April 25, 2023

Women continue to hold less than a third of all municipal offices nationwide, according to new CAWP data. While women’s share of seats in mayoral and municipal council offices increased from 31.5% to 32% since the release of CAWP’s 2022 data on women in municipal office, they still fall well short of their share of the overall population.

The top five states for women’s representation in municipal offices in 2023 are Arizona and Alaska (both 45.1%), Nevada and Colorado (both 44.3%), and Oregon (43.2%), while the bottom five states for women’s representation in municipal offices in 2023 are North Dakota (20%), Mississippi (20.3%), Nebraska (20.8%), Wyoming (21.4%), and South Dakota (21.8%).

Find out how your state ranks at our 2023 Women in Municipal Office fact page, which includes an interactive map showing women’s share of municipal offices in all 50 states, as well as a sortable table that shows this percentage, state rankings for women’s representation in municipal offices, rank change from 2022, and comparisons to state legislative rankings.

We are thrilled to announce that Professor Paru Shah will join CAWP in the fall as a senior scholar. Shah, who will have a joint appointment with the Rutgers–New Brunswick Department of Political Science, is a leading expert in the study of gender, race/ethnicity, immigration, and American politics. In addition to conducting path-breaking research, Shah has served as an elected school board president in Wisconsin. She holds a Ph.D. from Rice University and M.A. and M.P.H. degrees from the University of Illinois, Chicago as well as a B.A. from the University of Michigan. She has taught at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and Macalester College. Her recent projects include studies of how gender and race intersect in state legislative elections, how women's candidacies are shaped by the experience of losing races, and how Asian American women in politics are navigating threats of violence. Shah will be one of several new faculty joining Rutgers this year through the university’s cluster hiring initiative on Race, Racism, and Intersecting Inequalities.

The application deadline for our inaugural Ruth B. Mandel Dissertation Research Awards is next Monday, May 1st! Are you a graduate student working on doctoral research in the field of women and politics? CAWP is awarding up to four Mandel Awards of $2,000 dollars supporting dissertation research on women, gender, and U.S. politics. Eligible recipients include advanced doctoral students from any relevant discipline at U.S.-based institutions who have successfully defended their dissertation proposal. We encourage applications from scholars who are traditionally underrepresented in the academy and welcome applications for research that analyzes gender in addition to or in conjunction with other categories such as race/ethnicity, class, immigration status, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

In her new piece in Forbes, “A Woman Tribal Leader Leads A New National Monument With Distinct Approach To Power,” CAWP’s Kelly Dittmar writes about the successful effort to earn federal recognition of Avi Kwa Ame as a national monument. In March of this year, the Biden administration established the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument in Nevada, which spans a half-million acres in the Mojave Desert. Avi Kwa Ame is recognized by numerous indigenous communities as a sacred site, and Dittmar spoke with Ashley Hemmers, Tribal Administrator for the Fort Mojave Tribe, about communal approaches to power and the long campaign to preserve the site and gain it federal protection. “They always have trouble understanding that people can actually live together. And then when you remind them they're like, ‘Well, that makes a lot of sense,’” Hemmers tells Dittmar in the piece. “That's how we got support for Avi Kwa Ame, is by building those types of understanding at all different levels. How can we make a better future for all of our communities together?” Read the full piece on the Forbes website.

Kathryn D. McLamb, a second-year student at Rutgers Law, attended our 2023 Ready to Run® campaign training program for women (pictured at right) and wrote about her experience for The Brief, the Rutgers Law blog. “Within minutes of mingling before the programming officially began, I found myself surrounded by an incredible, diverse group of women of various ages, races, ethnicities, professional backgrounds, and political interests,” she writes. “I walked away with countless connections, in addition to gaining invaluable skills and a trove of supplementary resources I look forward to utilizing, no matter which direction my political path leads.” We hope to see you in our officeholder database soon, Kathryn!

Read her full piece here.