For Immediate Release: Tuesday, October 8, 2014.
Contact Information: Representation 2020: Cynthia Terrell, 301-270 4616, ct@fairvote.org
What’s the Matter with the State Legislature? Gender Parity in Elected Office in the State of
Louisiana
Representation 2020 has assigned all 50 states a Gender Parity Score as part of its Gender Parity Index. A
state’s Gender Parity Score measures women’s recent electoral success at the local, state and national
level on a scale of 0 — if it had no women in any of the offices used to create the index — to 100, if
women held all such offices. Gender parity in elected office is defined as women and men being equally
likely to hold the majority of seats. No state has ever achieved a parity score of 50, while 22 states have
scores of 15 or less.
The median Gender Parity Score for all 50 states was 15.84 at the end of 2013, up from 9.45 in
1993. Representation 2020 researched the rate of change between 1993 and 2013 and projected the
following, if the same pace of change was to continue:
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Women will reach parity in 71 years in the US Senate and 89 years in the US House
Women will reach parity in state legislatures in 139 years
Women will reach parity in statewide executive offices in approximately 900 years
At the end of 2013, Louisiana’s Gender Parity Score was 15.7, meaning that Louisiana ranked 29th for
gender parity. This is an improvement from 1993, when the Bayou State ranked 41st in the nation with a
Gender Parity Score of 5.3. These gains are mostly due to the repeated election of US Senator Mary
Landrieu (who has served since 1996) and the term of Kathleen Blanco in the Governor’s office (20042008).
Louisiana stands out for the woeful gender parity performance of its state legislature. Currently, just 18
(12.5%) women serve in Louisiana’s 144 member state legislature, which is the lowest percentage in the
nation! There has been some improvement, from a low base, since 1993 (when there were only 11
women in the legislature) but, at this rate, it will take an extra 183 years to achieve gender parity in the
state legislature.
The slow progress toward parity is partially due to the use of single-member districts in its Louisiana’s
state legislature. In 2013, those state legislative chambers that used multi-member districts were 31.0%
female, while those that did not were made up of only 22.8% women. State legislative offices are an
important stepping stone to higher office, so an absence of women in a state’s legislature typically equates
to an absence in statewide offices and Congress.
In line with the close relationship between women’s representation and institutions, Representation 2020
is working with other reform organizations to develop remedies for the structural barriers to gender parity
in elected office. "Current strategies alone will not get us to gender parity” commented Representation
2020 director Cynthia Terrell, “we must embrace voting systems that elect more women, party rules to
recruit more women candidates, and legislative practices that make it feasible for women to serve and
lead if we are to fix the under representation of women in our lifetimes."
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