As the Nov. 6 election day draws near, gender disparities in the U.S. political landscape have caught a great deal of voters' attention in a country with a lower-than-average female representation in its national legislature.
The League of Women Voters in California Thursday held a panel
discussion on the issue, encouraging more women to run for public
offices and appealing for stronger voter support for women
candidates.
"Women are underrepresented ... women just don't have the courage
and don't have the confidence to run for the office," Jackie Knowles
from the league told Xinhua.
It took dozens of years for women to win the right to vote, and
it also took time for them to think about going into politics, she
said, adding that it is time for a change.
More women have engaged in politics over the years, according to
the Center for American Women and Politics. Three decades ago, women
held a mere 10 percent of all the state legislative seats, and now
the figure has risen to 24 percent.
But a report released this year by the Women & Politics Institute
showed that the United States ranked 91st worldwide in terms of
women representation in its national legislature, well below even
some developing countries including Rwanda, South Africa, Cuba and
Nepal.
A study by Jennifer L. Lawless from American University and
Richard L. Fox from Loyola Marymount University also finds that
women remain severely underrepresented in the U.S. political
institutions.
As of the 1970s, women have held almost no major public offices,
with only two elected governors throughout the decade, according to
the study.
"Today, if we glance at the television screen, peruse the
newspaper, listen to the radio, or scan the Internet, we might be
tempted to conclude that women have made remarkable gains," the
study says.
Many prominent female faces started to appear before the public
eye, including Nancy Pelosi, the Minority Leader in the House of
Representatives, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and former vice
presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
But these famous figures could not obscure the dearth of women
who hold elective office in the United States, where 84 percent of
Congress members are men in 2011.
The percentages of women office holders demonstrate that it is
not only at the federal level that women are numerically
underrepresented, the study says.
The study identifies seven factors contributing to the gender
gap, either by directly impeding women's political ambition, or by
making the decision calculus far more complicated for women than
men.
