Posted on 11/21/2006 9:28:20 AM PST by presidio9
A few years ago my colleague Martin Plissner wrote a piece entitled "The 25 Percent Solution," quoting Rep. Louise Slaughter bemoaning the fact that the United States ranked 60th in women's political leadership, behind Sierra Leone and tied with Andorra. "With women holding barely 15 percent of the seats on Capitol Hill, it will soon trail Iraq and Afghanistan as well," Plissner wrote.
The media is agog over the fact that Rep. Nancy Pelosi is about to become speaker of the House, and releases from women's organizations proclaim victories last Tuesday of "historic proportions." This is true. When the Congress convenes next January, according to the Center for American Women in Politics there will be between 70 and 74 women in the House (depending on the outcome of a few contested races) and 16 in the U.S. Senate. That will make the percentage of women in the House and Senate a whopping 16-17 percent.
The march to equality comes in baby steps, although as Plissner pointed out, "Under the constitution ratified by Iraqi voters with the blessing of advisors recruited by Washington, women are assured at least 25% of the parliament and when the Afghan parliament was elected, women made up 27% – under a similar constitutional floor of 25%. Both countries, ironically, drafted their constitutions under the guidance of that nation whose women rank sixtieth in the world for their share of their country's lawmaking clout." By September of 2006, the U.S. had fallen to 67th on the list of women in parliaments around the world, with Afghanistan ranked 25th and Iraq 28th.
Quotas are decidedly out of fashion in the U.S.; the politically correct prefer goals and timetables. By my count, if the goal of parity is to be achieved at the current "historic" rate, the number of men and women will be equal in the Senate in 2040 and in the House in 2066. And that's the rosy view; historic years don't happen that often. Emily's List, the organization that raises and spends more money than any other PAC, spent over $60 million this cycle on recruitment, support and programs to get Democratic pro-choice women elected, yet wound up with only six new candidates elected in the House and two in the Senate. They say, however, that they had impressive successes reelecting Democratic members of Congress and governors, and in electing hundreds of women to state and local offices, which will put a lot of women in the pipeline for future statewide and federal runs.
Emily's List's expenditure of over $8 million to mobilize women voters may have produced more apparent results. Women voters once again were more Democratic than their male counterparts and provided the margin of victory in the crucial Senate races in Virginia, Missouri and Montana. In those states a majority of women voted for Democrats Webb, McCaskill and Tester, while their male counterparts picked Allen, Talent and Burns; and because women outvoted men, Democrats regained the Senate.
The exit polls show some interesting things about the women voters of 2006. They are overwhelmingly pessimistic about the direction of the country and only 27 percent believe their families are getting ahead financially. By 40 percent to 27 percent, they believe life for the next generation will be worse than today. Women are substantially more supportive of allowing illegal immigrants to apply for legal status than are men, and more likely to favor troop withdrawal from Iraq.
Forty-three percent of women (compared to 35 percent of men) said the economy was extremely important in their vote for the House, and they favored increasing the minimum wage by 69 percent to 30 percent. Women are also more likely than men to attend church frequently and to say that values such as same-sex marriage and abortion are very important in their voting decisions.
One of the groups which got some play this year was single women, a potential goldmine for Democrats. This year they voted 66 percent for Democrats for Congress, compared with 62 percent of single men and 48 percent of married women.
As the glare of the media spotlight shines on Nancy and Hillary and what Nancy means for Hillary, and pundits start worrying about the feminization of politics and Democrats becoming the Mommy party, they may want to look at the numbers and sit back and relax. They've come a long way baby, but Washington is still very much a men's club.
Women seem to be doing a wonderful job for all those other countries.
...reading.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Maybe American women who are married with kids prefer to actually see their children more than once a month and this is why national political jobs don't appeal to them.
that CBS posting said : " .... The march to equality comes in baby steps ... "
That is not the best logic, to say that because women don't make up 51% of the seats in Congress that we are therefore not equal.
