The United States is often heralded as an exemplary model of democracy, and this vision prompts many to assume that women in the United States enjoy greater equality than women anywhere else. As Gretchen Ritter (this volume) notes, “As the world's first modern democracy, one might expect that the United States has led the way in granting equal rights to women.” Women in the United States have come a long way, but we still have far to go before men and women gain political equality, as many of the chapters in this volume make clear. How does the United States compare with other countries in this regard? Any remaining expectation that the United States leads the world in terms of women's rights evaporates when you look at the United States in terms of the indicators now used to compare the status of women worldwide. Consider the percentage of women in elective office. The number of women elected to the U.S. House of Representatives has registered steady gains over time and, as of this writing, stands at 17.1 percent. In terms of the worldwide ranking of women in the lower houses of parliament, however, the United States stands in sixty-eighth place, between Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan. Because of ties among nations, the United States is actually eighty-first in the ranking; eighty nations have better records of electing women to national legislatures (Inter-Parliamentary Union 2007).