Women and Politics

This post was submitted by Rebecca Freedholm, WCF Communications Fellow

Kathleen Parker from the Washington Post disapproves of Obama’s approach to the BP oil spill. In fact, she thinks that Obama has been passive, appeasing, ineffective, and downright feminine! That’s right, apparently our president’s biggest fault is that he is acting like a woman.

Last week Parker deemed Obama “our first female president,” and it certainly was not meant as a compliment. She primarily criticized Obama’s communication style, claiming that the president is “suffering a rhetorical-testosterone deficit when it comes to dealing with crises.”

Although Parker insists that her description of Obama’s alleged gender-swap is not a dig at women, linking femininity with ineffectiveness and passivity can be construed as nothing but what it is: sexist and insulting.

How else could you interpret one blaming Obama’s supposed futility on his stereotypically female qualities? And as Rose Afriyie observed, Parker refuses to cite examples of how this form of “feminine communication” can be anything besides disastrous:

“…nowhere in her analysis of the BP oil spill does she speak to how this alleged feminine communication style has been an asset. In this way, her analysis is more of a slight against women in leadership than it is of the President. And it begs the question, when is being called a woman going to be an affirmation instead of an offense against one’s competence?”

Afriyie’s question is essential, and one that should have been running through the minds of all Washington Post readers. When will calling someone a woman cease to be an insult? The more we disparage men for acting “womanly” or women for displaying masculine qualities, the more we perpetuate the use of toxic gender stereotypes.

The more misogynistic language is used and sexist arguments are made, the more our society’s destructive gender hierarchy is reinforced. Mary Curtis reflects on the harm of these stereotypes in her response to Parker’s column:

“Criticizing the president for policy or demeanor or anything else is fine. But emasculating him based on worn-out stereotypes is depressing. If he isn’t the angry black man he must be a gentle white woman. We are all prisoners of what others have decided we must be. Might as well give our little boys trucks and our little girls dolls and forget about it.”

Parker is right about one thing: We have “come a long way gender-wise.” But the anti-woman ideas expressed in her column hurl us backward. Sadly, we can be sure that she isn’t the only one in America holding these sexist beliefs.

And it’s exactly this archaic line of thinking that prevents women from running for and entering public office. If we equate feminine qualities to being intrinsically negative and ineffective, why would anyone want to support a woman candidate?

These destructive ideas about gender must end now.

At WCF, we believe that conformity to traditional gender roles should not be the key to the Oval Office. Moreover, we believe that women bring valuable and vital perspectives, experiences, and qualities into the political arena.

The longer we allow such denigration of women to persist, the harder it will be for women to rise to leadership in all fields. As it’s been demonstrated that women’s increased participation in decision-making creates better outcomes, preventing gender equality isn’t just a blow to women—it’s devastating to our entire country.

By Amy Siskind, President and co-founder of The New Agenda
Cross-posted from the Huffington Post

This post was submitted by Jean Qiao, WCF Communications Fellow

It is no secret that women today are struggling to achieve equality in all aspects of life, especially in political participation.

What better day than International Women’s Day to highlight the achievements and setbacks in the political arena that women from around the world have faced? But to go through every country and analyze every single issue that women are facing would leave you and I with quite a heavy heart (and would take pretty much all day to read and write!). Instead, I give you three countries and their achievements/setbacks for women:

1. Sweden
Achievements: Sweden ranks 2nd in the world in the amount of women in national parliaments. As elections are held every 4 years, the latest data from the 2006 election show that women make up 47% of the parliament, making Sweden one of the most gender-balanced governments in the world. Today Sweden continues to be a world leader in women’s parliamentary representation. Sweden is expected to have their next election on September 19th, 2010. Let’s hope 2010 is the final push to 50% representation.
Setbacks: Unfortunately, this gender-balance has not been the easiest process for women in Sweden. Before 1972, women were only 14% of the Swedish parliament. In 1972 the Liberal Party in Sweden recognized the importance of involving women in politics and therefore mandated a minimum quota of 40%. In addition, the recent world-wide economic downturn has had negative effects for women as they are less likely to consider running for political office during times of economic pressure.

