Few women in U.S. politics 

November 16th, 2011 at 02:00

Not only did the U.S. end up very far down the list of the number of women in politics, 69th, after Venezuela and the Republic of Turkmenistan. After a rise over 30 years, the number of female candidates for political office is shrinking.

The buzz is growing in a function room upstairs in Washington's grand railway station, Union Station. She Should Run launched a nationwide campaign this evening for this particular slogan.

Reason number one is that women do not think they are qualified. When an American man sees himself in the mirror, it is a senator who looks back at him, said Siobhan Bennett, who uses the nickname Sam.

Sam Bennett makes clear one simple fact: only 17 percent of Congress members, 24 percent of the regional parliaments and 12 percent of governors are women. Hopes from a few years ago that state parliaments would become a breeding ground for female politicians seem to have been dashed, and now have fewer women candidates.

If all factors are otherwise identical, women can raise campaign funds and win election to the same extent as men, emphasizes Sam Bennett.

The campaign aims to get women aware of this democratic deficit and to emphasize that having leadership roles in parent associations, religious congregations or at work is an excellent background.

A couple of the women who responded to the summons, to cocktail and panel discussion, nod and say they would consider political office in the long run. Michelle McLeod is involved in the gay movement and think it is important that it gets a voice in local governance. Vanessa Kritz hopes to stand for election in a few years and certifies that it feels good to know that there are resources available from groups like She Should Run and Emily's List (which stands for for Early Money is like yeast).

Democrat Hillary Clinton could point out that she got 19 million votes - or, as she said, cracked the glass ceiling - in the primary battle with Barack Obama, in 2008. Otherwise, the Republican women who have been in the spotlight in recent years: former Vice President candidate Sarah Palin, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who is competing with a dozen men on the Republican nomination in the presidential election in 2012, the Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley and the unsuccessful gubernatorial and Senate candidates in 2010 in California, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina.

In Congress, veterans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, who worked their way up in the committees, have been joined by a new generation of confident colleagues. Last summer they took the floor later in a speech entitled "I am a republican woman" to highlight that the party's main issues, such as lower taxes and more domestic energy production, are also women's issues.

But Sam Bennett points out that the Republican poster names Palin and Bachmann give a distorted picture of reality. The proportion of women is significantly greater in the Democratic Party. Many analysts would include that it is the Democratic Party that is fighting for women's traditional priorities such as access to health care, elderly services, child day care, etc., and that a democratic electoral defeat as in 2010 would result in even fewer women in Congress.

 *This article was translated courtesy of Google Translate. For the original article in Swedish, click here.