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Women and Politics: Reflections on “Poised to Run”

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Why don’t more women run for office? This question has perplexed activists, party elite, academics and others. In “Poised to Run: Women’s Pathways to the State Legislatures” by three scholars affiliated with the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), Kira Sanbonmatsu, Susan Carroll and Debbie Walsh, offer some answers.  Frankly, their Executive Summary is worthy of a poster. I encourage you to read the full report at http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/research/reports/PoisedtoRun.pdf .  But, I am going to review the Executive Summary.

  1. Women need to be recruited
  2. Political Parties Matter
  3. Organizations Help Women Run
  4. More Women Can Run
  5. Resources are Important

The truth is that two major points holding women back are institutional sexism that permeates most of the points noted above, as well as women themselves. Women are less apt to think of themselves as experts in a field (see Informed Opinions for more information). Likewise, party gatekeepers are also less likely to think of women as a successful candidate. Thus, recruiting women is important. Gatekeepers need to take special care to not only recruit and vet women, but to also nurture them through the pipeline.

Related to this is how important both parties and organizations are to women candidates. This is the official parties, but also partisan organization and multi-partisan organizations like the National Women’s Political Caucus, Chamber of Commerce, and other civic groups. We see more women running at the local or municipal levels, so there are women who can run. They just need encouragement. This encouragement needs to include financial support. The authors of the “Poised to Run” study note that it is easier for male candidates to raise money due to their connections and assumptions about the viability of their candidacy. Clearly, our elected officials are more educated and more wealthy than the average populace—especially when we look at federal elected officials in both Canada and the United States.

I am hopeful that during the upcoming election in British Columbia and 2012 election in the United States, that more women candidates will throw their hat into the race. And, I also hope that as you review this blog post that you see the full report and also think about supporting a woman candidate in your riding or district.

While this article was focused on the issue of gender, I surmise that the authors would also offer that race is important issue to examine as well. Looking at the federal levels of representation in Canada and the United States there is not parity based on gender or race among the sitting members of Parliament or Congress. However, the focus of this study was gender. I do encourage you to look at other reports published by CAWP http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/. If you want more Canadian focused research about women in politics, I suggest Equal Voice http://www.equalvoice.ca/.

On Saying No and Setting Limits/Guest Post

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This is another guest post via Breathe Now by the especially talented Janice Mansfield. This post resonates with all the busy women. It is OK and necessary to say no and set boundaries. It can be hard to do so, but it is something that we all need to get better at doing! This post was originally published on July 3rd at http://breathenow.ca/2011/07/on-saying-no-and-setting-limits/. You know the axiom–if you want something done– ask a busy woman! Well, busy women (and men for that matter) need to not feel guilty at occasionally saying, no! 

Sometimes you just need a big karmic bitchslap before you’ll sit up and pay attention.  That’s kind of what this week has been like!

I’ve been feeling stretched thin the last little while, and had agreed to stretch myself a little thinner than normal by taking on a favour which I was hesitant about, but didn’t want to say “no”.  My husband did give me a little warning “… are you SURE you should be taking this on?” — should’ve probably listened to him, but the universe obliged with a little firmer follow-up later in the week.

The irony was that myself and one of the other Breathe Now co-founders found ourselves talking with Rona Maynard, one of our keynote speakers about the direction for her keynote address, and I found myself having to physically take a moment to calm down — mind and mouth racing in two directions at the same time with all the madness of the week going on.  The good news is, the moments spent with Rona on the phone did provide a little oasis of calm.  The bad news is we finished the call, and I launched right back in the crazy-making of the week — a week made busier than need-be due to my not saying “no”.

This week culminated in a high followed by a complete low point!  The high point being my friend Aaron Hall, asking me to film an episode of his new food show Delicious, at my house!  An honour, and quite interesting to see all that goes on behind the scenes!  The low point being the favour I had agreed to do, completely falling through into a complete sh*# show (sorry, no nice way of putting it!).  As I said, sometimes the universe just decides you need a giant kick in the rear before you’ll get it!

So the upside of this week is a giant re-realization that

  1. I should probably heed my intuition when I’m feeling like I’m overextending myself, or a “favour” does not line up with my business goals.
  2. I should probably also pay more attention to my husband when he gently reminds me of (1).  Thankfully, he has just shaken his head, and not given me the “I told you so”!

Of Heroes and the Fellowship of Women/Guest Post

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Today’s post is a guest post via Breathe Now. I am one of the four co-founders for Breathe Now. Our conference will take place in Victoria, BC on Friday, Sept 30th and Saturday, October 1st. This conference is geared for college aged women through women established in their careers. This particular post penned by the lovely and talented Janice Mansfield was posted on April 18th on http://breathenow.ca/2011/04/of-heroes-and-the-fellowship-of-women/.

Thanks to the powers of Social Media, I was alerted last week to the fact that Marilyn Waring was going to be speaking at the University of Victoria as part of the Centre for Cooperative and Community Based Economy‘s Distinguished Speaker series.

Marilyn Waring is a distinguished economist, researching and exploring issues of gender balance and the impact it has in the traditional economic paradigm.  Her work also extends to analysis of environmental issues, governance, human rights, and economic valuations of public goods or “the commons”, and she regularly contributes to international discussions on economic measurement and valuation.

As an economist in my previous career, I have to say I did a quiet squeal at the prospect of listening to her latest.  Her groundbreaking work in the latter 1980s on public accounting practices and their omissions of subsistence activity (much of it by women) in developing countries was front and centre in my bookshelf.

After the Thursday evening talk, my friend Dr. Janni Aragon invited me to come as her guest the next day for an afternoon of tea and talk with Dr. Waring — an exciting prospect indeed to meet and talk with someone who has had such an influence and impact on my thinking early on in my career.

