Usalis is the strategic partnerships manager at RepresentWomen, a nonpartisan group advocating for policies that would result in more women holding office.
March 8 was International Women’s Day, established by our foremothers in 1910 as a day for women to join together and fight for equal rights. Although it has essentially evolved into International Virtue Signaling Day by governments, corporations and groups across the globe that aren’t actually doing much for women’s rights, I think it is an important opportunity to reflect on the status of women.
We at RepresentWomen are, of course, honor this day by reflecting on the status of women in politics.
The valedictorian of gender balance is …
Thanks to the hard work of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, we know there are continued global trends towards gender balance. Since 1995, the global average of women in elected positions has increased from 11 percent to 26 percent. While still a far cry from gender balance, it’s great news that we’re headed in the right direction. Also exciting is that the Americas lead the way in the race towards gender balance, with 34 percent average regional representation – the highest share of representation in the world!
When I dug a bit deeper into these numbers, I realized pretty quickly that these gains in representation in the Americas are all thanks to our neighbors to the south: Mexico has 50 percent women in its government, Costa Rica has 46 percent, Argentina is at 45 percent … the list goes on. On top of that, Peru’s representation rates jumped by 14 percent and Chile’s by 13 percent — in one year! And the United States? In 2021, we dropped to 72nd in our global ranking for gender parity with a staggering average of 26 percent representation in Congress.
The United States is that classmate who actually brings the average down, and who all the other hardworking students glare at. The fact is, average representation rates in the Americas would be even higher without us.
The tools for success
So how are these countries achieving gender balance, and in record time? Oh I know, I know. It’s because the women running for office are more qualified and there’s just less gender bias there. 🙄
The democratic countries in the Americas that have achieved at least 40 percent representation in government have one thing in common: All of them have embraced policy tools that get at the root of gender imbalance. Most of them have adopted innovative gender quotas and modernized electoral systems that use proportional representation rather than winner-take-all voting. These system upgrades dismantle outdated structures fortified by built-in mechanisms that protect the status quo and keep diverse women out of office. These system upgrades clear out the cobwebs and create space for a 21st century democracy.
Source: Women in Parliaments in 2021 Report
The good news is that there are efforts in the United States to advance similar system upgrades.
Fair representation voting is an American, constitutional and candidate-based form of proportional representation that combines ranked-choice voting with multimember districts. Fair representation voting would not only help us take leaps towards catching up with our neighbors in the south, but it also means the views of voters are represented as accurately as possible.
Australia uses a form of fair representation voting for its Senate elections, and the gender balance rates speak for themselves: In the 73 years that they’ve used multiwinner RCV, Australians have gone from 3 percent to 51 percent representation of women in the Senate. The House, which uses single-winner RCV, does maintain above-average gender balance (31 percent representation in 2021), but has not experienced such rapid progress.
The urgency cannot be understated
Our current system was designed to protect the power of those already in office, and our history and culture has dictated that those incumbents are vastly white and male. To fan the flames of the incumbency advantage, redistricting has yet again shrunk the number of competitive districts, which we are already seeing the effects of in this year’s midterm elections. Add to this the fact that the United States is no longer considered a “full democracy,” and the urgency and necessity of reform cannot be understated.
It is evident that we need the best and the brightest to tackle these challenges facing our democracy, and cutting women out of the equation severely limits the candidate pool. To overcome powerful systemic barriers like these we need powerful systems change. As seen in Australia, fair representation voting will produce continued progress and lasting effects. Add other critical reforms like expanding the House and we will create more open seats that women also have a greater chance of winning.
It’s time we clear out the cobwebs and bring our democracy into the 21st century.
A view of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on June 25, 2026. President Donald Trump jolted Republicans during a fiery appearance at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, scrapping a housing bill signing ceremony and clashing behind closed doors with a party rebel who challenged him over the Iran war. Trump had been expected to sign the bipartisan housing.
Only Trump doesn’t care about housing
It was August 15, 2024. Then candidate Donald Trump stepped out of his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club’s columned clubhouse to a gaggle of reporters. He was flanked by tables of groceries and signs showing the rising cost of food. Also on one of the tables was a dollhouse, meant to represent the equally alarming rise in housing prices.
It was a speech about the economy, the single most important issue of the 2024 election cycle, full of promises that went right to the heart of Americans’ anxieties. While former President Joe Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris were contorting themselves to posture a good economy that just needed more time to recover from the pandemic, Trump was preying on voters’ very real fears of unaffordable gas, groceries, and homes. It was obviously a winning message.
In that speech, Trump promised, “We’re going to open up tracts of federal land for housing construction. We desperately need housing for people who can’t afford what’s going on now.”
As of mid-2023, there had been a housing shortage of nearly four million homes, according to the National Association of Realtors. Americans all over the country were either priced out of buying new homes due to low inventory, trapped in their existing homes by sky-high mortgage rates, or facing exorbitant rent hikes thanks to corporate investors buying up rental properties. Americans needed help, and Trump promised it.
Cut to March of 2026, when Trump reportedly told House Speaker Mike Johnson, “No one gives a sh*t about housing.”
That kind of thinking may explain why Trump this week suddenly announced he was canceling a signing ceremony for the bipartisan “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act,” a housing bill co-sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott that passed the House 358-32 and was approved in the Senate on Monday.
Trump instead demanded Congress pass the SAVE America Act, his controversial election grievance bill that doesn’t have enough Republican support to get passed in the Senate.
It’s just the latest in a line of policy self-owns where Trump has seemingly intentionally made life more difficult for Republicans hoping to keep their majority. Despite midterm elections occurring in the midst of a blistering economy and an unpopular war, they were surely hoping the housing bill would give them something — anything — to brag about when they returned home to their districts.
And very much to the contrary, Americans do give a sh*t about housing. According to a recent survey by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a whopping 79% say the cost of housing is extremely or very important to them. Eighty-three percent say Congress should take action on the issue — like it just did. Eighty-nine percent say the House and Senate need to work together to pass affordable housing legislation — like they just did. And 63% say they would be more likely to vote for a lawmaker if they helped pass legislation to build more affordable homes and lower housing costs — like they just did.
There aren’t many issues that unite Americans like housing does, and very few bipartisan policy wins Congress can point to, and yet, Trump is holding that bill hostage in order to get his pet project — which doesn’t even have the support of his own party — pushed through.
If you’re trying to make sense of something so nonsensical, as I’m sure many Republican lawmakers are, it’s certainly sad but not actually all that complicated. Trump said what he needed to get reelected and then promptly abandoned his promises in order to pursue his own self-interests, even if those interests are bad for Republicans and bad for voters.
That’s just the kind of guy he is.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.