The underrepresentation of women in our city, state, and federal legislatures is an ongoing problem in our political system. For instance, despite recent gains for women, they occupy a mere 11 per cent of the seats in the U.S. Congress. This dramatic different is primarily due to women being nominated in much higher numbers as part of the party slates of candidates used in PR systems. Parties cannot leave women off their slates for fear of being accused of sexism. Thus more women are nominated and more are elected.
Slates also allow parties to establish gender quotas for nominations.
The adoption of PR in the U.S. would be one of the most effective ways to quickly increase the number of women in elected office. However, as mentioned earlier, how district lines are drawn in PR systems usually has no significant impact on representation. So, under PR rules, the drawing of districts lines would no longer be a way of determining who gets represented or which party controls the legislature. The actual impacts of new political innovations are notoriously difficult to predict. Political scientists studying these countries have found that virtually all of them have enjoyed high voter turnout rates, vigorous multi-party competition, fair representation for political, ethnic and racial minorities, and practically no gerrymandering.