October 26, 2022

CAWP and our partners at Latinas Represent just released a new report on the status of Latina/Hispanic women in American politics. This report, the first in a planned series of status updates, looks at the data on the representation of Latinas at various levels of office and examines Latina candidacies in the 2022 midterms. Some key takeaways include:

• A record number of Latinas serve in Congress and statewide elective executive offices, but Latina political underrepresentation persists at all levels of office. 
• Despite being about 9.3% of the population, Latinas are less than 3% of officeholders elected to statewide executive offices, Congress, and state legislatures. Three Latinas currently serve as mayors of the top 100 most populous cities in the U.S.      
• Latina representation at the congressional and statewide elective executive levels is concentrated in a small number of states, with current Latina officeholders across these offices coming from just ten states. 
• A record number of Latinas ran for and won congressional offices in 2020, but just one Latina has ever served in the U.S. Senate.  
• Between 2020 and 2021, Latina state legislative representation increased and ultimately reached a record high, but – as with other levels of office – Latina representation remains concentrated in a small number of states.

Read the full report here.

Election Day is less than two weeks away on November 8th, so we here at CAWP would like to encourage all of you to get out and vote! Find out where to vote and what’s on your ballot here. Every vote counts and every election counts, so make sure your voice is heard in the 2022 midterms. Also, get motivated to vote with this video from our friends at Higher Heights for America.

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Our friends at WNYC’s The Takeaway have continued focusing on fascinating all-women races in the 2022 midterms in our ongoing partnership project, Shelection. Here’s a rundown of recent episodes and the candidates in the highlighted races:



• The Michigan Governor's Race, Tudor Dixon (R) and Gretchen Whitmer (D)
• The Oregon Governor's Race, Christine Drazan (R), Betsy Johnson (I), and Tina Kotek (D)
• The Iowa Governor’s Race, Deidre DeJear (D) and Kim Reynolds (R)
• Ohio's 13th Congressional District, Madison Gesiotto Gilbert (R) and Emilia Sykes (D)
• Texas's 15th Congressional District, Monica De La Cruz (R) and Michelle Vallejo (D)

Follow the full series on the Shelection page of The Takeaway’s website.

Earlier this month, CAWP and the YWCA of Northern New Jersey hosted a roundtable discussion about sexual harassment in New Jersey politics and how to create safe workspaces for all stakeholders. The conversation featured representatives from an array of constituencies – politicians, political staffers, activists, academics, and more – who examined the ongoing problem of sexual harassment in state politics and discussed solutions to make New Jersey’s political environment safe for everyone who engages in it. CAWP’s associate director, Jean Sinzdak, said at the livestream event, “The importance of getting more women into office feeds right into this issue, because if we have more women in public leadership roles — women are the amplifiers of this issue, they are leaders on this issue. We are very happy to have male allies on this issue – and we need more of them – but we also need women at the table.” View the full event on CAWP’s Facebook page.

To mark the fifth anniversary of the #MeToo movement, the academic journal Politics & Gender is providing ungated access to a previous virtual special issue on the movement’s impacts in East Asia. The articles in the series cover both geographic and political breadth, from #MeToo in an authoritarian China to next-generation feminism and gender inequality in democratic South Korea to the convergence of feminism with the Hong Kong democracy movement. Politics & Gender is a project of Cambridge University Press, and CAWP scholars Kira Sanbonmatsu and Kelly Dittmar serve as associate editors for the journal. Read the full virtual special issue for free through November on the Politics & Gender website.