Women in Elected Office: Will U.S. Voters Move the Dial?

Choosing gender equity may make for happier citizens.

Source: Debbie Peterson/@heyjasperai

According to Pew researchers, 53 percent of Americans say there are still too few women in high political office in the United States. With women filling less than 28 percent of elected offices, the 2023 global Gender Parity Index shows that 42 countries outrank the U.S. These include Moldova, Rwanda, and Namibia. A 2023 Pew Research Center analysis reports that women have served as the head of government in 59 United Nations member states. The first was Sri Lanka, where Sirimavo Bandaranaike was elected prime minister in 1960. Currently, over half of the female heads of state are in Europe.

This is 65 years of female political leadership worldwide and provides a robust database to document the changes when women lead. In a July 2024 article from the American Psychological Association, author Amy Novotney says, “When women are empowered to take on leadership positions, the effects can be metamorphic for everyone.” Novotney reviews decades of studies showing that when women lead, there are improvements in productivity, collaboration, organizational dedication, and fairness.

She explains that one reason for these advances is that female leaders have more transformational leadership styles; they are more likely than men to epitomize what’s good in the organization and inspire people to follow its mission.

Organizational psychologist Anita Williams Woolley, Ph.D., and her colleagues find that the presence of women greatly improves team collaboration. In workplace groups of two to five people, they find that the proportion of women in a group is strongly related to the group’s collective intelligence, which is their ability to work together to solve a wide range of problems.

The most telling response on how electing more women will affect a country comes from studies covered throughout this blog column. Countries with women heads of state are notable for better pandemic outcomes, happier citizens, lower corruption, and healthier youth.

Health

The UN Singapore University of Social Sciences and Queensland University found that female leaders act promptly and decisively and are more risk-averse toward the loss of human life, which is essential in pandemic prevention and outcome. Countries led by women have much lower COVID-19 death and complication rates, recording 40 percent fewer COVID-19 deaths than those governed by men. This correlates with studies before and during the pandemic that female leaders outperform their male counterparts during crises.

Happiness

Polling millions of people worldwide, the Gallup and United Nations’ World Happiness Study ranks the happiness of citizens in 150 countries and considers six different elements: sufficient income, physical and mental health, social support (having someone to count on), sense of freedom to make key life decisions and exercise human rights, generosity and community engagement, and the absence of corruption.

They find a significant correlation between perceived happiness on the part of all citizens, whether male or female, in countries where women represent a higher percentage of legislative bodies.

In the industrial democracies of the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, the authors find strong and consistent evidence that when the sexes are more equal, there are significant gains in life satisfaction. As gender equality increases, citizen happiness increases even with small gains in equity and continues as equity increases.

According to the UN Happiness study, one of the reasons for higher levels of happiness reported by citizens is low corruption, another correlation with a higher percentage of women in office.

Corruption

UN and World Bank Research confirms that women affect corruption through policymaking, which continues as they gain more representation.

In France, studies found that female mayors with the authority to award contracts were much less likely to accept bribes than their male counterparts.

Women are More Productive

The University of Minnesota Gender Policy Report finds that electing women to public office leads to more legislation because women introduce more successful legislation than their male counterparts and more legislation that benefits women. He points out that ensuring women have choices in how to lead their lives—economic, social, and political—can signal a net increase of freedom to others around them and empower others to achieve their dreams.

Childcare Support for Working Parents

According to the UN, Norwegian communities led by majority women councils have better child-care coverage than those led by councils with predominantly male. A recent Bloomberg report named three of the 20 happiest countries—Germany, Iceland, and Canada—as the best countries in the world for working parents for child-care costs. Many others among the top 20 happiest countries also score high for support for working parents.

Leadership Essential Reads

We Still Need to Talk About the Election at Work

Political Leaders and Cults: Why Do They Drink the Kool Aid?

Youth

Female leaders tend to be younger than their male counterparts. Worldwide, almost all current female heads of state are under the age of 60, some by decades. Finland is led by a millennial (born between 1981 and 1996.) Denmark and Iceland’s female leaders are Gen X (born between 1965 and 1980.)

Sixty-four years of women in office show that should American voters elect more women in November 2024, their leaders will likely be younger, more productive, and less corrupt, and the country will be healthier and happier. UN Happiness Study contributor Andre Audette sums it up, “Specifically, we can promote happiness among our neighbors by electing more women because the choice to strive for equality, justice, and greater representation for women is good for everyone," as well as being one of the key tenets of democracy.