2. Iraq
Achievements: How convenient that the Iraqi elections were just two days ago, giving myself and all of the other bloggers out there an opportunity to jump at the chance to write about this event. According to the Iraqi constitution, at least one quarter of the Iraqi parliament must be women. This year there was a record amount of women on the ballot: Over 2,000 women were listed out of 6,000 candidates; kudos to Iraq for mandating these requirements. While exact numbers of women who went to the polls on Sunday have not been released yet, it definitely seems that Iraqi women this year are finally realizing that having women in the parliament is the best way to have their interests represented.
Setbacks: A forced quota does not necessarily translate to greater power. Men are more likely to be nominated to higher positions in the parliament therefore given far more power in decision-making. Extreme violence prevented many people from reaching the polls yesterday. In addition, women living in rural areas faced exigent circumstances on Election Day:

“Young women from a village in Diyala province told RFI that many women in rural areas were being told that they were not allowed to leave their house to participate in the elections. They added that the male members of many households had collected the voter registration cards of all the women in their family, and planned to cast ballots on behalf of their female relatives, in addition to their own”

3. The United States
Achievements: Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court saw the confirmation of its first Latina and third woman, Sonia Sotomayor. And thanks to the strong women in the U.S. Congress, the Nelson-Hatch amendment—which if passed would have placed serious restrictions on women’s reproductive freedoms—was struck down in the Senate last December.
Setbacks: The United States ranks 84th in the world in the number of women participating in our national legislature. Yes, we are lagging behind both Afghanistan and Cuba. To make matters worse, our female candidates continue to face sexism and double standards in every way possible. No wonder women must be asked an average of SIX times before they consider running for office. Furthermore, the extreme gender gap is why legislators such as Bart Stupak are able to keep trying to take away women’s reproductive freedoms.

Today we can celebrate how far women have come in many countries and across man fields—but we must also acknowledge the tremendous amount of work we have yet to do for women to truly achieve equality across the board.

Cross-posted from Women’s Media Center and Huffington Post

Women leaders have shown they know how to work together, whether it’s in the public or private sector. Women’s Campaign Forum President Sam Bennett describes a new initiative to put enough women in office this year to overcome the political impasse plaguing our nation’s lawmakers.
I know I’m not the only one to find myself watching the news in disbelief day after day. We listen to pundits, elected officials, and even the vice president call our government “broken.” This sentiment was only reinforced at last week’s White House health care summit when the partisan stalemate continued—only four women had been invited.

Who’s at fault and how do we get out of the seemingly endless deadlock? Some dare to argue that men are to blame. Somewhat earlier in the health care debate, Representative Carol Shea-Porter said of her sister House members: “We go to the ladies room, and we just roll our eyes at what’s being said out there. And the Republican women said when we were fighting over the health care bill, if we sent the men home, we could get this done this week.”

A bold statement? Yes. But studies have shown that women, who hold only 90 out of 535 seats in Congress, legislate differently—often being more collaborative and ensuring more win-win outcomes—than men. Women in the House and Senate stood together against the Nelson and Stupak amendments, just as women’s organizations banded together to ensure health care reform’s effectiveness and prevent the elimination of any existing rights.

And it’s not just women asserting that we need more women in public office. For our Women’s Campaign Forum (WCF) Parties of Your Choice Gala in New York next Thursday, we’ve gathered prominent leaders from the fields of business, media, theater, politics, fashion, and publishing. Folks like NFL Executive Vice President Jeff Pash, The View co-host Sherri Shepherd, musician/singer-songwriter Moby, former 60 Minutes Executive Editor Philip Scheffler, fashion designer Vivienne Tam, and actor Alexander Chaplin will come together to support the need to increase women’s political representation.

These WCF events have mobilized supporters from across the country for three decades now. But this year, it’s with a much greater sense of urgency. To underline the need right now to elect more women to fix our broken government, we will debut our national awareness campaign (Who Needs More Women in Government? Everyone.) via a performance piece written by and starring a broad array of female leaders. Performers—including former CEO Christie Hefner, WNBA President Donna Orender, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Elizabeth “Liz” Shuler, and Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner—will be perched on ladders in the middle of Christie’s Auction House at the gala reception to command attention in a launch of a campaign designed to disturb the complacency of our nation.

Most people, when hearing that the U.S. ranks 84^th in the world, behind Afghanistan and Cuba, in the percentage of women in the national legislature, are briefly surprised—“Oh wow, I didn’t think it was that bad”—but the thought process stops there. We need everyone to realize the true weight of this disparity: That women’s political inequality isn’t just a “shame.” It’s actually halting progress and damaging our country.

