Y., where I grew up, in the heart of the Haudenosaunee homeland. It felt only right to spend the holiday there, grateful for a reminder most Americans never receive: What we call American democracy was never ours to invent in the first place.
I made this same case in Ms. magazine last week, about what the next chapter of democracy could look like if we finally learned that lesson:
“For 250 years, the story of American democracy has been a story of expanding who holds power and who gets to decide who yields it. The 15th Amendment, the 17th, the Voting Rights Act, the 19th Amendment, and the 26th—each was a structural intervention, a deliberate redesign of the rules to bring more people into the democratic process. And at each iteration, a bet was made on the same proposition: Democracy works better when more people have real power within it… [T]he expansion of American democracy has come from changing those rules, not from asking underrepresented people to be more persistent within them. A feminist vision for the next 250 years requires the same courage.”
I don’t want to dwell only on what democracy has denied, or on how long it took to give any of it back. The women in my foyer wouldn’t want that either. The best way to honor them isn’t by begrudging the past—it’s by deliberately building the democracy we never got to see: one with new systems, ranked ballots, and structural steps that guarantee women a seat at the table in every chapter still to come. The past is a landmark. The future is ours to design.
Upcoming Digital Events
RepresentWomen’s Women’s Power Collaborative Lunch and Learn: What 250 Years of History Means for the Work Ahead
Join us for our next Women’s Power Collaborative Lunch and Learn on Thursday, July 16, at 1:00 p.m. ET, featuring Dr. Janell Hobson, professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at the University at Albany. Hobson guest-edited Ms. magazine’s “Founding Feminists” series, which reexamines America’s origin story through the women who built—and kept rebuilding—this democracy from its earliest days, including the often-overlooked influence of Haudenosaunee governance on the framework we now call American democracy. Register now!
Gender Parity Index Report Release and Webinar
On Wednesday, July 22, RepresentWomen is releasing our 2026 Gender Parity Index report. To kick off our digital release, we will host a Democracy Solutions Series exclusive event on the evening of the report release at 7 p.m. ET, led by RepresentWomen research director Courtney Lamendola. She will provide an overview of how the nation is faring with regard to gender representation, a deeper analysis of what the data tell us about our current system’s structural ceiling, and explain how people can use this scorecard to advance policy change in the months to come.
We hope you will join us on July 22—register here!
In the meantime, check out last year’s Gender Parity Index report.
Beyond Graham Platner: Learning from Maine Voters
This November, Maine’s U.S. Senate election will be one of the nation’s few electoral battlegrounds. After allegations of sexual misconduct and the implosion of Graham Platner’s Senate candidacy, a feverish effort is being led by Maine Democrats to replace him with a candidate who both respects the voters who overwhelmingly nominated him in June and positions their party to win in November.
Incumbent Susan Collins is one of two pro-choice Republican women in the Senate, but she also cast the decisive vote for Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, which led directly to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. She is also the nation’s only Senate Republican to represent a state won by Kamala Harris, making her an obvious target.
Knowing that whoever is nominated will face intense scrutiny for potential sexual misconduct, a woman could be their safest choice—yet another reason to give strong women candidates a second look when assessing viability.
FairVote did a fascinating analysis of Maine’s gubernatorial primary that shows how much you can learn from ranked-choice voting ballots:
“Ranked choice voting (RCV) has become the norm in Maine since its first use in 2018, and Maine Democrats should consider using it in this process – to select a new Senate nominee with support from a majority of the party, and/or to select delegates to the convention.
