Executive Summary

With the right tools, young women can change America. Women’s political leadership efforts typically focus on immediate electoral outcomes. But if we don’t engage the youngest generation of women, the fight for parity will never end. IGNITE builds a sense of duty for young women to become politically active, vote, run and serve. Young women may not perceive government as a potential solution to anything. Poor civic education exacerbates this, as girls learn little about how government works or why it matters. IGNITE leads with issues young women care about, connects them to elected women making decisions around those issues, then trains them to run and lead. If just .1% of Gen Z women ran, the trajectory of women’s political representation would change within a decade. Expanding IGNITE’s reach to 100,000 young women annually will yield a generation of women who hold office at higher rates than ever before.