As Womenomics authors Katty Kay and Claire Shipman point out, research has shown the many benefits of having more women at the decision-making table—leading to a wake-up call among many U.S. companies. In addition to focusing on collaboration, women seek out long-term results and tend to take fewer risks. The positive results of women’s leadership can be demonstrated by corporations’ performance: “By all measures, more women in your company means better performance. Pepperdine [University] found that the Fortune 500 firms with the best records of putting women at the top were 18 to 69 percent more profitable than the median companies in their industries.”

Considering we’re currently at war, suffering from a severe economic recession, and unable to fix a broken health care system, I have to ask: When will our political system acknowledge women’s unique ability to enact change?

Given our current state of wheel-spinning and political gridlock, it would behoove us to make 2010 another Year of the Woman—one that this time will have staying power. (We harked back to that historic 1992 election year for the cover of our gala invitation, which shows women walking up steps on the Hill.) And yes, we need more women on both sides of the aisle. That’s why WCF works to recruit female candidates from all parties, across the country, at all levels of office. But as we’ve learned with Sarah Palin, not all women support reproductive health choices, and we acknowledge that finding a Republican candidate who will stand up for women’s health can be difficult. Yet the country is hungry for female moderate Republican candidates who will do just that.

WCF currently has more than 30 endorsed candidates for 2010—18 of whom are running for Congress. And we only expect those numbers to increase, as more applications flood in every week. But will we really move the needle on women’s unequal representation this November, or even this decade?

The Women’s Campaign Forum has been in the game for 36 years now and endorsed thousands of women. When we were founded, there were no female senators and 16 congresswomen. Since 1974, the percentage of women in Congress has gone from three to 17 percent—only a 14 percent increase. Today we have organizations all over the country working to elect more women, yet our progress has stagnated. Many estimate that at our current rate of growth, it will take more than 70 years to achieve political gender equality.

So what’s it going to be, America? Will we continue to stand agape at our broken government the way children stare at a broken toy, or will we answer the wake-up call and elect more women?

This post was submitted by Ann McLane Kuster, Candidate for Congress (NH-02)

Next week I’m headed down to New York for WCF’s “Parties of Your Choice” Gala, and I thought it would be a good time to share here one of the reasons I chose to run for Congress this year – and why I think more women should run.

I’ve worked here in New Hampshire as an attorney and a public policy advocate my whole life, focusing on improving access to health care and affordable higher education.  But I’ve also worked as an adoption attorney for the past twenty-five years, and in doing so I have been reminded hundreds of times about the importance of trusting women to have autonomy over their lives.  It’s a lesson that has sadly often fallen on deaf ears in Washington.

As an adoption attorney I have dedicated my career to the autonomy of women - young and old, rich and poor, educated and illiterate - who have faced the daunting decision of an unplanned pregnancy.  I have represented birthmothers from age 14 to 44, from junior high school to a junior at a prestigious college, from living in a car to the nicest neighborhoods in town. I have witnessed the courage and grace of teenagers facing emergency Caesarians and women showing up at the emergency room in labor having never told anyone about being pregnant. I have represented women pregnant from date rape, incest and abusive relationships and women who thought pregnancy would bring happiness to a failed relationship.  We laugh together, we cry together and in the end, we make our way together to another day.

Most birthmothers come to me late in the pregnancy, often just a few weeks before delivery. My role is to offer them legal support and guidance through the adoption process. Most birthmothers choose to receive counseling about their decision to place their baby for adoption. All of the birthmothers choose the prospective adoptive family who will parent their child and many choose to meet the parents before the birth. Some birthparents and adoptive families choose to visit in the hospital and exchange photos and letters as the baby grows up. Occasionally, they may even meet again later in life and now, after 25 years, I am asked to arrange birthparent reunions with grown children.

Witnessing these courageous women make difficult life decisions, and supporting them through the adoption process, has been the honor of my life.  When I hear politicians in Washington argue over how far they can restrict reproductive rights in pending health care legislation – and when I see special interests poised to kill reform entirely – I can’t help but think that having a Congress made up of only 17% women is, in effect, shortchanging the American people.  We deserve to have our entire nation, and all of its challenges and experiences, represented in Washington.

So I’m putting my money where my mouth is – I’m running for Congress.