Additionally, among the names discussed as potential Platner replacements are three candidates from Maine’s record-turnout Democratic gubernatorial primary last month – public health official Nirav Shah, former State Senator Troy Jackson, and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows…
First, data from the state’s cast vote record – an anonymized record of every ballot cast – shows that most Maine Democrats have just affirmatively supported at least one of these candidates by ranking them on their ballots. 70% of Maine Democrats ranked Shah on their ballots, 73% ranked Bellows, and 62% ranked Jackson. More Maine Democrats ranked Shah (156,780) and Bellows (161,921) than voted for Platner (156,084)…
Second, the cast vote record data available from an RCV contest provides more detailed information on voter behavior than we’d get in any “choose-one” election – including how the candidates would fare in head-to-head matchups, and how candidates appeal to different groups of voters. We can use ranking data to simulate head-to-head matchups – selecting any pair of candidates, and identifying who was ranked higher on the majority of ballots. In these head-to-head matchups, Shenna Bellows would defeat both Shah and Jackson, while Shah would defeat Jackson…
There is also significant discussion of which possible Senate nominee might best reflect the coalition of voters who nominated Graham Platner in the primary – and whether picking that person should be a goal of Maine Democrats’ process. Notably, Platner supported Jackson, Bellows, and Hannah Pingree in the gubernatorial primary, with Jackson as his first choice. Those three candidates also cross-endorsed – encouraging voters to rank all three on their ballots. Cast vote record data shows the effect of cross-endorsement was strongest between Pingree and Bellows: 57% of Pingree voters ranked Bellows in their top three, and 70% of Bellows voters ranked Pingree in their top three.”
America 250: Inspiring Insights from Janai Nelson and Heather Gerken
In the wake of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, I’m more determined than ever to work toward making real the promise of government by and for the people. Among the many insightful pieces about the Declaration’s call for equality, freedom and democracy by respecting the consent of the governed, I wanted to highlight two: one by NAACP LDF president Janai Nelson and one by Ford Foundation president Heather Gerken. Here are excerpts.
Janai Nelson in The Contrarian, “We Need a New Founding”:
“Since our founding 250 years ago, our country has repeated a familiar pattern: bursts of progress followed by bouts of backlash. Enormous advancement followed by violent retrenchment.The promise of Reconstruction followed by the pain of Jim Crow. The peaks of the Civil Rights Movement are followed by the slow unraveling we’re living through today….
It’s worth remembering that in moments of past darkness we have triumphed not by moderating our opinions or softening our asks, but by dreaming big and daring boldly.
What we need now is that same radical hope and daring vision: a reimagining, a rebirth, a refounding. We cannot settle for half measures that nibble around the edges of our deep-rooted, structural problems. We cannot prop up without critique what remains of our tattered and flawed political system that carries forward vestiges of slavery in such consequential structures as the Senate and the electoral college, for example. And, we cannot compromise with those who seek to destroy the very idea of equal rights and democracy.
As Lincoln observed on the eve of the Emancipation Proclamation, “broken eggs cannot be mended.” No, instead we must build anew. We must create institutions accountable to the people, including a Supreme Court bound by exacting ethical standards and unwavering fidelity to justice and the rule of law. This starts with reforms like term limits, curbing the abuse of the emergency docket, and a close examination of the merits of court expansion.
We must overhaul our election system by expanding vote-by-mail options, limiting aggressive purges of voter rolls, codifying same-day and automatic voter registration, and ending the pernicious practice of racial and political gerrymandering. And we must begin socializing the use of alternative voting systems like ranked choice, instant runoff, and cumulative voting, which, with necessary investments in turnout, give voters more options to exercise their power to elect representatives of their choice.”
Heather Gerken, “Democracy Is Unfinished Work“:
“At the Ford Foundation, we believe democracy and the rule of law constitute the bedrock of the American experiment. Everything we hold dear depends on these twin values. Embraced by people of good faith across the ideological spectrum, they exist beyond politics. And people experience these values in everyday life—at polling places and courthouses, yes, but also in schools, civic rituals, and local institutions. Shoring up these bedrock values is the central project of this moment, one on which all of our other work depends.
This conviction animates our new Ford Foundation series, Reflections on Democracy: Of, By, and For the People. Starting this month, across our channels, you will hear from a wide range of leaders, representing a wide range of sectors and disciplines. All reflect on a question 250 years in the making: How can we ensure—as Lincoln said at Gettysburg—that democracy “can long endure”?
For my part, I think we must begin by recognizing that democracy means of the people—and of all the people… Ultimately, democracy is not self-executing. Each generation must choose to protect it, preserve it, and pass it forward. This is the unfinished work. This Fourth of July, let us recommit ourselves to it—and to one another.”
The Most Popular Supreme Court Justices Are Women
A new Economist/YouGov poll offers a snapshot of how Americans feel about the Supreme Court.
