Women and Public Service: Barriers, Challenges and Opportunities by Mohamad G. Alkadry & Leslie E Tower

Author:Mohamad G. Alkadry & Leslie E Tower [Alkadry, Mohamad G. & Tower, Leslie E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General, Political Ideologies, Nationalism & Patriotism
ISBN: 9781317451914
Google: Ky7fBQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-12-18T05:06:35+00:00

Women in Representative Institutions

There is no question that more women are in elected offices today than there were fifty years ago. It is not uncommon for many states now to have a woman governor. State and federal cabinets are populated with many women. For several years now, women have held positions historically reserved for men in the federal cabinet, such as secretary of state. While the inventory of anecdotal evidence that women are now better represented in political institutions has grown substantially over the past years, the overall numbers indicate that women are far away from parity in representation in these institutions.

Perhaps even more alarming is that improvement in the representation of women has slowed down substantially in the past two decades. If the goal is to see more women in elected offices, then one should not worry, as that goal is within reach. If the goal, however, is to achieve parity in representation between women and men in elected offices, then we should be worried about the attainability of this goal given the slower pace of improvements in representation in political institutions over the past decade. The pace of improvement in representation might leave us a century away from parity in representation.

Figure 5.1 shows the pace of improvement in representation of women in the U.S. Congress, statewide elected offices, and state legislatures. In 2011, women held 88 elected congressional offices—16.4 percent of the House of Representatives’ 435 seats and 17 percent of the Senate’s 100 seats. This is a substantial improvement in the representation of women at the federal level over 1979, when women held only 3 percent of congressional offices. However, in 2013, women continue to be far from holding half of the congressional seats, and more important, the change has been slower in the past fifteen years, considering that women were 10.1 percent of congressional elected officials in 1997 (CAWP, 2011). The deceleration of improvement in the representation of women is alarming because it cannot be explained by budget cuts or layoffs, based on the last-in/first-out principle. These are rather selections by voters and local and state party leaders who choose whom to vote for, and whom to give financial and political support, respectively.

The pace of progress in terms of women’s representation in state legislatures has been even slower than that in congressional elected offices. In 2011, women held 23 percent of all state legislative elected seats—or 1,738 of the 7,382 available seats (CAWP, 2011). This is a substantial improvement from 1979 when women held 10 percent of the state legislative elected offices. However, the improvement has been modest in the past 15 years—from 21 percent in 1995 to 24 percent in 2011.

In statewide elected offices (governor, secretary of state, treasurer, auditor, etc.), improvements were substantial between 1991 and 1997, when women’s representation in these offices increased from 14 percent to 26 percent. Since 1997, however, the representation of women declined from 26 percent to 22 percent. In 2011, women held 22 percent of the statewide elective offices compared to 11 percent in 1979.

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