Women and Politics

It’s true. Sad, but true. The United States, a country that boasts its dedication to equality, still gives almost no voice to over 50% of its population. Well, you might say, women got off to a slow start in U.S. government, but we’ve made progress.

Sure. The U.S. elected the first woman to Congress in 1916, Jeannette Rankin. But it wasn’t until 1941 that women broke double digits for their combined seats in the House and Senate.

The year of the woman, 1992, brought us up to a whopping 12.4% of Congress. And here we are today—women holding only 17% of Congress. Clearly, whatever progress we were making has severely stagnated.

Almost a century after electing the first woman, our federal legislature—arguably the most powerful governing body in the world—doesn’t even come close to accurately representing its country. Not by gender, race, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, age, or ethnicity.

For being a long-standing world leader—historically ahead of the curve, innovative, powerful—the United States has certainly fallen way behind on the road to gender equality in its government. As we’re ranked 84th in the world for the number of women in our national legislature, I would say we’ve fallen off the equality cart and can barely even see the dust that we’re being left in.

As White House Correspondent Anne E. Kornblut and author of “Notes from the Cracked Ceiling” points out in the Huffington Post, the U.S. currently falls behind Pakistan and Cuba, with many other countries already appointing female leaders.

“At one time, Margaret Thatcher seemed to be the rare example of a female head of state, the isolated exception to the worldwide rule of male-dominated law. Now there are numerous women running countries—from Angela Merkel (Germany) to Michelle Bachelet (Chile) to Cristina Kirchner (Argentina) to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (Liberia) to Luisa Dias Diogo (Mozambique) along with a handful of others.”

Kornblut discusses examples of female leaders across the globe, showing how even the men in some societies are promoting the unique qualities of women. In Liberia, after enduring a terrible civil war, people are saying things like, “Men are too violent, too prone to make war,” or “Men have failed us.”

In Iceland, the former male leaders are being blamed for their economic meltdown and are “now looking for a female solution to clean up the mess.”

Several international studies have found women to be more trustworthy and less likely to be corrupt:

“A 1999 study published by the World Bank claimed that women were more trustworthy and public-spirited than men and concluded that greater representation of women in Parliament in a sample of 150 countries in Europe, Africa and Asia led to lower levels of corruption.”

Many countries have turned to women to clean up the mess left after severe national conflict—especially in Africa, from countries like Rwanda to Sierra Leon.

Hmm. So with the United States currently at war(s), suffering from a severe economic recession, with a giant federal deficit, and its citizens becoming more divided by the day, I have to ask: When will we start turning to women for help?

When will we realize that our security, stability, and progress are being inhibited by the lack of diversity in our public leadership? How much worse does it have to get before we have our national awakening? Will we ever get there?

Well, we’re starting to get there…slowly. But even despite our own reports saying that women lawmakers are more effective than their male counterparts, women who dare tout that fact are still criticized. (Cough, Sonia Sotomayor, cough.)

I fear to imagine what terrible circumstances might have to arise before our country finally works to put more women in power…but I certainly hope we won’t have to find out.