Lone Star Parity Project

All politics is local. But the approach to elect more women+ has focused on the highest levels of governance. While many entities train women to run for office, none exist to address gaps in local political data. With one of the largest and diverse populations, Texas presents an opportunity to gather data from a battleground state, a valuable yet untapped control group. No one knows how many women and femmes make up the thousands of unmeasured countywide, judicial, and municipal seats across 254 counties in Texas. Lone Star Parity Project (LSPP) is the only entity to aggregate these numbers and stories.

By shedding light on all levels of government, we elevate the power of grassroots organizing to push women and femmes higher in their political careers and encourage others to step in. We created a simple, but novel three-tiered approach: gathering stories from women, conducting qualitative surveys, and manually collecting election data. Our approach builds the most comprehensive database of its kind, where we analyze current and historic trends that inform on regional differences of how many women file, run, and win public office. We are reshaping the narrative of women+ running in Texas by highlighting women's stories and providing insight into each woman's success.

LSPP identifies barriers holding women+ back and provides context to dismantle them. With a focus on intersectionality and racial equity, we share stories of how women have worked for their success to create a record for others to follow in their paths. While historical data severely lacks depth of diversity, we research what is available to create a more expansive picture. Paired with our historic data collection, our surveys include an exhaustive list of questions on socioeconomic status, education, language, disability, mental health, country of origin, sexuality, age, political diversity, work experience, military experience, religion, and family life.

Our Needs

Our target market is women+ in Texas politics. Our number one goal is to inspire more women to run for office across the political spectrum.

Our novel approach works at several levels: We provide hard numbers to establish the landscape of gender politics in their region, our shared stories give insight into the unique perspective of women's experiences in their area, and we have a network of local women throughout the state that a candidate can pull from for advice and support.

As we continue to grow, we are capturing a wider set of data points, both qualitative and quantitative. We are interviewing triple the amount of women that we interviewed in our first year. We are collecting more types of data including municipalities, student government, and appointed positions. Our plan is to provide regional tools for candidates, specific to each corner of Texas.

Our plan to capture the women+ in Texas politics centers on building our online presence. Over the past 5 months, we have taken advantage of online tools that have launched our personal brand. We gained over 4,000 followers across our social media platforms. We rebuilt our website with the user experience as our guiding principle. When we launched our open employment roles, all of our applicants found us through social media. We are at a critical juncture in our online presence where we need to use our momentum to expand. With greater online presence, we will be able to share our resources with more women+ in Texas politics.