A Woman's Place is in the House?
Among the other interesting facts from this Robert Samuelson article:
The United States may be the birthplace of feminism, but that's not obvious from global figures. In 2009, women were 16.8 percent of the U.S. House of Representatives. In other national legislatures, women did better. For Canada, the comparable figure was 22.1 percent; for the Netherlands, 41.3 percent. The United States was nearly on a par with Uzbekistan's 17.5 percent.
What is one to think about that?
By way of excuses, places like Uzbekistan just recently adopted democracy, and so there might be less lag-time based on incumbency. If we were to fire all of our congresspeople today and start over, it seems likely that a higher percentage would be women.
If 16.8% is too low (and it seems like it is*), there's two basic ways we could go about fixing it. One, we could encourage women to run for higher office and see if time and intention do the trick. Two, we could try to change things institutionally. It'd be a big damn hassle (as well as a terrible idea) to mandate a percentage of women in congress. Single-district plurality elections would make that a tricky and unjust reform to implement. But perhaps if the two major parties set up their own quotas for endorsements? The Democrats and Republicans could agree that they were each going to endorse women for congress at least half the time. Or either party could do it on their own for the free feminist goodwill. That would still be fairly tricky and somewhat unjust, but at least it'd be the parties doing it, not the government. And maybe a little bit of institutional unjustice is ok if it results in a better democracy. We've made that determination before.
Being from Washington State, I've pretty much stopped worrying about female representation in elected office. From Seattle City Council, to Supreme Court, to Governor, to our Senate delegation, there seem to be about as many women in office as want to be in office. Around half our state Senate is women, and a third of the House, which seems within tolerances. The statistic from the article was a good reminder that the rest of the country isn't necessarily that way. Of course, if you look at only that statistic, we're doing our part--only one of our nine representatives is a woman. But both of our senators are women, and the Senate's rate is 17% women. So all in all, we're doing just fine.
*If at some point we get to the point where women are routinely around 50% of Congress, and one year for whatever reason they only make up 16.8%, I won't fret. As far as I'm concerned we shouldn't be judging people by gender, a prerequisite for keeping the numbers even. I would expect wide variations in a truly gender-blind system as more talented and popular people of each gender come and go. The 16.8% is only alarming in the context of a system that is officially gender neutral but has never reached that level. See my above note about Washington State for a context in which I wouldn't be alarmed if the balance was off any given year.
The United States may be the birthplace of feminism, but that's not obvious from global figures. In 2009, women were 16.8 percent of the U.S. House of Representatives. In other national legislatures, women did better. For Canada, the comparable figure was 22.1 percent; for the Netherlands, 41.3 percent. The United States was nearly on a par with Uzbekistan's 17.5 percent.
What is one to think about that?
By way of excuses, places like Uzbekistan just recently adopted democracy, and so there might be less lag-time based on incumbency. If we were to fire all of our congresspeople today and start over, it seems likely that a higher percentage would be women.
If 16.8% is too low (and it seems like it is*), there's two basic ways we could go about fixing it. One, we could encourage women to run for higher office and see if time and intention do the trick. Two, we could try to change things institutionally. It'd be a big damn hassle (as well as a terrible idea) to mandate a percentage of women in congress. Single-district plurality elections would make that a tricky and unjust reform to implement. But perhaps if the two major parties set up their own quotas for endorsements? The Democrats and Republicans could agree that they were each going to endorse women for congress at least half the time. Or either party could do it on their own for the free feminist goodwill. That would still be fairly tricky and somewhat unjust, but at least it'd be the parties doing it, not the government. And maybe a little bit of institutional unjustice is ok if it results in a better democracy. We've made that determination before.
Being from Washington State, I've pretty much stopped worrying about female representation in elected office. From Seattle City Council, to Supreme Court, to Governor, to our Senate delegation, there seem to be about as many women in office as want to be in office. Around half our state Senate is women, and a third of the House, which seems within tolerances. The statistic from the article was a good reminder that the rest of the country isn't necessarily that way. Of course, if you look at only that statistic, we're doing our part--only one of our nine representatives is a woman. But both of our senators are women, and the Senate's rate is 17% women. So all in all, we're doing just fine.
*If at some point we get to the point where women are routinely around 50% of Congress, and one year for whatever reason they only make up 16.8%, I won't fret. As far as I'm concerned we shouldn't be judging people by gender, a prerequisite for keeping the numbers even. I would expect wide variations in a truly gender-blind system as more talented and popular people of each gender come and go. The 16.8% is only alarming in the context of a system that is officially gender neutral but has never reached that level. See my above note about Washington State for a context in which I wouldn't be alarmed if the balance was off any given year.