Half of adult Americans disapprove of the way the Court is handling its job. A significant part of that disapproval stems from a specific concern.
Nearly half of Americans (45 percent) think the Court’s recent decisions have given the president too much power, including 47 percent of independents.
The justices who have most visibly pushed back on executive overreach, including on birthright citizenship and Trump’s tariffs, happen to be the three women on the liberal wing. And they are also, by a significant margin, the most popular justices in the country.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor has the highest net favorability among justices at +10, meaning more Americans view her favorably than unfavorably across party affiliations. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson follows at +8, and Justice Elena Kagan at +6. Every other justice is viewed unfavorably. Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch each sit at -7. Justice Brett Kavanaugh is at -10, Chief Justice John Roberts is at -11, and Justice Clarence Thomas is at -12.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the only woman on the conservative wing, has the lowest net favorability of any justice on the Court at -15. Republicans view her favorably at a net +9, the lowest among the conservative justices from her own party, compared to Thomas’ +44, while Democrats rate her at -42. Since joining the Court, Barrett has drawn criticism from Trump allies for breaking with the conservative bloc, including the majority, to uphold birthright citizenship and to reject Trump’s tariffs.
The liberal justices’ higher overall favorability can be explained by the fact that Democrats tend to view conservative justices more negatively than Republicans view liberal justices, and that independents generally favor liberal justices over conservative ones. The result is that the three most trusted members are all women.
Five-Term Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles Steps Down and Reflects on Legacy
Vi Lyles won five terms as mayor of Charlotte, N.C., the nation’s 14th largest city, after becoming the city’s first Black mayor in 2017. This spring, she announced she would be resigning to spend more time with her family. The City of Charlotte published a piece on her legacy that includes this excerpt:
“Lyles’ transition into politics was inspired by her late husband John Lyles. “My husband had cancer, and he was not going to make it,” she said. “I remember being at home, and he looked at me and said, ‘You’ve got to find something to do.’”
That conversation made her realize she wanted to do more for Charlotte. She won an at-large seat on Charlotte City Council in 2013. A few years later, she threw her hat in the running for mayor. In 2017, she won Charlotte’s mayoral seat, etching herself in history as the city’s first Black female mayor.
“I never thought about myself as making history,” she said. “I guess I have to rely on how I grew up and what made it possible for us, but this was just an opportunity to grow.”
Lyles has achieved a lot during her time in office. She worked to help implement the city’s Alternatives to Violence, a partnership with Mecklenburg County to help disrupt violence through street outreach, community events and public education. She helped support SAFE Charlotte, a plan implementing public safety policy improvements developed through conversations with residents and community leaders. Lyles also sought expansion of the city’s Housing Trust Fund, saying one of her biggest goals on Charlotte City Council and as mayor was to create more affordable housing for Charlotte residents.
“We’re looking for a way to make it possible for everyone to have a place to live,” she said. “To this day, I still believe housing is the only way we will get citizens who care about the community and the city.”
Lyles has also championed advancing the region’s transportation and transit programs, including voters approving a referendum to fund Mobility+, a 30-year plan to advance mobility across Mecklenburg County.
“I’m really proud of the work we did to make it possible for everyone to be able to move around the city and do it in a way that supports their family and their friends,” she said.”
Women in Louisiana Are Underrepresented
A new analysis from Tulane’s Newcomb Institute, released in collaboration with Ellevate as part of the nation’s 250th anniversary reflection, spotlights Louisiana’s record on women’s representation.
There are milestones to celebrate. Firstly, in 1936, Doris Lindsey Holland became the first woman in the Louisiana Legislature. Lindy Boggs became the first woman elected to the U.S. House from Louisiana in 1973. Mary Landrieu became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Louisiana in 1996. Julia Letlow is heavily favored to win a Senate seat this year.
Yet, despite nearly a century of firsts, women still hold just 22 percent of Louisiana state legislative seats in the House, only 14 percent in the state Senate, and 13 percent in Congress, even though they make up 51 percent of the state’s population and 55 percent of registered voters.
