How Gender Parity in Government Can Foster a More Representative Democracy

The year 2020 was remarkable for women in public office. Record numbers of women ran for and won seats in Congress and in state legislatures. The first woman was elected Vice President.  And she also happens to be the first Black woman and first South Asian woman elected Vice President.

But despite this progress, women—and women of color, in particular—are still underrepresented as candidates and office-holders at every level of public office in the United States. In the 2020 election cycle, women were only about a fourth of all Congressional candidates (29 percent of House, and 24 percent of Senate candidates); and women of color specifically were even more underrepresented at just 7.5 percent of Senate and 13 percent of House candidates.

At Pivotal Ventures, an investment and incubation company created by Melinda Gates, I oversee a set of investments aimed at breaking down barriers for women and families in the United States, and fast-tracking women’s leadership in key sectors, including in public office.

During the 4th annual Confluence Philanthropy Advisors Forum, I led a discussion about why it’s so important to elect women and push for equal representation in government, and how donors and investors can support this work.

One thing is clear: gender parity in public office isn’t just fair, it’s key to good governance. For example, in the United States, women members of Congress are more likely to build consensus and engage on specific issues, which leads to more bills passing and becoming legislation. We see the same marks of effectiveness when we look globally. In responding to the coronavirus pandemic, for example, countries led by women leaders (like New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and German Chancellor Angela Merkel) suffered fewer COVID-19-related deaths than most other countries, due to their more proactive and coordinated policy responses.

If women are just as (or more) effective in creating laws and running countries, what’s holding us back in the U.S.? The problem isn’t that women aren’t as successful as men when they run for office. In fact, they often win at similar rates. The problem is that there are structural, systemic, and cultural barriers that limit women’s odds of success at every stage of the electoral process.

For example, the lack of access to affordable child care, paid family leave, and support networks can deter women from running for office in the first place, and especially if they are women caring for children or loved ones, low-income earners, and women of color. So when we examined the range of possible interventions in the political pipeline, we saw significant opportunity to address the gender gap in political office by funding groups doing the early work to equip women with the tools and supports they need to feel empowered and ready to run in the first place.

At Pivotal, we’re deploying philanthropic capital to several of the leading non-profit organizations who are cultivating diverse women to run for office, changing the narrative of what leaders look like in this country, and building the research and data on who is running, winning, and holding office. But Pivotal’s investments are just one piece of the puzzle in how values-based investing can be used to increase pathways for women and people of color in public office.

For investors who are driven by values, we can improve representation by funding organizations that recruit and equip our future leaders, fund research on the barriers holding women back from running and winning, give to diverse candidates, engage voters to be active participants in our democracy, and much more.

Our goal is for government to better reflect the diversity of its citizens, which means electing more women and people of color. These emerging leaders, and the organizations working to build the pipeline, need our support.