Systemic reforms power the path to equality 2 hours ago Tiffany Gardner and Cynthia Richie Terrell, Tribune News Service The United States has a crisis of representation in government. Women are 51 per cent of the population, yet only hold 27 per cent of seats in the House of Representatives. Over the last decades, a myriad of training programmes, including leadership development solutions, have been created specifically to get more women elected. Even with these increased resources to support women running for office, at our current rate we won’t reach gender parity in political leadership in our lifetimes. In 2000, the United States ranked 46th for women’s representation in government at the national level; now we rank 67th, alongside Mali, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria and Afghanistan. And the US ranks well behind most well-established democracies in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.