Women’s Underrepresentation in Government

Women having been fighting for equality for decades now. In the US the Women’s Rights Movement started in 1848 when a group of mostly women abolitionist but some men also got together and discussed the issue of women’s rights. It has taken many years but women are finally becoming more and more included. When it comes to jobs and women having the opportunity to do almost every job that men can do, all the way to women being able to vote, the Women’s RIght Movement has pushed women in the right direction. Continually moving forward each day we can not forgeet about the past.

Although women have made many leaps we are still lacking representaion in government. Adult women take up 51.4% of the US population but are represented in the Senate with 21% and represented in The House of Representatives with 19.1% making women’s representation in Congress 19.4%. (Pew Research Center) Women are being underrepresented by 32% in Congress but a majority of these women are Democrats. The different ideas of the two political parties happens to be a cause of the underreprsentation that we see in Congress. “Democrats are leaps and bounds ahead of Republicans when it comes to gender representation, for both cultural and structural reasons.” (Emily Crockett, Vox)

The Democratic party is way more open to the idea of a women being in power more than the Republican party is. This explains why 32% of Democrats are women and 9% of Republicans are women. Not only are women mainly represented in the Democratic party, but Democrats are now considered to be the minority. This makes the majority of Congress Republican making the chance for a women to hokd a seat in Congress that much more difficult. How do we increase the portion of women in the Republican party so that women can be represented more accurately?

The fight for equality is no where near done for women all across the globe. Everyday they fight for the right to be just alike and it gets harder and harder each day. If we can figure out a way to encourage women and their families to push for political positions their would be a significant increase in the amount of women represented in Congress. This would make the fight a little easier and it would give women a bigger plat form to speak on.

https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/1/3/14154752/115th-congress-women-gender-disparity

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/03/20/despite-gains-women-remain-underrepresented-among-u-s-political-and-business-leaders/

6 Responses to "Women’s Underrepresentation in Government"

Elizabeth Curland says:

April 20, 2018 at 5:11 pm

Daniella,
I enjoyed your post. The Republican party has always been critized for their lack of female representation. A recent example of this is the criticism toward the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnel, for the lack of gender diversity on dealing with key issues like the insurance coverage of maternity care. The lack of female presentation in the Republican party means that when the Republicans are in the majority, women have little-to-no voice. Whereas the Democratic party, which is known to embrace women’s rights and prioritize electing females, experiences a significantly larger number of female representation. I believe that more women are increasing becoming Democrats over Republicans, in part, because of the upsetting results of Hilary’s loss, along with a fueled anger toward Trump’s mistreatment of women. I think this energy will further motivate the Democratic party to vote a women in office in the coming election.
Isabella Brown says:

April 22, 2018 at 3:41 pm

Daniella,

Your explanation of the lack of women representation in the Republican party is interesting. The democrat party is more dedicated to women’s issues, so it makes sense that they have a higher number of female representation in their party. I did some more reading to find more evidence on this issue, and interestingly enough I found an article that asserted that the real issue with the lack of women representation is not with women getting voted for office, but rather with women running for office in the first place. Basically, a lot of women do not see themselves as political leaders, most likely due to the fact that the majority of political leaders are male. There’s also the fact that political recruiters oftentimes focus on men rather than women. I believe that it is time to encourage more women to run for office, especially in the Republican party. Since women make up more than half the population, we need more female representation to reflect the demographics of its citizens.

https://thinkprogress.org/republican-party-female-representation/
Madeleine Stone says:

April 22, 2018 at 6:36 pm

Hi Daniella,

Thank you for a great post! Some really interesting facts are pointed out by your argument. It is quite shocking to see that less than half of the women population is represented by members of the Senate, the House, and Congress. Also, political party affiliation shows the disconnect here with Democrats being more favorable of gender pay equality and women’s rights in general. I didn’t realize that this is also effecting the ability of women to hold a seat in Congress because Democrats are outnumbered by Republicans and only 9% of Republicans are women. You raise the question as to how we can increase the potion of women in the Republican party so that women are represented more accurately. I do no think there is a clear cut answer here. The fight for equality has been going on since the 1800’s and due to the political spectrum and ideology we see at play in our democracy, I think it is going to be very difficult to change the representation numbers. I do believe however, that if women continue to encourage and support each other to run for political candidacy then it will definitely make the fight for equal representation in Congress easier. Women should have a larger platform to go off of and speak on behalf of when running and representing our gender.
Abigail Belcher says:

April 22, 2018 at 7:40 pm

Daniella,
Thanks for your post! I think that, as far as the amount of representation for women in the Republican party goes, that the lack of representation in comparison to women’s representation in the Democratic party is largely associated with the fact that women are pulled more towards agreeing with democratic standpoints on many issues. For example, many women feel they should be able to choose what they do with their bodies and are pro-choice (democratic belief) and many women feel strongly about letting people express themselves and are big on acceptance, which is another democratic belief (belief in gay rights). With women generally falling more in line with democratic beliefs, I think that it is natural to have a larger percentage of women be represented in the Democratic party as opposed to the Republican party. This is not to say that the percentage of representation pales in comparison to men’s representation in both parties and I do agree that women should be even more represented than they are today.
Virginia Myers says:

April 22, 2018 at 11:09 pm

Dear Daniella,

Thank you for your post about female representation in politics. Unfortunately, Trump’s administration is going to exacerbate the problem of underrepresentation of women because he is a sexually abusive, sexist, misogynistic person and president. Trump’s rhetoric about women and derogatory comments are going to have a long term effect on future American citizens – the young kids who are being socialized during Trump’s presidency, which is exposing them to harsh language and misguided values. As Isabella mentioned in her comment above, one of the reasons we see fewer women in office is because they do not run for office as often as men do since they only see males in office. Hopefully, since Hillary Clinton’s campaign was so widely valued and supported, more women will run for office in upcoming elections and will gain even more momentum than the previous candidate. Trump’s administration will also exacerbate the problem of underrepresentation of women because his supporters value other issues over women’s rights (as clearly articulated in pro-Trump rallies). When thinking about the cohort effect and generational replacement, our generation is getting more and more liberal, so I am hopeful that future citizens and future eligible voters will voice their desire for all human rights publicly. Then, we can hope that the elected officials will represent this strive for equality and we can live in a healthy, representative American democracy.
Sara Milano says:

April 24, 2018 at 3:32 pm

Daniella,

I think you make some really interesting points about women in government. Congress has long been thought of as an old, white, and rich men club where the interests represented are vastly skewed. All of our presidents have been men, and all but one have been white. While progress has been made in increasing gender and racial diversity in government, the ratio is still not proportionate to the population and thus we do not have a representational government. In this sense, government is not working. It is significant to point out that other developed nations are much better at gender equality than we are. For example in Sweden women make up 44% of the members of the Swedish parliament. Even Rwanda, which we would like to think of ourselves as being more developed than in many ways, has more women in government than we do. Following the Rwandan genocide, women stepped up and assumed untraditional roles. Now they occupy 64% of the seats in the lower house, versus our 19%. This reminds me of how women took over men’s jobs while they fought in WWII and this is how they were introduced into the public sphere. I would hope that it would not take a massive loss of life or another war to gain representation for women in government but rather that we can examine the systems we have in place that may disenfranchise women and dismantle them.

Comments are closed.