Even more sobering, a Newcomb Institute statewide survey found that 34 percent of men and 16 percent of women agreed that men make better political leaders than women. Only 49 percent of women and 31 percent of men disagreed outright. These numbers shape who imagines themselves as a candidate, who gets recruited, who gets funded, and who appears on the ballot.
Black women’s gains within that underrepresentation are notable. Black women constitute 31 percent of women seatholders in the House and 40 percent in the Senate, numbers that reflect generations of civic leadership and political organizing even within an overall landscape of exclusion.
Anita Raj, a New Orleans researcher, writes on the ramifications of these outcomes in the Louisiana Illuminator:
“If Louisiana hopes to see more women in elected office, changing these perceptions may be just as important as expanding opportunities to serve. These attitudes matter because representation begins long before an inauguration.
“Why does women’s representation matter? Because Louisiana women continue to face some of the greatest health and economic challenges in the nation. Louisiana ranks last among states for women’s and children’s health and forwomen’s economic and social well-being. These rankings reflect persistent challenges in maternal and infant health, economic opportunity, educational attainment and safety.”
Greater representation alone will not solve these problems, but it can help ensure policy decisions are informed by a broader range of lived experiences.
Representative government is strengthened when decision-makers draw upon the experiences and perspectives of the people they serve. A legislature that more closely reflects Louisiana’s population is better positioned to understand the challenges facing women, children, families, and communities across our state.
Deschutes County, Oregon’s Campaign for Ranked-Choice Voting
Several local campaigns for ranked-choice voting (RCV) are underway, including a new petition drive to adopt the proportional form of RCV to elect the Deschutes County, Ore., County Commission. Here’s more on coverage of the local campaign for proportional RCV from the Bend Bulletin:
Organizers have launched a petition that, if passed by voters, would allow ranked choice voting in Deschutes County Commissioner races. Organizers are now gathering signatures to place the measure on the ballot, which may be as soon as November.
“We’ve seen (the Deschutes County Commission has) gone to nonpartisan,” said Brian Smith of the Tribal Democracy Project. “They’ve recently expanded to five (seats). We think that this is a natural extension to get a county commission that’s elected in a fair manner.”
Deschutes Defend Our Democracy Coalition, Common Cause Oregon and Tribal Democracy Project, along with activist Freddy Finney-Jordet, Redmond School board member and former commission candidate Amanda Page and Tawny Barin Howlett, organized the petition…
Jamie Collins, elected in May in a winner-take-all election, said he thought a new voting system would be good for the county’s voters.
Collins said that expanding the commission to five seats was a good first step for increasing representation on the county’s top governing body. But he said reforms should not stop there. Voters should also rethink how officials should be elected, how government ensures everyone has a voice and how the county should be governed, considering its expansive growth in the past twenty years.
My husband Rob Richie and our daughter Becca are in Bend housesitting for Rob’s sister Marina Richie, as she launches a tour in the United Kingdom for her new book Feathered Forest. (Pre-order it here!). The Deschutes County League of Women Voters is hosting Rob to share his national insights on July 13.
Women in Governor Elections: A Record Year or Downturn?
My husband Rob Richie, long-time leader of FairVote, helps with RepresentWomen’s work and analysis around electoral reform and women’s leadership. He shared this analysis of women in the 2026 governor elections, which suggests women have a real chance of a record high among governors — but still far short of parity, and particularly low among Republicans. This is what he wrote:
The Center for American Women and Politics, the go-to source for reporting on the latest stats for women’s representation in elected office in the United States, reports on the 14 women governors – that’s a record high, but still only 28 percent of governors. Six of these 14 women are not running for re-election this year, creating a real risk that women could drop in representation. Indeed, the worst case scenario is that only four women are governors next year.
Far more likely is that women increase their number. Their high-end is 27 seats, but between 16 and 18 is more likely. Republican women today are governors of four states. They could at most win seven seats, but are favored in only four that depends on primary results in two August primaries. Democrats are likely to hold between 12 and 14 seats, up from 10 today, and could win as many as 20. Here’s a summary of how that may happen.
- Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger and New Jersey’s Mikie Sherrill won last year and will serve until 2029.