If there was a city School Board of Education that was composed of 5 seats and just so happened that all 5 members on the Board were women, that wouldn't mean that male students in that city are automatically not equal.
more CBS faulty logic
I once mapped out her organization and chain of command. It's matrix management, and somewhat complex. But I did learn that she has 13 people above her. Two of them are men. She does not report to the men, and the men are very much in the middle, not running the show.
I showed her a diagram of this so-called "Boy's Club" -- 11 women, 2 men -- and she said "You don't get it ..."
Although most women I know say that women bosses are harder for women to work for and impress than men bosses.
Speaking of which, I found all the women bosses I ever worked for to be difficult, and I'm a guy. They always seemed to have deep insecurity issues.
Although most women I know say that women bosses are harder for women to work for and impress than men bosses.
Speaking of which, I found all the women bosses I ever worked for to be difficult, and I'm a guy. They always seemed to have deep insecurity issues.
so many points here to discuss. I'll try to pick just one.... male turnout. In talking to both R and D precinct workers in the Il 6-Roskam-Duckworth and 8-McSweeney-Bean districts, one consistent opinion expressed from men who always vote Republican and most of always vote, was that this time these men were going to stay home in protest to the corruption in Illinois Politics. They were going to punish the non-corrupt candidates for Congress and lesser offices for the corruption in both candidates for governor.
In contrast, corruption was the #1 issue for women voters in IL also. But their response was to be even more certain to vote ... and to vote Democrat ... because both parties were corrupt ... but they expected Democrats to be corrupt. They held Republicans to a higher standard. The corruption of the candidates for governor also cascaded down-ballot to Republican candidates who were not corrupt.
The coup-de-grace was Hastert doing such a poor job of (again) covering up for the mis-deeds of others. He has done that for other Illinois politicians and now he was doing it for Foley ... or at least that was the image that Hastert himself projected in his direct comments to the media.
Bush had a long scheduled fund raiser for Roskam and McSweeney. (Apparently) Hastert's people were able to push Roskam and McSweeney into the background while Hastert got all the camera time and was a total disaster on camera, especially in the eyes of women he was a disaster. If the Dems were to run a video clip of Hastert there would be protests of dirty and unfair tactics from Republicans.
BINGO! Oh why wasn't I born back in the days pre-feminism?
Before 1848? The laundry alone would have been a deal-killer for me.
Thank God I was alive while these two lead the world. I wish they'd come back.
Well, these women don't know what's good for them. (Sarcasm) They have to work hard and seldom see their kids so they can be in politics. Then their kids can see them sometimes on C-Span. Yep, that's what women need to apsire to.
Gees the way feminist logic works, any women who doesn't think that her professional career is the most important thing in her life is hopelessly retrograde, and needs to be re-educated.
Dotty sounds like she's enthusiastically in faver, however.
Speaking of which, I found all the women bosses I ever worked for to be difficult, and I'm a guy. They always seemed to have deep insecurity issues.
I find what you say is very true and I'm a woman.
There is such a phenomena called "estrogen overload" in an office environment. I hate it, and I do my best to avoid those situations, and focus on the work a hand, instead.
The liberal damnocrats will never get my vote, dead or alive. And only over my dead body will they have a chance.
OMG and don't forget about the petty vindictiveness. I've worked for both women and men and I have always preferred to work for a man. Men are more straight forward, don't bring emotions into their jobs, and they do not get into petty little spats about issues irrelevant to the workplace. I have worked (and currently do) for women who constantly belittled and berated me not because I was doing my job poorly or incorrectly, but because I weighed less and was younger than them.
I make video games for a living, and it is very much a male-dominated industry. Still, we do have one woman in management on my current team, and she's just fine to work for. She is, to be fair, a definite gamer girl, and plays along with (or even leads) the joking and teasing that's a regular part of office life here. But she does a good job, and is advancing well. I've had no problems when I've worked with her, and I'm not aware of any more than the usual number of issues.
So it's not like these problems with women apply to every woman in a management position.
Drew Garrett
In fairness, your female bosses were probably less likely to demand sex from you in return for career advancement...
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