“‘Yes, a woman can!’ she said from a hotel stage in Brasília. ‘Equal opportunity for men and women is an essential principal of democracy,’ she said, pledging to make her achievement a ‘natural event’ in Brazil.”
– The Wall Street Journal quoting Dilma Rousseff
In her first speech as President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff congratulates her nation for electing its first female leader. Brazil, a nation that was mired in an oppressive military dictatorship that optimized the machismo politics of Latin America less than three decades ago, now becomes the 18th democratic nation with a woman in power. The number of nations who have elected a woman to their presidency or as prime minister seems to grow with each passing year, but noticeably absent from the list is the United States.
The world’s oldest continuous democracy continues to be a man’s playground. And while the rest of the world seems to have figured out that empowering women is, as Rousseff claims, “an essential principal of democracy,” America seems to be stubbornly old-fashioned. America took an enormous step in nearly placing Hillary Clinton on the ballot in 2008, but the fact that the question of whether America was ready for a female President shows that our country has a long way to go.
With the midterms this week the country’s focus is pretty squarely on Congress. Heading into Election Day there are 17 women in the Senate, or 17% of the total seats. That’s a joke. And the House doesn’t look much better with 73 women holding seats and a staggering majority of 362 men. Although 2010 census data has not been released yet, estimates indicate that the women make up a slightly larger percentage of the US population. How is it that 50.7% of the United States is female and 16.8% of the seats in Congress are filled by women (this is below the global representational average of 18.6%)?
As a country that is supposed to be one of the world’s most progressive, America is falling short in terms of equality. With a nation largely jaded by the shortcomings of the Obama Administration and its Democratic majority in Congress, early predictions for female incumbents looks stark. 76.6% of women serving in Congress are Democrats and of those 69 politicians, 10 appear to be on the verge of losing their seats to male challengers and the chances of 10 new women claiming seats looking grim. For the first time since 1972 it appears as though the number of women serving in Congress will decrease, and even if it doesn’t the growth in numbers isn’t going to even bring the US up to the global average.
What does this mean for America? As Nicholas Kristof and Cheryl Wudunn state in their book Half the Sky that “[o]ne rationale for seeking more female politicians is that women supposedly excel in empathy and forging consensus” and point out that the government has responded to women gaining a voice in politics by “allocating more funds to public health programs, particularly for child health” because this was an issue associated more with females. As has been said before in the media, women bring a different view to Washington (as in they’re the ones actually having abortions and dealing with cervical cancer), and female politicians often have different (and equally important) political agendas then the majority of their male counterparts. Women in government have placed increased focus on issues like health, education, and the global sex trade, topics that often seem to recede in the face of security, health care, and the economy.
While prominent female politicians like Sarah Palin and Hilary Clinton have attempted to galvanize female voters into making a greater effort to equal the gender gap in American politics, results have been less than stellar. America still has never had a female President or Vice President and is not even remotely close to having population-proportional representation in Congress, or on any level of government. If women are truly equal in American society, then why has America’s readiness for a female president still come under fire and the chance of a female majority Congress nonexistent? It is time for Americans, especially American women, to start taking a greater role in the leadership of our nation. It happened in Brazil, and India, and Liberia, and the United Kingdom, ect…
The words of Dilma Rousseff at her moment of greatest triumph ring true. It is time for female Americans to start believing that women can run the country, for if women don’t believe it than is there really any chance of its realization? America needs to start accounting for its massive gender gap in Washington, and while this election is shaping to be a step backwards, it is up to the American public to make sure that 2010 is an outlier in women’s ascension to equality in office. As Dilma said, “Yes! A woman can!”
Photocredit: Wikimedia