Dear all,
Phyllis Schlafly's death this week was a reminder that women's perspectives and opinions are varied and often complicated. Schlafly's opposition to the ERA was legendary but it became very personal for me in 1992 - the year I ran a campaign for a statewide ERA in Iowa. Pat Robertson and Phyllis Schlafly teamed up to run a campaign of lies and distortions against the effort which led to a terrifying but ultimately very satisfying debate between me and Ralph Reed on Larry King Live. You can get a flavor of that year in my life in the article below "Anti-abortion foes claim win" - amidst the coverage of a Springsteen concert and a new Clinton presidency.
Of course another Clinton is on the ballot this year. Ruth Marcus has a very interesting piece in the Washington Post: Turmp and Priebus's sexism show the challenges Clinton will face - even if she wins.
Earlier this summer, I shared an early draft of a report on research by Dr. Sarah John and others at FairVote on the impact of ranked choice voting on the representation of women and people of color. This work was made possible by a grant from the Women Donors Network's Reflective Democracy Campaign. We now have published our final version - here is a teaser from the summary:
This study examines the effect of ranked choice voting (RCV) on women and people of color running for elected office in the California Bay Area. San Francisco began using ranked choice voting in 2004 for their city elections, followed by Oakland, Berkeley, and San Leandro in 2010. The findings of the study reveal that RCV increases descriptive representation for women, people of color, and women of color. Some reasons for RCV’s positive effects can be related to how often it replaces low, unrepresentative, turnout elections and that it allows for multiple candidates appealing to the same community to run without splitting the vote. The unambiguously positive impact of RCV on descriptive representation encourages further study.
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World issued a call for papers this week on Gender in the 2016 Elections - the deadline for submission is January 15, 2017.
- Common Cause's Leading Women: New Leaders, New Solutions for a 21st Century Democracy on September 13th
- Black Women Lead on September 16th
- AAUW's Open House on September 21st
- VoteRunLead's Anniversary Celebration on October 4th
VoteRunLead is partnering this week and next with Gender Equality Political Leadership Education - Erin Vilardi reports that:
GEPLE heads to Philadelphia to The William Way LGBT Community Center, and then off to Pipeline Philly to connect with Technical.ly, Philadelphia 3.0, Generocity.com, and local elected officials.We finish our trip in DC hosted by National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, Facebook Elections, New America, Solid Grounds Strategy, and Representation2020. (A special thanks to the NHLA for inviting us to be a part of their 25th Anniversary Celebration!
And finally, I attended the 10th anniversary celebration of MomsRising last night and am in awe of all that they have accomplished - working to organize moms across the country to pass critically important legislation. Congratulations to the staff, board, volunteers, and caped honorees!
Have a great weekend!