The following day, we gathered around a table with tea with Dr. Waring as a small group of women, seeking fellowship and connection.  The first thing Marilyn said when we sat down was she seeks out opportunities to listen to what other women are interested in and researching, as she spends so much of her time on the road talking.  The thing that struck me through the afternoon was the genuine interest with which Dr. Waring had for areas of work being undertaken by each woman in the room — and a diverse group indeed (Political Science, Environmental issues, Cooperative Economic models, Womens Studies …).  Dr Waring has such a wealth of knowledge and experience, she spoke to each woman with an equal level of expertise, but was also making notes through the afternoon of things that piqued her interest, and provided some great guidance and feedback for the undergraduate students who had joined us.

Janni and I had the chance through this discussion to share the fact that we are two of the co-founders of the Breathe Now conference — an opportunity for all women to connect, decompress, enjoy the fellowship of each other and talk about substantive issues they are dealing with in a supportive environment.  While neither of us remember the exact quote (I have to confess being a little starstruck!), she was quite interested in the conference, and remarked that it was such a such great idea to bring women together to support each other.   Dr. Waring is a mentor in the truest sense of the word, and the afternoon with her and other like-minded women was a priceless experience.

It struck me after, that this afternoon of tea and easy conversation was a micro-version of what we are hoping to achieve through Breathe Now — mentorship and fellowship with some goodies on the side!

Slutwalk and the Feminist Debates

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Can I just say that the debates about the veracity of Slutwalk on the WMST-L have really hurt my feminist heart. The Women’s Studies Listserv has several thousand subscribers and the subscribers vary from those in Women’s Studies or other disciplines. You don’t have to be an academic to be on the list and lots of activists and writers subscribe. The WMST-L provides a beacon of feminist information sharing and dare I say networking. Occasionally a debate will transpire on the list among some of the list members.  Once again we have a round of back and forth where the debate is not so much about stopping violence against women, but instead is about semantics and feminist politics. Who has the right to say that they are the most feminist?! Using pornographic languages is apparently problematic and defeats the purpose of the walks. And, the salvos go back and forth.

This is a great example of how some academic feminist ideology not only turns off the mainstream from ideas, but also causes major fissures among the various feminist camps. Now, I’m not so pollyannish to expect us to all get along. What I don’t like, though, is how it appears that the debates become mired in certain conversations that smell of generational bullshit and  one-upwomanship on who owns the most feminist politics. Don’t get me started about how these conversations at times don’t offer an analysis that remembers class, race, sexuality and ability, but that would really complicate things, right?

Can’t we agree that the Police Officer should not have blamed the woman for her dress? He should have not said that she should not dress like a slut. For information about this Toronto situation see: http://www.slutwalktoronto.com/  And, can we agree that he should have kept his mouth shut or perhaps condemned the assailant. Yes, bring men into this discussion. Don’t rape women!

Then, the response with the Slutwalks in Toronto, Victoria and elsewhere was really about reclaiming the word and explaining to the public—don’t rape women. Stop violence against women. You say slut to demean women, well fuck you, we’re taking this word back! We’re going to go out in the public space and use this word and bellow a resounding, no. How is this not empowering? Well, the word is heternormative, demeaning, sexualizes women, and is an example of porn culture. Yes, but the point is that Slutwalk is reclaiming this word—empowering women to say, “Guess what—rape is never acceptable.”

There is power in words. Words are signifiers. We know this. However, we also know that we can take back words and refashion them and say that these words don’t hurt us anymore. Slutwalk is getting press around the globe and when more people talk about curbing violence against women this is a win for feminisms.

But, the debate about this term being problematic is really beside the point in my opinion. I’m sure Inga Muscio is smiling about these debates and thinking back about the flak she got with her first book. But, that my friends, is another blog post.

Rebuttal to Margaret Wente

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Wouldn’t it be great if the Globe and Mail ran a regular column that responded to Margaret Wente? They don’t and I’m not a journalist, but I will respond here to her article published on March 8th. The Globe does not like people linking directly to their articles, so I’ll just note the title, “A Legacy of Success.”

In Margaret Wente’s world, women are white and have lots of class, education, and other privilege. I’m not sure where she lives, but it is not the reality that I see on campus at the University of Victoria or one that I am completely familiar with in San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties in Southern California. My reality or familiarity with women’s realities varies. See here I use the plural as we cannot use the singular, since it doesn’t speak to the varied ways that women live their lives in the West.

It is no doubt that the 20th and 21st centuries have held some of the largest gains for women in the West. We do have more women completing school and attending college. However, our social mores and social policies have not changed quite as quickly to aid families with these changes. We still see women doing more care work in and outside of the home. We see that the economic Gender Gap between women and men has increased. And, this is only looking at women and men and not disaggregating the numbers for different racial and ethnic groups, as the gap is wider. Women might live longer, but more apt to work in the Pink Collar Ghetto. Thanks to this we see that the feminization of poverty continues. More women are poor or vulnerable.

We might have some of the most educated women in the West ever–according to Wente, however, if the economic Gender Gap is increasing and so few women are leaders of Fortune 500 companies one might surmise that there is more work to be done. Right? Then, if we look to the criminal justice system. We see that Aboriginal women constitute some 20-25% of the incarcerated federally, yet Aboriginal people as whole constitute only 4% of the population in Canada. Thus, Aboriginal women are over-represented in prisons in Canada. If we were to look at racialized or women of color in the US, we would also see that they are over-represented in prisons. Angela Davis and Julia Sudbury have each spoken to the problems of racism and the Prison Industrial Complex. The struggle is not over.  Continue reading →