| Mnementh said: Interesting note, although only partly on the topic of this thread (I don't think this article is enough to justify it's own thread, but it's data provides a little light on current developments in politics in the US regarding congresswomen): https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/more-women-than-ever-are-running-for-office-but-are-they-winning-their-primaries/ This is a data-based article that shows, that the number of women who won their primaries for seats in congress has improved this year, even over 2018 which saw a record number of congresswomen. This time around not only female democratic candidates improved, but also on the republican side more female candidates won, although it still is far behind democrats (47% of democratic candidates are women now, but only 22% of republican candidates). The article goes on to explain, that data also shows that the support of Emily's list is helpful here, and that the republican side the new organisations E-PAC and Winning for Women may have influenced that result as well. So, this is not saying everything is fine now, but that we see in one area - political representation - signs of improvement and how specialized endorsing organizations have helped here. |
Hadn't seen all that data yet. Nice find!
We've seen a lot of progress on the political representation front here in the U.S. for women since Trump's election, led by Democratic women. This article seems to suggest that the outcome of the 2018 midterm elections, which saw the biggest single-election leap in female representation in our government since 1992, almost entirely because of victories for Democratic women, has inspired the Republicans to respond with women's support groups analogous to Emily's List of their own, which are yielding results already. It goes to show the impact of women seeing other women winning, even from the other side of the aisle! Political victories for women encourage more women to run...in both parties! Which is, incidentally, the intrinsic merit I see in electing a female president. Or even just a female vice president. Doing so will tend to inspire more women, regardless of party affiliation, to run for public office at all levels in the future.
Out of the four metrics the World Economic Forum uses to gauge the relative equality of men and women in their annual Global Gender Gap reports -- health and survival, educational attainment, political empowerment, and economic participation and opportunity -- governmental representation is the single weakest area worldwide overall, and the United States is behind that world average. Overall worldwide, 25.2% of lower-house parliamentary seats were held by women as of the end of 2019, for example, while 23.4% of those seats in the United States House of Representatives are held by women, for example. In a world-historic sense, I think the fact that this is the metric that women are farthest away from equality in overall is probably the reason why it's the gap that's closing the fastest at the moment.
Last edited by Jaicee - on 03 September 2020