- Among Democrats, two women incumbents are heavily favored to win in November: Maura Healey in Massachusetts and Kathy Hochul in New York. Women are also favored in Arizona (Katie Hobbs seeking re-election), Maine (Hannah Pingree, replacing Janet Mills), Michigan (Jocelyn Benson, replacing Gretchen Whitmer), Oregon (Tina Kotek seeing re-election, and Rhode Island (Helena Foulkes defeating incumbent Dan McKee in the Democratic primary and win in November). Women nominees are in tossup races in Georgia (Keisha Lance Bottoms), Ohio (Amy Acton) and Wisconsin (key will be the August 11 primary, with two strong women candidates). Democratic women are longer shots in Kansas, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Texas, Vermont, and Wyoming.
- Among Republicans, Alabama’s Kay Ivey and Iowa’s Kim Reynolds will be replaced by men. Arkansas’ Sara Huckabee Sanders is heavily favored to be re-elected, New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte is slightly favored against a woman Democrat Cinde Warmington, Tennessee U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn is favored to win an open seat, as is Trump-endorsed in an open seat in Wyoming if they win their primaries in August. The longshot chances for Republican women are in Alaska, Oregon, and Pennsylvania.
Julia Letlow Favored to Become Louisiana’s First Female Republican U.S. Senator
Republicans do far worse than Democrats in gubernatorial elections, but they hold 10 of the 26 seats held by women in the U.S. Senate. This year, Republican women are retiring in Iowa and Wyoming, but Republicans have rallied around women as their nominees. In Louisiana, an early Donald Trump endorsement was key to Congresswoman Julia Letlow winning the Republican nod in a June 27th runoff.
“U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Louisiana on Saturday, giving President Donald Trump a win after he backed her to replace GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy. Letlow, who was endorsed by Trump, defeated state Treasurer John Fleming in the two-candidate runoff after they finished ahead of Cassidy in the GOP primary May 16…
Letlow is now the immediate favorite to succeed Cassidy in a state Trump carried in 2024 by 22 percentage points. Letlow would become Louisiana’s first female Republican senator if elected. Her supporters cheered as she stepped to the stage in Baton Rouge. One attendee let out a shriek a few minutes earlier after seeing on TV that The Associated Press had called the race.
Letlow has been in the House since 2021. Her husband, Luke Letlow, died from COVID-19 complications after being elected to Congress in 2020, and she won a special election to fill the seat…
Fleming ads highlighted Letlow’s previous public support for diversity, equity and inclusion policy, which Trump has tried to eliminate. Letlow, a former college administrator, said she supported DEI while interviewing for the position of president of the University of Louisiana-Monroe in 2020, but said this year she opposes it.
Fleming reposted an AI-generated video on the social platform X this month that purported to show Letlow saying she supported DEI because she “didn’t know any better.” The fake image of Letlow also referenced her husband, who died from complications of COVID-19. Fleming said he did not create the video “but it’s getting passed around Louisiana for a reason.”
Letlow condemned the sharing of the video as “disgraceful and indefensible.”
Melat Kiros Expected to Become the First Gen Z Woman in Congress
In one of the most stunning upsets of the 2026 primary season, 29-year-old Ethiopian immigrant Melat Kiros defeated 15-term Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado’s 1st Congressional District on Tuesday. Kiros ended DeGette’s nearly 30-year congressional career by a margin of ten percentage points in a dark-blue Denver district, which she is strongly favored to win in November — a district that has had women’s leadership since Pat Schroeder first won it in 1972.
Kiros’s win is part of a broader wave of democratic socialist primary victories this summer, including three DSA-aligned candidates winning in New York City the week before. Denver’s district will almost certainly still be represented by a woman in January, just a younger one, with a different vision for how to lead and advocate for Coloradans. The Guardian writes:
“After announcing her run for Congress, Kiros picked up endorsements from the progressive senator Bernie Sanders, as well as the Democratic Socialists of America and Justice Democrats, progressive groups that had also been involved in New York’s primaries.
In a statement, Justice Democrats praised Kiros for having “built a movement that inspired Denverites to remember they themselves have the power to transform what kind of Democratic Party they want to be represented by”.
