Electing Women

Two points at the outset: there's not enough here, for reasons explained below, and there will be more. While the evidence is clear that multi-member districts and multi-winner elections, independent of the particular electoral system used, facilitate the election of women, it's also true that proportional representation systems do so even more. But most proportional systems are to be found outside the United States, while the predominant focus of PR Voting is US-based research. Further, the PR history in the United States that has provided most of the research material on diversity under STV/PR in the US generally, occurred at a time when few women were running for office, even at the local level. Still, you will find some relevant data below, as a starting point.

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