Why so few women in politics?
Personally I have long thought that women were better politicians than men. In recent years I have watched Hillary Clinton, Dina Titus and Laurayne Murray run for public office.
I come away with the impression that women are more focused, more determined and work harder than men in seeking election.
They are more empathetic in their views of people as well. There are, of course exceptions, but not many.
Women, in general, seem more engaged in community affairs. I think of the Nye County Republican Women’s Club here in Pahrump. They’re, seemingly everywhere, doing something, remaining in the public eye. I don’t know much about the Nye County Republican Party but my outsider’s view is that the Republican Women are the backbone of the County’s Republican Party. I suspect if the women didn’t hold it all together it would disintegrate into nothing.
I was reading Philly.com about the scarcity of women in politics in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, the city of “brotherly love.” No mention of “sisterly love.”
The “good old boys” network apparently is alive and well in Philadelphia. Their local politics, according to the article, remains the domain of the “good old boys.”
But almost 20 years later, the “No Girls Allowed” sign still seems firmly in place in both the city and state.
“Pennsylvania is ranked 46th for the percentage of women in the state Legislature – only Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma and South Carolina are worse. The state has never had a woman governor or a woman U.S. senator.”
Wonder where Nevada ranks.
Although women make up 53 percent of the city’s population, women often take a back seat in the world of local politics. Wonder why that is?
“Reasons cited by experts for the dearth of women in elected office include the city and state’s entrenched political machinery, which often favors male candidates and protects male incumbents; limited efforts to actively recruit women candidates, and that there are few high-ranking female elected officials to help advance others.”
That isn’t foreign to anyplace, I suspect, even Nye County. However, there are signs that Nye County may be changing. Up until last April the Nye County Democratic Central Committee consisted of four men and one woman. The female, of course was the “secretary.” That board was dominated by men who ran the show.
In April a new board came into being totally replacing the makeup of the old Central Committee. Now there are four women and one man on the Committee, and a woman is the Chairperson. Wonder what differences will arise out of they way they govern the Democratic Party of Nye? Too soon to tell yet. They’re just beginning to settle in and tackle the job ahead, which is significant.
Will the new Committee be timid and seek to retain the status quo? Or will they be progressive and boldly strike out on a new path?
They have a tough row to hoe. The manner in which the last election was conducted left a bitter taste in the mouths of many. The new Committee has a herculean task of reaching out to all the Democrats in the county, not focus so much on just Pahrump. As large as Nye County is it is challenging to become the Central Committee for all of Nye County and not just Pahrump.
The new Committee appears to be approaching their task by recognizing the need of creating a set of bylaws in an effort to set the structural framework of the party with new rules from which to govern. Almost any new set of bylaws would be an improvement over that last batch which were plain horrible, dictatorial, non-democratic, exclusionary, confusing, and almost any other adjective you can think of.
And the new Central Committee doesn’t have a whole lot of time to dilly dally in their reorganization of the party. We are fast approaching a new election in 2010. Nye County is red as a beet. There are candidates for a number of elective offices to be found to make viable runs for office.
Campaigns for election cannot be begun the week before election day. They are begun a year or so before the polls open. That takes planning, laying the ground work, raising finances and the like. Campaigns run on the spur of the moment in an ad hoc fashion are doomed to failure. The new Central Committee, at a time when they could and should be working to build a slate of competent and viable candidates, are stuck with fundamentally organizing the party upon which the success of the candidates depend.
It takes planned devotion to purpose to rebuild a political party into a cohesive whole. Most people in Nye County don’t even know what precinct they live in. Have no idea of what a Central Committee is, let alone the names of the people on the Committee. Viewing it county-wide Democrats are mostly strangers to each other. How can one congeal all those strangers into an organized unit committed to a single goal? There isn’t even a system of communication which is fundamental to bringing such a group into a single fold. It is like, as they say, herding cats.
So those women on the Central Committee have their work cut out for them. But, as I said at the beginning, I think women are better politicians than men. Let’s see if I’m right as the coming months pass by.
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