December 20, 2022

It’s been another fascinating year for women in politics, and CAWP is proud of the work we’ve done to chronicle women as candidates in the 2022 midterms, as well as our ongoing work to advance the breadth of research and knowledge on women in politics. We’re excited to have brought our NEW Leadership® program for college students back to an in-person format and to have trained hundreds of women to run for office via our Ready to Run® virtual training series this past year. We are looking forward to our first in-person Ready to Run® New Jersey campaign training program since 2019 in the new year. Our partner programs around the country, including 24 Ready to Run® partners and 18 NEW Leadership® partners, are also hard at work preparing their own 2023 programming, and we can’t wait to see the impactful programs they create in the new year. We are immensely grateful for all of our supporters and wish every one of you a happy, healthy, and restful holiday season. CAWP’s News & Notes will take a holiday break and will return on January 17th. 

CAWP’s annual New Jersey County Report Card shows that women’s representation remains fundamentally stalled in New Jersey counties. While women made incremental gains as county commissioners and in municipal council offices, they lost ground as mayors in New Jersey since our previous report card in 2021. Union County continues at the top spot in our overall county rankings – which is determined via an average of rankings for women’s representation in mayoral, county commissioner, and municipal council offices – while Salem County is this year’s lowest-ranked county for women’s representation among the 21 counties of New Jersey.

With a gain of just two seats in county commissioner (formerly freeholder) offices, women now hold 36% of these seats statewide, up from 35% in 2021. Women gained a total of 26 seats on city and town councils, but, with 3,109 such seats statewide, women’s share of these municipal council offices remained essentially unchanged at 30%. Meanwhile, women lost ground as mayors between 2021 and 2022, losing eight mayoralties and falling from 18% of mayoral seats to 16.6%.

“The coming year will see the return to an in-person format for our annual Ready to Run® campaign training program in New Jersey,” CAWP associate director Jean Sinzdak said in a press release. “We strongly encourage any woman in the Garden State with political aspirations, ambitions, or even curiosity, to attend Ready to Run® 2023 and take advantage of the knowledge and networking the program offers. New Jersey needs you.”

Find the full 2022 New Jersey County Report card here and read an op-ed from Sinzdak about its findings in The Star-Ledger.

This holiday season, give the gift of knowledge by

supporting CAWP’s unmatched data and research mission.

CAWP has decades of experience as the leading source of current data about women’s political participation in the United States and in offering imaginative programs aimed at advancing women’s political leadership. Here’s your chance to be part of the team that makes these things happen. CAWP is currently hiring for the following positions:

Program Coordinator The program coordinator works collaboratively to innovate and drive the development, implementation, and evaluation of a range of public programs, special projects, and outreach efforts — like our Ready to Run® and NEW Leadership® programs. The person in this position is responsible for expanding our target audience, providing focused/appropriate educational opportunities, and developing relationships and managing partnerships with outside organizations to provide joint programs.

Research Project Assistant The research project assistant will join CAWP’s peerless data team that tracks women as candidates and officeholders. The person in this position will also assist in the expansion of our data services work, including widening the scope of current data projects as well as growing new areas of data collection, such as additional levels of office for elected officeholders and expanded candidate coverage. This expansion will allow CAWP to provide new measures of women’s political participation in the United States and provide a backbone of data to bolster research and scholarship in the field of women’s political participation.

Learn more and submit applications here and here.

Early bird registration for Ready to Run® is now LIVE! Registrations received prior to February 10, 2023 will secure a discounted early bird registration rate. Ready to Run® returns to an in-person format in 2023, with two days of networking and training on March 17th and 18th in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The agenda for Ready to Run® New Jersey 2023 is filling out and includes the following sessions:

• ELLA Wins (Elections & Leadership Latina Academy)
• Rising Stars: Educating Asian American Women for Politics
• Run Sister Run: Women of the African Diaspora Changing the Political Landscape
• Digital Strategies for Candidates, Campaigns, and Advocates
• Strategic Campaign Communications
• Launching Your Campaign
• Finding Your Political Voice and Influence
• Navigating New Jersey’s Political Parties for Candidates
• Legislative Advocacy
• Fundraising for Success

Learn more about these training sessions, including the lineup of session leaders, at the Ready to Run® New Jersey 2023 agenda.

Still looking for a last-minute holiday gift? Check out the fantastic collection of books in our CAWP Series in Gender and American Politics from the University of Michigan Press! The series includes important work on women as candidates and officeholders like The Political Consequences of Motherhood from Jill S. Greenlee, Sarah Oliver and Meredith Conroy’s Who Runs? The Masculine Advantage in Candidate Emergence, and Gender in Campaigns for the U.S. House of Representatives by Barbara Burrell. You can also pre-order the forthcoming book in the series, Walking the Gendered Tightrope: Leadership Challenges to Theresa May and Nancy Pelosi from Melissa Haussman and Karen M. Kedrowski. This new book, due in 2023, examines how women, even at the heights of political power, still face gendered criticism about their capacity for leadership. The CAWP Series in Gender and American Politics publishes innovative work that pushes the boundaries of current thinking about the intersection of gender and politics. Learn more here.