Today, the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, a coalition of the nation’s 36 preeminent national Latino organizations, will be launching their new initiative LatinasRepresent, a campaign to address the lack of Latina representation at all levels of government.
There are 25 million Latinas who live in the United States, and only 1.6% of Members of Congress and just 1.1% of state-level elected officials represent this demographic.
Partnered with Political Parity, a nonpartisan program that seeks to collectively increase the number of women in office, LatinasRepresent is an effort to help fix an important underrepresentation issue by calling out the lack of elected Latina leaders and working with communities to change the political landscape so it better reflects all Americans.
In a signed statement, Swanee Hunt, chair of Political Partiy and former U.S. ambassador to Austria, and Hector Sanchez, chair of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, said, “For a nation that prides itself on inclusion, that’s frankly unacceptable. Our very democracy is in question when our legislative bodies look nothing like the diverse constituencies of our country.”
The LatinasRepresent launch event is in Denver, Colorado, today, where the public can hear the findings of a 14-city, 9-state research effort looking at the barriers and opportunities related to Latinas running for office, followed by a panel of national and local leaders who’ll share their perspectives.
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