“Melat and our candidates continue winning this cycle because Democratic voters are finally getting leaders acting on their demands to bring the fight to the corporations raising our prices, the war lobbies profiting off endless war & genocide, and the immigration gestapo terrorizing our communities,” said Alexandra Rojas, the group’s executive director .
Kiros sought to mount a generational challenge to the 68-year-old DeGette, a member of the Congressional Progressive caucus, who supported key progressive policies like Medicare for all and abolishing ICE. But since Donald Trump returned to the White House, Democratic voters have increasingly turned to younger, more aggressive candidates willing to take on their party’s aging establishment.
Kiros made concerns about US support for Israel prominent in her campaign. In an interview with Colorado Public Radio (CPR), Kiros accused the country of carrying out a genocide in Gaza and called for the United States to impose an arms embargo.”
International Elections: Costa Rica, Denmark and Cabo Verde at Parity After 2026 Elections
At RepresentWomen, we regularly do analyses of international elections and the impact of different rules and systems for women. This spring, Costa Rica, Denmark, and Cabo Verde held national elections that cemented their leadership in women’s representation, both in their parliaments and in national leadership.
Costa Rica tops all democracies in women’s representation, with women winning a remarkable 53 percent of seats and with Laura Fernández elected as president this year. In Denmark this spring, women increased their number of seats from 79 to 86, representing 48 percent of seats. Denmark also returned Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen for a third term.
In Cabo Verde, an island nation that is one of Africa’s strongest democracies, women have tripled their representation in the past two decades, now holding 47 percent of seats after its May elections, with woman Janira Hopffer Almada elected as speaker.
All of these nations have proportional representation, with parties required or incentivized to run women in large numbers. The Tico Times summarizes gains for women, the role of gender quotas in Costa Rica’s party-list proportional-representation system, and what they promise to mean for policy.
“In a landmark development for gender representation, women have claimed 30 of the 57 seats in Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly after the February 1 elections. This amounts to 52.6 percent of the total, making it the first time in the nation’s history that female lawmakers outnumber their male counterparts.
The results, released by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, show 30 women and 27 men set to take office on May 1. This shift builds on steady progress in recent years. The outgoing assembly, from 2022 to 2026, had 28 women, or 49.1 percent. Before that, the 2018-2022 term featured 26 women at 45.6 percent. The new composition pushes beyond parity, reflecting changes in electoral laws that mandate gender balance in candidate lists.
The ruling Pueblo Soberano Party leads with 31 seats overall, including 16 held by women. The National Liberation Party follows with 17 seats, 10 of them women. The Broad Front takes seven seats, with four women. Smaller parties, like the Social Christian Unity Party and the Citizen Agenda Coalition, each have one seat, both occupied by women.
This majority could reshape key areas of governance. Lawmakers often focus on social policies, such as health and education, where women’s perspectives may drive reforms. Public services, including childcare and elder support networks, stand to gain from targeted initiatives. Daily life issues, like violence prevention and job training, might see new priorities under this assembly.”
Japanese Mayor’s Maternity Leave Sparks a National Debate
Shoko Kawata, the 35-year-old mayor of Yawata near Kyoto, announced in May that she would step back from her duties around the birth of her child. Kawata is expected to give birth in mid-September and plans to take roughly two months before and two months after the birth. Because Japan has no formal maternity leave framework for elected officials, she will not technically be on official leave. Instead, Deputy Mayor Shigeto Nose will carry out her mayoral duties, consulting with her remotely once a week on major decisions.
The public response has been divided. Some backed her decision as a model for women who want to hold office without giving up family life. Others argued that senior public officials should step down if they require a prolonged absence, or that elected representatives must prioritize public duty over private life. Kawata pushed back directly: criticism of maternity leave for politicians, she said, would effectively shut women of childbearing age out of public office entirely.
The case resonates beyond one city. Women remain extraordinarily rare in Japanese local leadership—only about 4% of Japan’s 1,720 mayors were women last year. Kawata herself became Japan’s youngest female mayor at 33. A Cabinet Office survey published in July 2025 identified pregnancy, the belief that politics is men’s work, and harassment as the principal barriers keeping women out of politics. Turkiye Today notes:
“Japan has legal maternity and paternity leave systems for regular workers, including leave before and after childbirth for mothers and flexible paid leave for fathers after a child’s birth. However, Kawata’s case has highlighted that these protections do not clearly cover elected local leaders.
