Vote Mama Foundation Shares Research at ECPG 2026

In June, Vote Mama Foundation had the opportunity to attend the 2026 European Conference on Gender and Politics held at Newcastle University in the UK. This three-day conference is the largest gathering of academics and activists in the gender and policy space, and featured scholars and speakers from all over the world. This was Vote Mama Foundation’s first time attending this conference, and we were selected to present our work on two panels! Our Senior Research Manager, Maria Wilson, attended sessions and presented on behalf of the organization. We had a great experience sharing our work with an international audience, and we also learned a lot from the panels we attended.

In a panel titled ‘Governing Health and Care,’ Maria presented our work on the authorization and use of Campaign Funds for Childcare (CFCC) in all 50 states and our analysis of spending trends. We showed that when candidates can use campaign funds for childcare expenses, they do. However, there is a gap in spending among men and women. We spoke about this gap and welcomed suggestions for future research on how to breakdown barriers to using CFCC. In a panel titled ‘Youth, Parenthood, and Political Socialization: Innovative Empirical Approaches to Gendered Civic Engagement,’ we showed how our Politics of Parenthood data fills a critical gap in the study of parenthood and politics. We also discussed the key findings of our data: that just 7.2% of Congress and only 8.3% of state legislators are moms of minor children, highlighting severe underrepresentation of moms of minor children in office.

We got invaluable feedback from panel discussants and attendees in the audience on both presentations. Our CFCC data was described as a “novel approach” to studying underrepresented groups in politics and we connected with policy advocates who have worked on getting campaign funds for childcare authorized in Brazil! We cannot wait to follow up and learn more about Brazilian politics and campaign finance reforms. Our Politics of Parenthood presentation was met with a similar enthusiasm. Our discussants gave thoughtful and detailed feedback, commented that our approach to collecting parenthood data was “ground breaking,” and they offered fresh suggestions on how to model our data in future research. We are so grateful to all discussants and attendees who came to our presentations and offered their thoughts on our work!

Another huge takeaway from this experience was understanding how our work fits in the global context. While the United States stands out from other western democracies for our lack of childcare policies and a strong social safety net, we are not alone in facing gender inequality in politics. From our fellow panelists we learned that in Finland, a lack of funding for eldercare has left Finnish women shouldering the brunt of caregiving. In Brazil, women — especially Black and Indigenous women, are severely underrepresented in Parliament. Across Europe, parental leave policies often fall short of supporting single parent families. Vote Mama Foundation’s work is critical for reforming US politics, but our commitment to making society better for parents and families reaches across country borders.

We have come away from our first ECPG with positive feedback on our research from experts in the gender and politics space, and we are excited to foster the new connections we’ve made from all over the world!