Skip to main content

The odds of a woman president just went up

Editorial / Opinion Piece / Blog Post

Back
July 11, 2019

The odds of a woman president just went up

Source: Politico

By Elizabeth Ralph,

We’re way more likely to have a woman president in 2020 than ever before. I know, you’re thinking, isn’t that just because there are six women in the presidential race right now — the most in history?

Not so fast: Simple probability isn’t the only factor at work here. In Politico Magazine today, Cyrus Mehri writes there is a huge difference between having just one woman in the race versus multiple women. A single woman faces enormous headwinds; multiple women alter the collective expectations of the electorate, dramatically increasing a woman’s chances of making it to the end.

How does he know this? Mehri has a lot of experience advising major businesses on diversity — he helped the NFL write its diversity-promoting Rooney Rule — and he’s found that when companies interview just one woman or minority candidate in a pool of white males, there’s statistically almost no chance the diverse candidate will get the job. But when multiple diverse candidates are in the competition, the chances that a diverse candidate will get the job skyrocket.

Click here to read the full article published by Politico on 21 June 2019.

Focus areas

By Elizabeth Ralph,

We’re way more likely to have a woman president in 2020 than ever before. I know, you’re thinking, isn’t that just because there are six women in the presidential race right now — the most in history?

Not so fast: Simple probability isn’t the only factor at work here. In Politico Magazine today, Cyrus Mehri writes there is a huge difference between having just one woman in the race versus multiple women. A single woman faces enormous headwinds; multiple women alter the collective expectations of the electorate, dramatically increasing a woman’s chances of making it to the end.

How does he know this? Mehri has a lot of experience advising major businesses on diversity — he helped the NFL write its diversity-promoting Rooney Rule — and he’s found that when companies interview just one woman or minority candidate in a pool of white males, there’s statistically almost no chance the diverse candidate will get the job. But when multiple diverse candidates are in the competition, the chances that a diverse candidate will get the job skyrocket.

Click here to read the full article published by Politico on 21 June 2019.

Focus areas