“What do you get when put 100 women in Congress?”
No, it’s not the first line of a joke, but a reference to the mid-term elections. Given the results of Tuesday night, the number of women in the House will increase to 80 and the number in the Senate will increase to 20. Which means that, when the 114th Congress begins on January 3rd, it will be the first in U.S. history with 100 women. Compare that to just 30 years ago, when there were only 25 women in Congress. In addition, the 114th will feature the first black woman Republican (Representative Mia Love of Utah), and the youngest-ever woman (30-year-old Elise Stefanik, Representative from New York). Pretty impressive stuff.
Which raises a question: how well are various demographic groups represented in Congress? Well, if you assume that the House and Senate are equal in value, and you do a little research and number crunching, you can calculate what we call the CRI, or “Congressional Representation Index,” for any group. For example, Asian Americans now hold 13 House seats (out of 435 total) and 2 Senate seats (out of 100), which equals 3% of the House and 2% of the Senate, for a total of 2.5% of the total Congress. Seems pretty low. But when you factor in that Asians are only 5% of the total U.S. population, you realize they hold exactly half the seats they should (2.5% v. 5%), which means Asians get a .50 CRI. Other groups have it worse. For African Americans (13% of population), there are 43 Representatives (10%) and 2 Senators (2%), for a .46 CRI. For Hispanics (16% of population), 35 Representatives (7%) and 3 Senators (3%), yields a paltry .35 CRI. And, worst of all, Native Americans are only 1% of the U.S. population, and they have only 1 Representative and no Senators, giving them a .11 CRI.
Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, there’s this: 343 Representatives are White, as are 93 Senators. Which gives Whites control of 86% of Congress. And, since they are 65% of the U.S. population, Whites enjoy a CRI of 1.32.
Taken all together, it means the following, math-o-demo-graphically speaking: 2/3 of Americans (White) are way overrepresented in Congress, while 1/3 (Non-White) of Americans get only half, or much worse, of the representation that they should.
And finally, what does it mean, math-o-gender-graphically speaking? Well, to answer the question we started with, 80 Representatives and 20 Senators equates to 19% of Congress. And Women are 51% of the population. So when you put 100 women in Congress, you get a CRI for Women of just .37.
Versus a CRI for Men of…1.65.
Look at it again: .37 versus 1.65. Representationally speaking, each Man in America is 4.5 times more influential than each Woman.
See? It’s not a joke. It’s just math, and it’s not very funny.
the quick Sliver 