Run Like a Girl: Women in Politics

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. 

Research from the Women & Politics Institute at American University and the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University found that women make up 17% of U.S. Senators, 16.8% of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives, 22.4% of Statewide Elected Officials, and only 8% of Mayors in the 100 largest cities. Pretty awful right? Just wait…

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

#WCW Feminist Profile: Notorious RBG

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, known by her fans as the Notorious RBG, was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993 to the United States Supreme Court. At the time of her appointment, RBG was just the second female Justice in the Supreme Court's history, the first being Sandra Day O'Conner. However, after O'Conner retired, RBG was the only female Justice on the Supreme Court. Currently, Justice Ginsberg serves alongside two other women (Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan) on the nine spot Supreme Court. She has also survived both colon and pancreatic cancer, proving what a fighter she is in and out of the Court.

Born on March 15, 1933 to Russian Jewish immigrants, RBG received her bachelor's degree from Cornell University, was married and had a child, and then went to Harvard Law School, where she was one of only a few women, before transferring to Columbia Law School where she graduated, FIRST IN HER CLASS. However, she did not get a single job offer, as women were not viewed positively in fields such as law (or medicine, or rather in anything except a housewife and mother). 

Eventually, she landed a clerkship and worked at Columbia Law School's International Procedure Project before becoming a professor at both Rutgers and Columbia, where she taught civil procedure as still one of only a few women in the field of law. As a faculty member of Rutgers Law School, she learned that her salary was lower than her male colleagues, and she joined an equal pay campaign with other female faculty teaching at the university, which resulted in substantial increases for all the complainants. This battle led to her future fight for women's rights, where she focused on sex discrimination lawsuits. 

RBG devoted her entire legal career to advocating for the advancement of gender equality and women's rights. She won multiple victories arguing before the Supreme Court, and advocated as a volunteer lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), becoming a member of its board of directors and one of its general counsels during the 1970's. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where she served until being appointment to the Supreme Court. 

Dissent

[Dis·sent: Noun): The expression or holding of opinions at variance with those previously, commonly, or officially held. Verb) To hold or express opinions that are at variance with those previously, commonly, or officially expressed. Legal) A dissenting opinion (or dissent) is an opinion in a legal case written by one or more judges expressing disagreement with the majority opinion of the court which gives rise to its judgment.]

During the time she served as the only female Justice, RBG became more outspoken and forceful with her dissents, which caught the attention of both legal observers and popular culture. "Linda Greenhouse of The New York Times referred to the subsequent 2006–2007 term of the court as the time when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg found her voice, and used it. The term also marked the first time in Ginsburg's history with the court where she read multiple dissents from the bench, a tactic employed to signal more intense disagreement with the majority". 

"Dubbed by some as "The Great Dissenter" or "The Queen of the Dissent," Ginsburg has been very vocal about her judicial opinions — for example, "making sure the gender wage gap got its due attention" after the Court decided 5-4 in favor of the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in the historic Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company ruling in 2007."

The Dissent Collar

"She has one for every occasion, but her most famous is the Dissent Collar. She wears it when she dissents from a decision being handed down by the Supreme Court. (She also has a collar she wears when she's reading majority opinions.)" 

RBG's dissent collar has become almost as iconic as Notorious RBG herself. The collar appears in pictures, branded across feminist battle flags, pinned to the lapels of female warriors carrying on the fight in their own communities. Dissent Pins, a feminist company that "created Dissent Pins as a tribute to the Notorious RBG and her subtle form of dissent", offers replica dissent collars as pins and necklaces, and donates 50% of the profits to The Center for Reproductive Rights, the International Refugee Assistance Project, and the Bronx Freedom Fund. Of course, I bought I dissent collar pin, and it helps me channel RBG's strength when needed. 

Justice Ginsburg inspires me to continually fight for change and what's right. She said "You go on to the next challenge and you give it your all." I think about that all the time. She has showed great resiliency, determination, tenacity, and ambition, which I admire greatly. In 2016, RBG wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times called "Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Advice for Living", where she writes: 

...To today’s youth, judgeship as an aspiration for a girl is not at all outlandish. Contrast the ancient days, the fall of 1956, when I entered law school. Women accounted for less than 3 percent of the legal profession in the United States, and only one woman had ever served on a federal appellate court.

Today about half the nation’s law students and more than one-third of our federal judges are women, including three of the justices seated on the United States Supreme Court bench. Women hold more than 30 percent of law school deanships in the United States and serve as general counsel to 24 percent of Fortune 500 companies. In my long life, I have seen great changes.

How fortunate I was to be alive and a lawyer when, for the first time in United States history, it became possible to urge, successfully, before legislatures and courts, the equal-citizenship stature of women and men as a fundamental constitutional principle. Feminists, caring men among them, had sought just that for generations. Until the late 1960s, however, society was not prepared to heed their plea.

...I have had more than a little bit of luck in life, but nothing equals in magnitude my marriage to Martin D. Ginsburg. I do not have words adequate to describe my supersmart, exuberant, ever-loving spouse. Early on in our marriage, it became clear to him that cooking was not my strong suit. To the eternal appreciation of our food-loving children (we became four in 1965, when our son, James, was born), Marty made the kitchen his domain and became chef supreme in our home.

Marty coached me through the birth of our son, he was the first reader and critic of articles, speeches and briefs I drafted, and he was at my side constantly, in and out of the hospital, during two long bouts with cancer. And I betray no secret in reporting that, without him, I would not have gained a seat on the Supreme Court.

...When a justice is of the firm view that the majority got it wrong, she is free to say so in dissent. I take advantage of that prerogative, when I think it important, as do my colleagues. Despite our strong disagreements on cardinal issues — think, for example, of controls on political campaign spending, affirmative action, access to abortion — we genuinely respect one another, even enjoy one another’s company.

...Earlier, I spoke of great changes I have seen in women’s occupations. Yet one must acknowledge the still bleak part of the picture. Most people in poverty in the United States and the world over are women and children, women’s earnings here and abroad trail the earnings of men with comparable education and experience, our workplaces do not adequately accommodate the demands of childbearing and child rearing, and we have yet to devise effective ways to ward off sexual harassment at work and domestic violence in our homes. I am optimistic, however, that movement toward enlistment of the talent of all who compose “We, the people,” will continue.

RBG inspires me to be brave, courageous, and bold. For so long, I feared disagreeing with friends and family on major issues, afraid that I would be made fun of, chided, or thought of as stupid and ridiculous. In full transparency, one of my biggest 'fears' is looking dumb or being thought of as stupid; perhaps it's a pride issues, but it's something that severely affects me, and for long periods of time in my late teens and early twenties, that anxiety crippled me, stamped out my courage, silenced my voice. But Justice Ginsberg helped me to find my self-confidence, to believe in myself, and find the strength to speak my mind.  

When there are nine. RBG is one of my all-time favorite feminist icons. After her 85th birthday this year, RBG was asked how long it would be until she retired, to which she responded: "I’m now 85, my senior colleague, Justice John Paul Stevens, he stepped down when he was 90, so think I have about at least five more years.” WE CAN ONLY HOPE. And with the state of federal government and the appointment Justice Neil Gorsuch, we need RBG now more than ever.