Dear friends,
What a busy week in the world of presidential politics.
Hats off yet again to the team at Presidential Gender Watch a program of the Center for American Women and Politics, Rutgers University, and the Barbara Lee Family Foundation for their excellent social media around the presidential campaign and debates. The messaging is made even more powerful with Tweets and retweets from the great folks at @AAUW and many others.
Read this very interesting piece from Elle by Mattie Kahn on the role of single women voters in the upcoming presidential race.
I have enjoyed watching To The Contrary - a PBS show that features discussions of many issues from various perspectives. Check the website for air times in your neck of the woods.
News this week led me to a little research on moderators and panelists for previous presidential debates. I was charmed to find that 3 of the 6 panelists for the 1980 debate between FairVote's founding chair John Anderson and Ronald Reagan were women, while the League of Women Voters hosted the event.
And on January 25th,1972 Shirley Chisholm declared her intentions to run for president as a candidate of the democratic party. Watch her historic announcement. After her bid she returned to Congress serving until 1982.
I was glad to learn about the Global Women's Leadership Initiative at the Wilson Center - their goal is 50% women in public service roles by 2050.
The Washington Post and many other outlets reported on this story about Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Sen. Susan Collins, and the other women who showed up for work despite the blizzard that struck Washington, DC. Reminded me of the classic book Herland which I devoured in my teens.
The terrific team at the International Knowledge Network of Women in Politics - iKNOW politics - asks all to contribute to the conversation about the Parliamentary Oversight of Gender Equality if you are interested. Discussions like these help to inform questions and challenges for our work on structural reforms to win gender parity in the United States.
Watch this clip from the ever-inspirational Justin Trudeau - as he talks at Davos with Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg about gender equality. Also watch this excellent TEDx talk by Joan Wages on the subject of Women Heroines.
Women candidates for the London mayoral race were profiled in the Independent this week. Learn more about how the votes are counted in this system which is very similar to ranked choice voting - a system that advantages women candidates in U.S. elections and abroad.
The RightNOW Women PAC is hosting a reception on Tuesday, February 2 at 101 Constitution Ave in Washington, DC to honor Republican Leaders in Congress.
VoteRunLead has a number of events planned - see if there is one in your community!
Finally, Jay Newton-Small had a very interesting piece on HuffPost Politics entitled The GOP's Biggest Problem: Women. When sharing the piece on Facebook CAWP had this to say about the history of the republican party and women:
"Twas not ever thus. Once upon a time, Republicans were The Party for women. At the request of Susan B. Anthony, it was a Republican, Sen. A. A. Sargent from California, who in 1878 introduced the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote. Almost 20 years later in 1896, the GOP became the first party to include equal rights for women in its platform. Twenty years after that, Republican suffragette Jeanette Rankin of Montana was the first woman elected to Congress in 1916 -- exactly a century ago. Republicans elected the first female speaker of a state legislature (Minnie Davenport Craig of North Dakota, from 1933-1935); appointed the first woman to a major ambassadorship (Clare Booth Luce to Italy in 1953); had the first serious female presidential candidate (Margaret Chase Smith in 1964), and appointed the first female Supreme Court Justice (Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981)."
Indeed.
That's all for now,
Cynthia
P.S. For some lighter reading check out Grace for President which CAWP has sent to every woman in Congress and state legislatures, and all women governors with help from the Hess Foundation.