Research shows that Republican women tend to hold views to the left of their male co-partisans and that voters perceive them to be more liberal than they actually are. On top of this, the state legislative pipeline contains shockingly few conservative women. In the state legislator data used above, between 2000 and 2010 nearly 6,600 Republican state legislators were in the conservative half of the GOP pool, but only about 1,050 were women.

Simply stated, conservative men are much better situated to run for and win GOP congressional seats. For the sake of the Republican Party and Congress as a whole, Republicans — and good governance allies — ought to take a page out of the Democrats’ playbook and recruit, train and support more women candidates to run for seats in state legislatures and Congress.

Since compromise is the linchpin of an effective government in our two-party system, the real answer to improving our democracy is electing more Republican women to Congress. And you don’t have to be a Republican to believe that.