
Dear fans of gender balance in politics,
Each week brings a new reminder that when there is not an intentional effort to ensure that women are nominated for positions & awards the male status quo fills the void. According to
this article on
Raidió Teilifís Éireann, Ireland's National Public Service Media platform, just one woman has been granted a Nobel prize in 2021 and
scientists are concerned that women were passed over despite their many contributions:
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Dear fans of gender balance in politics,
Women face steep barriers when running for executive offices in the United States so it is no surprise that of the 2,573 people who have served as governor in U.S. history only 45 have been women and only 9 women are currently in office.
Liz Crampton wrote
an interesting piece this week in
Politico about efforts by both major parties to increase the number of women in statewide executive office:
The struggle across parties for women to rise to the top within states speaks to the inherent bias against women that persists in politics. Research shows that women have to be more likeable, raise more money and generally work harder than their male counterparts in order to win. That’s why both the Democratic and Republican parties have vowed to invest more money and resources into supporting women gunning for governor in 2022.
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Dear fans of gender balance in politics,
We are excited to share that RepresentWomen is growing! As Cynthia is away this week, this Weekend Reading is brought to you by our team.
First up, we have a piece from Katie Usalis, our Outreach Coordinator:
I recently asked a friend of mine why she thought there were so few women in politics. Her response was that it’s probably because politics just isn’t the place for women, that it’s more of a “man thing.” Recent research in the American Political Science Review reveals that these beliefs don’t exist by accident, but that girls are socialized to lose political ambition from a very young age. The 19th*’s Barbara Rodriguez met with one of the authors to talk about how deep gender bias runs in American politics:
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Dear fans of gender balance in politics,
Paid leave is established law in all other developed countries but families in the United States continue to struggle to care for children, parents, and loved ones without jeopardizing their employment. While paid leave is essential across all sectors, RepresentWomen promotes its adoption for elected officials to ensure that caregivers can
serve effectively once elected to office.
Melinda French Gates brings renewed focus to the imperative of passing paid leave legislation in Congress with a
compelling piece in TIME Magazine:
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Candidates for Boston mayor Annissa Essaibi George & Michelle Wu, Boston Globe
Dear fans of gender balance in politics,
The results are in from the Boston mayoral primary and two women, Annissa Essabi George and Michelle Wu will advance to the general election ensuring that Boston will have a woman mayor come November no matter who wins. E.J. Dionne
wrote this commentary about the milestone election results, and the likely split vote between the two Black women candidates, in
The Washington Post:
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Dear fans of gender balance in politics,
In stark contrast to the new restrictive legislation in Texas, Mexico has
legalized reproductive rights for women and, according to
this article in
The Washington Post, women have reached gender parity in Congress. As a refresher, Mexico uses a proportional voting system & instituted gender quotas for women in government - Mexico
now ranks 6th worldwide for the percentage of women in the lower house of parliament:
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Dear fans of gender balance in politics,
The
2020 Paralympic Games are underway in Tokyo this week with
impressive wins for women in many different competitions. High numbers of women competing and winning in athletics, however, does not of course reflect
women's representation in politics or government. While this is true the world over it's especially pertinent in the United States where very few disabled women serve in elected office.
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Maya Angelou, Lucretia Mott, Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Warren, Fannie Lou Hamer, Condi Rice, Coretta Scott King, Ashley Judd, Tina Tchen, Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt, Shirley Chisholm, Michelle Obama, Tammy Duckworth
Dear fans of gender balance in politics,
Women's Equality Day was established in 1973 by Congress - at the request of Rep Bella Abzug - to commemorate passage of the 19th Amendment. Efforts to elevate the importance of
women's equality help to change the narrative about the importance of
women's equality, but as
Erin Vilardi, CEO of
VoteRunLead writes, we must move from recognizing the importance of
women's equality to embracing the imperative for
women's leadership:
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Sharon Nelson, Kathy Hochul & RepresentativeCarolyn Maloney
Dear friends,
News of the tragedy unfolding in Haiti, the rise of the Delta variant, and the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan dominate the headlines this week but there are a few other stories that have garnered media attention including the resignation of New York governor Andrew Cuomo.
I wrote about his successor, lieutenant governor Kathy Hochul, who will become the 1st woman governor of my home state joining a very small club of women who have served as governor - just 2% of all governors, in US history, have been women.
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Dear fans of women's representation,
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