Despite the groundbreaking historical 2016 election, where we saw the first woman presidential nominee from a major party, the disparity of women in politics is still outrageous. Women make up only 19.4% of all members of Congress, less than 24.5% of all state legislators, and only 6 of the nation’s 50 governors (12%). For comparison, the only major jobs with ratios lower than women in politics are carpenters (1.8%), firefighters (5.9%), and police officers (13.6%). While state legislators and congress members continue to be on the ((albeit SLOW)) rise, the number of women governors consistently rises and falls, with its peak being close to 17% in 2004 and 2007, before dropping back down to 12% in 2015.
On a global scale, the United States ranks NUMBER 91 on percentage of women in the National Legislature, with Rwanda (56.3%), Andorra (53.6%), Sweden (45%), South Africa (44.5%), and Cuba (43.2%) rounding out the top 5, in that order. Pathetic, isn’t it?
So here’s the big question, why aren’t more women in office??
Women Do Not Run For Office
First of all, women aren’t getting onto the ballot in the first place. Lawless and Fox (2012) found in their research that the fundamental reason for women’s under-representation in government is that they do not run for office. After analyzing the data, the authors summed the issues of under-representation in politics to seven key components:
1. Women are substantially more likely than men to perceive the electoral environment as highly competitive and biased against female candidates.
2. Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin’s candidacies aggravated women’s perceptions of gender bias in the electoral arena.
3. Women are much less likely than men to think they are qualified to run for office.
4. Female potential candidates are less competitive, less confident, and more risk averse than their male counterparts.
5. Women react more negatively than men to many aspects of modern campaigns.
6. Women are less likely than men to receive the suggestion to run for office– from anyone.
7. Women are still responsible for the majority of childcare and household tasks.
*A key point in this research, and countless others, is that once women run, they are just as successful as their male counterparts.
Partisan Issues: Lack of Women in GOP
There is also considerable difference in representation of women by political party. In Congress, there are only 6 Republican Women to the Democrats 14. The House isn’t better; there are only 22 Republican women compared to the 62 Democrats. This partisan issue is something to consider and address. Derek Willis (2015) wrote in the New York Times that "a root cause of the gap is that Democratic women who are potential congressional candidates tend to fit comfortably with the liberal ideology of their party's primary voters, while many potential female Republican candidates do not adhere to the conservative ideology of their primary voters."
Diversity Disparity
While Congress is the most diverse it’s ever been, it’s still substantially homogeneous compared to the population of people it’s supposed to represent. Pew Research Center found that currently only 17% of the members of Congress were nonwhite, and only 8% of congressional members were non-Christians. There is so much value in equal representation, not just in gender, but in race, ethnicity, religion, age, and sexual orientation. The government should be representative of the people it serves, simple as that. We are intersectional human beings, in that we belong to more than just one “group” of people, and thereby face a myriad of challenges and have unique perspectives that come from our intersectionality. A woman who is white and homosexual faces different challenges and has different experiences (and thereby perspectives) than a woman of color, who is cisgender. Yes, they are both women, and face challenges as women, but they also face challenges within their race and ethnicity and sexual orientation. Government needs individuals with these varying experiences so that our laws and governance is as equal and unbiased as possible.
Recruitment, Training, & Supporting
“Academics and political insiders have long known that convincing women to throw their hat in the ring — indeed, just getting women to view themselves as qualified — is one of the toughest hurdles in the fight for gender parity in politics,” states President Obama’s Director of Digital Analytics Amelia Showalter. On the other hand, Fox and Lawless (2004) found that men tend to view themselves as eminently qualified, even when they are not. Showalter goes on to state that “to make that leap [into politics] and become a candidate, a woman must first defy the cultural and institutional barriers that have cast politics as a man’s game. Recruitment remains an important, if painstaking, means of getting women into the pipeline, since women rarely recruit themselves.”
Here is where women’s organization’s arsenal needs to come into play, and we as people need to step up. We need to support women running for elected offices. We need to recruit women, help to finance their campaigns, and show up at the polls for women running for office. Women’s organization’s need to lend their strength and current leaders lend their political capital to the recruitment of women in government. We know (because we’re drowning in the amount of research that illustrates it) that once women are on the ballot, they are just as successful as men. SO LET’S GET THEM ON THE BALLOTS.
Showalter, after analyzing 30 years of data across 49 states, found that when women are elected to governorships, their states end up with more women legislators in the future. The same outcome has been found for the offices of Attorney General and U.S. Senators. So what’s the take-home message? Success breeds more success: “Elect a woman into a prominent office today, and you’ll see more women entering politics at lower levels tomorrow”.
The Rebellion
We also need to start breaking down the cultural and institutional barriers that have created a political “man’s world”. This is perhaps some of the hardest tasks, because influencing cultural shift takes a lot of cultural and societal capital. We have had an outpouring of celebrity feminists that have used their platforms for this very cause, but we need more. We also need more friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors to rally together to make these positive changes in our daily lives- in our homes, in our communities, our regions, our states. We need to forge together and be the change we want to see in the world.
It starts with us. It’s gotta start with us. WE CAN DO IT.
References
Fox, R. L., & Lawless, J. L. 2004. Entering the Arena? Gender and the decision to run for office. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1519882?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Krogstad, J. M. 2015. 114th Congress is the Most Diverse Ever. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/01/12/114th-congress-is-most-diverse-ever/
Kurtzleben, D. 2016. NPR: Almost 1 in 5 Congress Members Are Women. Here's How Other Jobs Compare https://www.npr.org/2016/06/11/481424890/even-with-a-female-presumptive-nominee-women-are-underrepresented-in-politics
Lawless, J. L., & Fox, R. L. 2012. Washington, DC: Women & Politics Institute. https://www.american.edu/spa/wpi/upload/2012-Men-Rule-Report-final-web.pdf
Showalter, A. 2015. Madam President, Role in Chief. https://medium.com/thelist/madam-president-role-model-in-chief-45bac4ac6147
Willis, D. 2015. GOP Women in Congress: Why so Few? https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/upshot/gop-women-in-congress-why-so-few.html?_r=0
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