Kawata said some criticism appeared to come from the belief that people in public office should give up their private lives and devote themselves entirely to public service.
Asked what she hoped her child would think about the attention around the case, Kawata said she hoped the situation would one day seem surprising, because society should make it normal for women to work and build families without having to choose between the two.”
International Elections: Women Surge in Proportional Elections in Hungary and Malta
Hungary and Malta also held elections this spring. While women are far short of parity, they have been surging in both nations within their proportional representation systems, with both nations more than doubling women in their parliaments in recent years.
Since the 2022 elections in Hungary, women increased their seats in parliament from 13 percent to 27 percent in an election where voters overwhelmingly tossed out conservative media darling Viktor Orban as prime minister. According to a report by international observers critical of Orban’s attempts to thwart fair elections, Hungarian women’s progress and role in the opposition victory came despite barriers put in their way, with the report noting that “authorities and parties have made virtually no efforts to enhance women’s political participation.”
In Malta, gains for women have been far more intentional. Malta uses the proportional form of ranked-choice voting and, for decades, has had the highest voter turnout in the world in a nation without compulsory voting, with 87 percent turnout this May. Because women have traditionally fared poorly in the majority-Catholic nation, a “gender corrective mechanism” was developed and then first used in 2022. The new law has led to women going from nine seats in 2019 to 27 today. Malta Daily Reports:
“Malta has registered the second highest increase in female representation in parliament across the European Union over the past decade, highlighting significant progress in the country’s political landscape.
According to newly released data, the share of women in Malta’s parliament increased by 14.8 percentage points between 2015 and 2025, placing the country behind only Latvia, which recorded a 19.0 percentage point increase during the same period.
The rise in female representation is partly attributed to Malta’s gender corrective mechanism, which was first introduced for the 2022 General Election. The mechanism grants additional parliamentary seats when either gender holds less than 40% of the seats in parliament, helping to create a more balanced representation.
The mechanism was once again triggered following the 2026 General Election, resulting in 12 women obtaining parliamentary seats through the system.”
“Twelve women will enter parliament through the gender corrective mechanism after the conclusion of the casual elections. Six candidates from the Labour Party will enter parliament through the mechanism: Cressida Galea, Fleur Abela, Francesca Zarb, Yana Borg Debono Grech, Deborah Schembri and Romilda Zarb, while six candidates from the Nationalist Party will also take seats through the same system: Bernice Bonello, Julie Zahra, Norma Camilleri, Annabelle Cilia, Marilena Gauci and Miriana Calleja Testaferrata De Noto.
The gender corrective mechanism, introduced to address the under-representation of women in parliament, is triggered when the proportion of female MPs elected falls below a constitutionally set threshold. It then allocates additional seats to ensure a minimum level of female representation across both parties.
This year’s election saw an unprecedented number of women elected, with a total of 10 securing seats in parliament. Four additional women were elected during the Labour Party casual election last week, with a single female candidate elected during the Nationalist Party casual election on Tuesday. In 2022, only four women were elected before the casual elections and the gender corrective mechanism came into effect, marking a 20-year low for female representation.”
International Election: Peru’s First Woman President
In her third bid for the presidency, Keiko Fujimori has won Peru’s presidential election, becoming the country’s first elected woman president. After two previous narrow losses in runoffs, Fujimori, 51, won 50.1 percent of the vote.
While RepresentWomen elevates women’s leadership, Fujimori’s victory is not being celebrated by feminists in Peru. Meteor’s Lorena Prochazka explains:
“Neither party appears to have women’s interests at heart. Peru is following a global trend of setbacks in women’s rights amid rising conservative pressures, but in our case, the trend pops up across the political spectrum. As former Minister for Women and Vulnerable Populations Marcela Huaita tells The Meteor, those advocating for human rights are “no longer pursuing a progressive agenda, but one of resistance.”
Peru is already at a point where reports of femicide have increased, and thousands of sexual abuse cases have gone unpunished. To make matters worse, current president José María Balcázar has defended child marriage and normalized sexual relationships between teachers and students.
