Who Runs Our Cities? The Political Gender Gap in the Top 100 U.S. Cities
Women comprise half of the population, but are highly under-represented at all levels of government. The consequences of the gender gap in political leadership go beyond issues of democratic representation. Studies have found that, on average, women elected officials introduce more legislation than men, and that they do so on a wide range of issues, from health and education to infrastructure and the environment. On balance, women elected officials have also been found to be more transparent, collaborative, and effective. Given the positive impact that women leaders have on the content and quality of public policy, a better understanding of the gender gap in political representation is needed.
While most of the existing studies of women in US politics have focused on the federal and state levels, this report focuses on women’s representation at the local level. Within our 2015 Equity Indicators for New York City, we included an indicator of “Gender & Representation in Government.” This report expands on this indicator by analyzing data on current mayors and city councilors, historical data on mayors, and data on the mayoral candidates in the most recent elections in the 100 largest cities in the United States. It examines three questions raised by existing studies:
Are women better represented at the local level than at the state and federal levels of government?
As more women are elected, do more women run for—and win—future elections?
Are women underrepresented because they do not win elections or because they do not run for office?
Our analysis shows that while the percentage of women in local elected office (mayors and city councilors combined) is higher than at the state and federal levels, the percentage of mayoral offices held by women is even lower than that of Congressional offices. We found moderate correlations between the number of historically-elected women mayors and the percentage of women among mayoral candidates and elected officials in each of the cities. Finally, our results indicate that when they run for office, women perform almost as well as men in mayoral elections.
This finding is consistent with the results of existing studies that have found that women are underrepresented because they do not run for office. There are a number of barriers preventing women from running for office, such as gendered social roles, negative self-perceptions, limited exposure to politics, and lack of support. Addressing these barriers will be an important step toward achieving greater gender parity, and we offer some suggestions for doing so.