Clinton highlights lack of women in office ‘The highest, hardest glass ceiling’
Hillary Clinton and Mary Thomas have little in common, except for this: They both hope to add to the meager ranks of America’s female elected officials come January.
You know about Clinton, but probably not Thomas - a conservative Republican, opponent of abortion and Obamacare, former general counsel of Florida’s Department of Elder Affairs. She’s running in Florida’s 2nd District to become the first Indian-American woman in Congress. It’s no easy task. “There is still a good ol’ boys network that is in place,” she says, though she insists that “A lot of people see the value in having different types of people in Washington.”
Even as Clinton attempts to shatter what she has called “the highest, hardest glass ceiling,” other women like Thomas are testing other, lower ceilings. There are many: Women in the US remain significantly underrepresented at all levels of elected office. “Historically, we have centuries of catching up to do,” says Missy Shorey, executive director of the conservative-leaning Maggie’s List, one of a number of groups supporting female candidates.
Though women are more than half of the American population, they now account for just a fifth of all US representatives and senators, and one in four state lawmakers. They serve as governors of only six states and are mayors in roughly 19 percent of the nation’s largest cities.
There has been progress; as recently as 1978, there were no women US senators, and now there are 20. Still, there has been little headway since a surge of women won office in the 1980s and early 1990s. Sixteen states have fewer women serving in legislatures than in 2005, and five others have shown no improvement, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of data collected by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
It is another aspect of the gender divide - one of the most glaring in our society. Women still earn 79 cents for every dollar men take home; men outnumber women in higher paying occupations, though even there they are often paid less. And the division plays out politically, as well. Women have tended to vote with the Democrats more often; polls have shown Clinton with a double-digit lead over Donald Trump among women, and Trump leading Clinton by double digits among men.
Advocates say the dearth of women officeholders has had consequences. They say women’s voices have been muted in local, state and national discussions of all issues, from climate change to foreign policy, but particularly of concerns important to women and working mothers: family leave, child care and equal pay, for example. They point to instances where women in office have made a difference.
Kim McMillan was first elected as a Democrat to her seat in Tennessee’s House of Representatives in 1994 when she was 32 years old, a working mother of two children under the age of 3. She was motivated to run after visiting the state Capitol as part of her law practice. “I went up to the gallery upstairs and you could look out at the entire House of Representatives. I remember standing up there and looking at the House floor, and I didn’t see anybody who looked like me,” McMillan says. “There were no women that I could see.”
More than once, she was told she couldn’t win because she was a woman. She recalls being asked why she would run with two young children to care for. McMillan won that race and eventually served six terms, rising to become the first woman majority leader. A major accomplishment: expansion of pre-kindergarten education around the state. “I felt like I represented people who didn’t have any representation, working mothers like me,” says McMillan, who now serves as the first female mayor of Clarkesville, the fifth largest city in Tennessee.
Whether a Clinton win in November will inspire a new generation of female politicians remains to be seen. While the election of a woman as US president would be unprecedented, at least 52 other countries around the world have had a female head of state in the last 50 years. Great Britain got its second female prime minister when Theresa May took office this month.
Female representation varies significantly around the US Six states have never elected or appointed a woman to the US House of Representatives, and 22 have never had a woman represent them in the US Senate. Mississippi is the only state where a woman has never served as a congresswoman, US senator or governor.
Colorado has the highest number of women serving in a state legislature, with 42 percent, but it has never had a woman governor or US senator. And while Nikki Haley is South Carolina’s governor, the state has never sent a woman to the US Senate and has one of the lowest percentages of female state lawmakers at 14 percent.
A major problem, activists say, is convincing women to run. Researchers say women generally need to be recruited to seek elected office, whereas men are more likely to decide on their own. Men are also the ones who are more likely to be recruited. “We know that when women run for office, they win as often as men do,” says Debbie Walsh, executive director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “The number of women running isn’t going up, and so the number of women in office isn’t going up.”
Quotas have been credited by some researchers with boosting the number of women in office in a few countries, but the political parties in the US are unlikely to consider any such system. Instead, the work of recruiting and supporting women has largely fallen to outside groups such as EMILY’s List.
Founded in 1985, the group backs Democrats who support abortion rights. It points to a record of helping elect 19 women to the US Senate, 110 women to the US House of Representatives and more than 700 women to state and local offices, including 11 governors. — AP