January 23, 2024

Following 2023 off-year elections in states around the country, CAWP has updated its rankings of states by women’s representation in state legislatures. CAWP’s rankings are determined by the proportion of state legislative seats held by women. Changes in our 2024 rankings principally derive from state legislative elections held in 2023 in Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Virginia.

As a result of the 2023 elections, New Jersey was the only one of these states to see a decrease in women’s representation in its state legislature; the number of women holding seats in the New Jersey Legislature fell by two, and currently 41 women hold these offices in the Garden State. With women holding 34.2% of seats, New Jersey falls from 21st to 23rd in our rankings.

Meanwhile, women gained seats in Louisiana (+6), Mississippi (+2), and Virginia (+2) as a result of 2023 elections. Virginia, with women holding 34.3% of seats, moves up four spots to 21st in our rankings. Mississippi and Louisiana also made gains, but these perennially low-ranked states remain in the bottom 10 states in our rankings. Louisiana (23.6%) gained three spots to land at 42nd, and Mississippi (15.5%) moved up two spots to 47th.

The top and bottom 10 states in our rankings are unchanged from 2023, with no change in ranks among the top 10 states and some movement in the bottom 10 as a result of gains made in Louisiana and Mississippi.



See CAWP’s full rankings, and find out where your state ranks, at the Women in State Legislatures 2024 fact sheet.

There’s still time to register for Ready to Run® New Jersey at our reduced early-bird rates! Through February 12th, register to attend New Jersey’s premiere candidate training program for women seeking to deepen their connection to politics and receive a 25% reduction in registration fees. The 2024 Ready to Run® program will take place on March 15th and 16th in New Brunswick, New Jersey.



The innovative Ready to Run® dual-track training program allows all women to learn from political professionals, whether you’re launching a campaign or taking the first steps into greater involvement with politics. With workshops about fundraising, digital outreach, media training, engaging with elected officials, navigating state political party systems, and more, Ready to Run® is here to prepare you for your next steps in politics.

Partner programs in our Ready to Run® National Network are also hosting upcoming events:

• WIL Win! Campaign Activation Toolkit Demonstration: January 24th

• Ready to Run® Philadelphia: February 10th

Applications for the Susan N. Wilson NEW Leadership® New Jersey 2024 program are now open! NEW Leadership® is a non-partisan, six-day residential program taking place June 6th to 11th at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. This program teaches college students about women’s leadership, gives them skills for a future in politics, and provides them access to networks of powerful professionals to help build their careers. NEW Leadership® New Jersey is open to students at all higher education institutions in New Jersey, and CAWP is committed to including students from diverse socioeconomic circumstances, sexual orientations, gender identities, and ethnic and racial backgrounds in each NEW Leadership® program.

Learn more about NEW Leadership® New Jersey and apply to join the 2024 cohort here.

We’ve released a new brief from CAWP Research Grant recipient Dr. Jeong Hyun Kim. Kim’s work, “Intersectionality in User Replies to Congressional Candidates’ Tweets” explores the frequently-hostile world of online interaction for people in politics. By analyzing replies to Twitter posts, Kim finds that, while white women receive less toxic replies than their white male counterparts, “there are considerable racial differences in the toxicity of replies that candidates receive.” Women of color face increased toxicity in some forms of digital communication, both in comparison to white women and to men in the same race/ethnicity groups. Kim calls for expanded research, using an intersectional framework, into online harassment of political figures. Read the full brief here.