Women won several high-profile races on Tuesday at both the state and national levels. I am celebrating these victories, even for women whose politics and positions I don’t share.
When was the last political “year of the woman”? 1992. We are past overdue.
Women continue to be significantly underrepresented in elected positions at all levels of government. According to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers, women hold 16.8 percent of all seats in the current Congress (both the House and the Senate), and the percent of women holding statewide elective office actually decreased to 22.9 percent in 2010 from a high of 27.6 percent in 1999.
Compare both of these to the percent of American adults who are women: 51.3 percent, as of July 1, 2008, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.
These numbers have to change.
Increasing the number of women officeholders could and should have many benefits, among them higher priority placed on women’s right, health care and children and families, according to research, again, by the Center for American Women and Politics .
Thinking about this also reminded me of a profile I am reading of Esther Duflo in the May 17th issue of The New Yorker. Duflo, a rising star professor of development economics at MIT, created an innovative approach to randomized studies of social and public health policy strategies. After studying quotas for women village leaders in India, she concluded: Any community that starts considering women candidates for the first time doubles the size of its leadership pool and should expect policy benefits and economic gains.
Here’s wishing it happens here!