Running for office for the first time isn’t easy, but more than 1,600 supporters have contributed to my campaign since I began last summer, helping raise over $650,000 and making our race one of the most competitive races in the nation.  We have a long way to go, but I know that I am doing my part to amplify women’s voices in Washington, and I know that more than 1,600 supporters are doing their part as well.  Please join us! Together, we can make a difference.

This post was submitted by Jean Qiao, WCF Communications Fellow

This month marks the end of our crazy snow-filled winter and the beginning of spring. But more importantly, March is Women’s History Month. I cannot think of a better time to address the importance of having more women in elected office.

The year 1992 was dubbed the “year of the woman” and for good reason too. A record-breaking amount of women candidates on the federal ticket motivated more than 60 million women to go to the polls and vote. The 1992 election resulted in the most women ever elected to U.S. Congress in any single election; to be precise, 24 women were elected to the house of representative and 5 women were elected to the U.S. Senate. Perhaps Americans believed that women could continue this trend of increasing more women in government with every election.

But 18 years later, women remain extremely underrepresented in Congress; only 90 out of the 535 members of Congress are women. No wonder double standards regarding women candidates still exist; Dawn Johnsen has still not been confirmed to head the Office of the Legal Counsel after a year of delays; and there was a severe under representation of women at President Obama’s Healthcare Summit.

Now, more than ever, we need another “year of the woman.” In a time in which some of the biggest reforms in America’s healthcare system are being proposed, women’s reproductive freedoms are truly in the hands of our elected officials. Only women know what best for women’s bodies, and it’s been proven again and again that it takes female elected officials to ensure our rights aren’t stripped away.

To combat the national complacency around women’s political inequality, WCF is launching its national awareness campaign, “Who Needs More Women in Government? Everyone.” This campaign will officially kickoff at the 30th Annual Parties of Your Choice Gala on Thursday March 11th.  It will begin with the premiere of a dramatic performance piece co-written and performed by a wide array of powerful female leaders such as Christie Hefner, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler, and WNBC President Donna Orender.

This original performance piece will not only state the need for more women in government, but why there is this need. Women bring a whole new set of qualities and perspectives to the table, which adds a breadth of talent and wisdom to our country’s direction. Research shows that women tend to avoid risk, increase collaboration, and ensure more win-win outcomes than their male counterparts.

2010 must be the year that our entire nation gets serious about electing more women to public office. The future of our country depends on it.

This post was submitted by Jean Qiao, WCF Communications Fellow

When you think Texas, ‘progressive’ isn’t exactly the first word that pops into your head. My guess is that it probably won’t even appear on your brain’s radar unless associated with city Austin. With that being said, Barbara Ann Radnofsky, candidate for Attorney General, is bringing progressive back in Texas by battling the issue of gay divorce.

Radnofsky recently wrote a piece in the Huffington Post challenging current Attorney General Greg Abbott’s decision to block a divorce between two women who were married in Massachusetts. His reason? Texas does not recognize gay marriage; therefore both the couple’s marriage and their file for divorce are now invalid. However, it appears that Abbott has read the marriage laws incorrectly in Texas. Radnofsky writes:

“‘The law of this state applies to persons married elsewhere who are domiciled in this state’. Texas Family Code Section 1.103. So, the law of Texas clearly applies Texas law to ‘persons married elsewhere’. Gay people are persons. Texas law would apply to any Texas domiciliaries seeking a divorce. The language is clear. This Texas law doesn’t apply to ‘marriages;’ rather it applies to ‘persons’”.

Gay people are people, too. ( What a shocker). Kudos to Radnofsky for stating the truth in this situation.

In addition, Radnofsky accuses Abbott of poorly utilizing his time and efforts on this non-issue:

“The Attorney General of our State thinks government intervention in the non-violent, orderly wind-down of a relationship is the best use of our State’s and his resources. He should leave divorce orders alone, and get back to work on the real problems facing our State, and our children”.

The rest of her piece can be found here.

Clearly Radnofsky isn’t afraid to speak her mind on progressive issues that many candidates, especially those from conservative states, shy away from. Her strong voice in standing up for women and minorities is exactly what Texas needs right now in their Attorney General.

Radnofsky’s primary election was yesterday, and she was running uncontested. Learn more about her today and make sure she secures a victory this November!