Percentage of Women in State Legislatures in the U.S.

Equal political representation and an equal share of women in parliaments and the executives is obviously a human rights issue. In a representative democracy, one can reasonably expect to have a parliament that is roughly representative of the population in general: poor people should have their representatives or delegates just like rich people, women just like men, minorities just like majorities. This “representativity” or “representativeness” isn’t an absolute requirement. One can have a democracy without it. The people, after all, may decide that their views are best represented by an all-male, all-white body of parliamentarians for example.