A Woman's Place is in the House?

[jonsonite]

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

Comments

[zabrahl]

Well more role models would certainly help. Maybe we could sneak little blurbs into Saturday morning cartoons and what not talking up about how Madam Senator So and So is totally The Man and get the young women of today thinking about how they'd like to be The Man someday too.
For my own part I can think of several infectious diseases I'd prefer to contract over having to take a job in politics.

[rhythmeme]

This argument presupposes that: 1) just as many women as men are qualified to be in politics; and 2) just as many women as men want to get into politics. Even if we concede point 1, I strongly suspect that point 2 will account for a large part of the disparity we're seeing. This same phenomenon is evident in fields like math, physics, engineering, and computer science, where elections (and thus the biases of others) aren't a factor.

[ranethor]

This is just my personal opinion as a woman, but I do think just as many women as men are qualified to be in politics. I think most politicians are stupid and self-serving (or at least they end up that way after several decades), so the bar isn't really that high. I don't think there's any intellect disparity between genders - but there is of course between individuals. It sounds a little silly to me that we have to "concede" that women aren't as qualified as men, and I'm usually not bothered by the gender wars.

I do think, though, that more women who are interested in politics would probably turn out at the state level, especially women who are more family-oriented. National politics involves such long stints of travel. Plus I think it's a lot easier to stay truer to your constituents in state government, but that doesn't have anything to do with gender. If I felt compelled to be a politician, it would be at the local or state level for those reasons.

It may or may not be a relevant corolation...

[lilliebelle2007]

But it is hard to make your way into the top rungs of any field and also raise a family. I'm facing that in my career right now. People want to hire single or childless women because they can theoretically put in more hours and more focus than a woman who has kids