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What Tunisia can teach the United States about women’s equality

Editorial / Opinion Piece / Blog Post

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December 11, 2018

What Tunisia can teach the United States about women’s equality

Source: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

By Sarah Yerkes and Shannon Mckeown.

An unprecedented number of women—especially women of color—are headed to the U.S. Congress in January. In what has been called another Year of the Woman, a historic 272 out of 964 candidates for Congress and governorships across the country were women. But even with this wave, women will make up only 21 percent of Congress in 2019 (and hold only about a quarter of the seats in state legislatures). These numbers pale in comparison to the world’s newest democracy, Tunisia, where 36 percent of parliamentarians and nearly half of elected local officials are women.

Why has a country that ratified its first democratic constitution just four years ago elected more women than the world’s oldest democracy? In two words: gender quotas.

Tunisia’s success is due to a combination of top-down and bottom-up measures. Women’s progress in the U.S. midterm elections is due primarily to grassroots efforts by women to push back against the Trump agenda, starting with the Women’s March in January 2017.

Click here to read the full article published by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on 30 November 2018. 

Author
Sarah Yerkes and Shannon Mckeown
Publisher
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Publication year
2018
Focus areas

By Sarah Yerkes and Shannon Mckeown.

An unprecedented number of women—especially women of color—are headed to the U.S. Congress in January. In what has been called another Year of the Woman, a historic 272 out of 964 candidates for Congress and governorships across the country were women. But even with this wave, women will make up only 21 percent of Congress in 2019 (and hold only about a quarter of the seats in state legislatures). These numbers pale in comparison to the world’s newest democracy, Tunisia, where 36 percent of parliamentarians and nearly half of elected local officials are women.

Why has a country that ratified its first democratic constitution just four years ago elected more women than the world’s oldest democracy? In two words: gender quotas.

Tunisia’s success is due to a combination of top-down and bottom-up measures. Women’s progress in the U.S. midterm elections is due primarily to grassroots efforts by women to push back against the Trump agenda, starting with the Women’s March in January 2017.

Click here to read the full article published by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on 30 November 2018. 

Author
Sarah Yerkes and Shannon Mckeown
Publisher
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Publication year
2018
Focus areas