The Right to Be Elected by Jennifer M. Piscopo & Shauna Shames

Author:Jennifer M. Piscopo & Shauna Shames
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2020-05-21T16:00:00+00:00

Solutions Designed for the U.S. Political Context

Kelly Dittmar

JENNIFER PISCOPO DEFINES a pervasive problem in U.S. politics: women's full inclusion in political power is stunted by their persistent underrepresentation as officeholders. She suggests that the solution must encompass positive action that promotes systemic, structural change—instead of putting the onus on women to remedy their own marginalization. She is right. But how can we respond to this call to action?

As Piscopo notes, it is difficult to imagine viable, realistic strategies for structural change to the U.S. electoral process. Gender quotas “aren't directly translatable to the United States,” and “one quirk of the U.S. political system is that political parties do not control ballot access.” But this is not just a quirk; this is a significant challenge to the types of electoral reforms that have been implemented globally in party-centered systems to promote gender parity. The weakening of party influence in the U.S. system of party primaries only exacerbates this challenge; not only do parties have minimal say in who runs for nomination, but they have ceded the decision on who wins to voters in (mostly) winner-takes-all elections. Parties’ unwillingness to “play” in primary elections—whether through endorsements or financial support—removes another potential site for the type of positive action Piscopo proposes. Of course, there is no legal reason parties could not intervene at this stage to support women, but there is also no way to punish parties that do not.

Elsewhere in the world, financial incentives or sanctions are used to shape party behavior; the government can punish or reward political parties for promoting women's inclusion by controlling the parties’ access to government funds. The role of outside (non-party and nongovernmental) money in U.S. politics means it is not possible to use campaign finance to enforce gender parity in candidate selection. These realities make applying solutions from other countries not only difficult, but also unlikely without a wholesale restructuring of how elections are run. On that front, remember that electoral rules vary across the fifty states, adding greater complexity to securing nationwide reforms.

Piscopo is aware of these challenges but rejects the idea that change is impossible. While I am slightly more pessimistic about the possibility of establishing women's political representation as a positive right in the United States, I am slightly more optimistic than Piscopo about the efforts already underway to promote gender parity in government. In the face of obstacles, organizations committed to women's political empowerment in the United States have sought solutions that match their country's reality—just as the global activists Piscopo praises have done.

In the United States, that means much of the work to promote women's recruitment and selection as candidates is focused on how to help women successfully navigate electoral structures imbued with gender bias. Sometimes that intervention is women-focused, such as efforts to encourage women to run for office in spite of the social, structural, and political hurdles. Like Piscopo, I am skeptical about an encouragement-centered approach; I have written elsewhere that encouragement, while shown to matter more for women than men in candidate emergence, is not enough.

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