Huaita sees “no ground for optimism.” We already know what FP stands for, she points out: It opposes same-sex marriage, abortion even in the case of rape, and comprehensive sex education, which FP charges will “homosexualize” children. FP has a natural ally in ultra-conservative Renovación Popular (RP). Together, they’re just one vote away from a Senate majority. And RP passed a law that eliminates “gender perspective”—a framework used to address gender inequality, gender-based violence, and sexual and gender diversity.
It’s not just a matter of rhetoric: This law removes the concept of gender from all legislation, obscuring how gender-based power dynamics drive violence and discrimination, Huaita explains. It limits access to comprehensive sexual education, health and reproductive rights; it means even more impunity for abusers and less support for survivors. It also sends an important institutional message: Women are not a priority.
The new administration will decide whether to preserve or dismantle the “gender perspective” framework. But it’s not as if a Sánchez presidency would have necessarily saved the project: Both Fujimori’s and leftist Castillo’s party supported the law eliminating it.”
Phoebe Gates on Four Years After Dobbs and How Her Generation That Lost Roe Won’t Back Down
Phoebe Gates, entrepreneur, reproductive rights advocate, and daughter of Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, marks the four-year anniversary of Dobbs with a personal essay in Elle that is equal parts reckoning and rallying cry.
The piece traces the major fallout since the decision. She recounts how 21 states now have abortion bans or restrictions, doctors are delaying emergency care for fear of criminal prosecution, and countless preventable deaths. She cites Josseli Barnica, a 28-year-old Texas woman who waited 40 hours for care her doctors wouldn’t provide and died of a preventable infection three days later, leaving behind her husband and daughter.
A 2025 study of abortion bans in 14 states found a 5.6 percent relative increase in overall infant mortality, with Black infants dying at rates 11 percent higher than projected absent the bans.
But the essay is not only an account of loss. Gates is equally specific about what has worked. Shield laws, now in place in 22 states and Washington, D.C., protect providers and patients from out-of-state prosecution. In 2024 alone, voters in seven states passed reproductive rights protections at the ballot box.
Time and time again, voters have demonstrated that abortion rights are popular. In Amarillo, Texas, where a ballot measure would have made it a crime to drive a neighbor to obtain abortion care in another state, with $10,000 penalties for private citizens who helped, nearly 60 percent of voters said no. Her concluding thoughts speak to her optimism and the work ahead:
“I’ve also witnessed something else these past four years: extraordinary adaptation and innovation from people who refuse to quit. Activists who understand that reproductive rights underpin every other freedom are running strategic, relentless campaigns at the state and local levels to claw back what my generation refuses to surrender…
…The next fight is the most critical of our lifetime: the November midterms. Abortion is on the ballot across the country, and the stakes could not be clearer.
In Texas, James Talarico is running for U.S. Senate against Ken Paxton, the attorney general who spent years stripping reproductive rights from women, even blocking those in San Antonio and Austin from traveling out of state for care. Paxton, and any candidate who stands between a woman and her future, does not deserve our vote.
This fight isn’t hypothetical. It’s happening now, in races often decided by just a handful of votes. The most powerful thing we can do today is elect leaders who will protect and expand our freedoms.
Amarillo fought back. Now, it’s our turn to do the same.”
P.S. — Last week, I attended a Communities in Action: Courage and Connection event at the Washington National Cathedral in honor of the 250th Anniversary of the United States. I was honored to spend time with Maya Wiley and Arlene Holt during this event.
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A note from Ms. editors: We want to hear from you for The Majority, a new campaign collecting stories about how reproductive freedom has enabled readers to build the lives they want and need. Poll after poll shows a majority of Americans support reproductive healthcare access. Yet public debate overlooks the lives shaped by abortion access, contraception, IVF, miscarriage care, maternal healthcare or comprehensive sex education—countless women who chose to pursue an education, have children, not have children, protect their health and chart their own future. Add your voice and complete the sentence: “Access to reproductive choices gave me the freedom to….” Together, these stories will help show not only why reproductive freedom remains a majority value, but also what it makes possible.
