Oof

Related to the “should we give a shit what's hanging (or not) between one’s legs” question and resulting discussion in this comments thread, some numbers care of Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math posting at Ezra’s joint:

There is a strong argument that women are the most underrepresented group in Washington. The Mountain West and Prairie states make up fifteen states that combine for exactly zero female Senators. The South has a whopping three female Senators from its thirteen states. The Industrial Midwest has only Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). Only the Northeast Corridor and Pacific Coast (including Alaska and Hawaii). have something close to equitable gender representation.

At present, women compromise over 50% of the population but only hold 14% of the Senate and 15% of the House, And the bench doesn't look much better; women have 22% of all state House and Senate seats. That's a drastic improvement over 1970, when fewer than 6% of all state Reps were female, but there is still plenty of work to be done on this front.

Now, there’s no certainty that if women were proportionally represented we’d have guaranteed job protections for maternity leave in every field, that emergency birth control wouldn’t still be held up by the FDA, that Roe wouldn’t be hanging in the balance, that women’s reproductive cancers wouldn’t still be way more likely to be a death sentence than men’s, that women wouldn’t be making less than men for the same work, that family leave legislation would be more generous and accommodating to working parents, etc., especially since it’s not the progressive states with the biggest disparity, but let’s just say that it might, you know, help.