Women’s Representation in the U.S. Congress : a case study of the 2018 elections

233 years after the Founding Fathers created the U.S. Congress, women are still very much underrepresented in both houses of Congress, with 28.3 % in the House of Representatives and 24% in the Senate. But throughout the years, there have been some increases in the number of women serving these chambers, especially in 1992 and 2018. In both these elections, we found out that the political context had had a real impact on the number of women who filed their candidacy and who were elected. We focused on the context around the 2018 elections, which included Trump’s presidential elections, Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, the #MeToo movement and women’s activism, and political retirements leading to more open seats. All these were motivational factors for women to run for office that year. Then, we wanted to understand this underrepresentation of women in U.S. politics. We focused on four obstacles that they were facing: gender discrimination, sexual harassment, structural barriers (incumbency, fundraising, media coverage, less infrastructures), and family responsibilities. To analyse these concretely, we chose a well-known group of progressive women of colour elected in 2018, The Squad, to determine whether they overcame these barriers or not. Results will show that every member has at least overcome one of these barriers.