Carey et. al’s "Report from the Field: Two Surveys of Political Scientists.": Alarming results Carey et al’s “Report,” alarmed me for two reasons: the lack of importance attached to women’s representation by the American Political Science Association’s members and the lack of country knowledge or experience of the electoral reform consultants. The first, I will rationalize out as realistic, even if I disagree at a fundamental level; and the second, I will criticize as a problem that should be addressed by future electoral reform consultants. Figure 7.1 illustrates women’s representation as APSA members’ second least priority goal “associated with the rules to elect legislators” (62-3). Yet, minority group representation is a more valued …show more content…
Figure 7.4 shows that 30% of the electoral reform consultants considered their prior knowledge about the country they consulted with to be minimal (68). While the authors question the qualifications of these consultants to “offer advice on electoral system design”, they then reveal that the consultants were, in many cases, “not asked to offer specific proposals” (68). However, later in the paper, the authors show in Figure 7.7 that nearly 50% of consultants endorse specific reforms (70). Although the authors do not analyze the potential crossover from the 30% with minimal country knowledge and the almost 50% who endorse specific reforms, it is likely that a good number of these consultants giving recommendations for societies and countries they know very little about. This is incredibly alarming considering that local political actors are “inclined to draw on the content provided by academic consultants selectively, when that content could be used to bolster positions motivated by other factors” (72). Therefore, consultants cannot rely on local political actors to take the academic knowledge and apply to their own context in an unbiased manner. So, when consultants give recommendations without understanding the context, these recommendations could be used by individuals to bolster the faulty argument they are making for an electoral system that would best
In addition to the arguments above there are some very strong disadvantages to this system such as it excludes women from the legislature. The ‘most broadly acceptable candidate’ syndrome also affects the ability of women to be elected to legislative office because they are often less likely to be selected as candidates by male-dominated party structures. Although the evidence across the world suggests that women are less likely to be elected to the
In contrast, American women hold a minor role in political participation. With only 84 of 435 seats, women face more challenges in American politics than men. (Catalyst) For example, we can look at the most recent election where Hillary Clinton was the victim to many implicit gender bias’. In order to elect the most qualified person to lead a country shouldn’t gender be taken out of the equation? Plato’s approach focuses on electing those who are most qualified and justly, eliminates gender as a factor.
Female representation is impediment for Political matters and topics regarding women decided by the Federal Government. For example, in 2006, female Senators from all main parties united and supported a bill to change legislation on the abortion pill, removing the Health Minister Tony Abbott’s right to retain the veto on the introduction of the
What was the most underrepresented social group in the elected assemblies of the world? whether is the minority ethnic, religious groups or the poor? According to Putman’s statistic, the answer was “women”. (Putnam 1976 cited in Megyery 1991) Statistics have shown that although women around the globe occupy more than one half of the population, very small proportion become political elite. Different from what women have encountered, man tends to dominate many spheres in life which includes electoral politics. Such gender disparity happens everywhere not just in Canada. Ever since Canadian women suffrage and the right to candidacy was achieved, they have made a couple strides in political arena, yet not as many as they wish with the existence of electoral glass ceiling standing
In reality, however, women are equally and in some ways more qualified to hold leadership positions than men. Although there is no single explanation for why women are underrepresented in politics, the gender gap in the political arena stems from the lack of female participation in elections as women are often discouraged or feel threatened by society to run for political office. Young women who aspire a career in politics encounter both structural and emotional barriers, which prevent them from running for political office. Women battle issues of self-confidence, face stereotypes, and derive false perceptions of political campaigns, all of which broaden the gender gap in the political
Bonnie Green, Chief Estimator, agreed that in a normal year only slight delays might develop due to a shortage of labor. However, she pointed out that for such a large project, the company would have to use unionized employees and that the construction industry labor agreements with New York City were to expire on October 30, 2004. Past experience and current construction activity in the surrounding area indicated that any union tradesman would support a strike against the city. Since this is a public project, she estimates that there is a 50% chance that they would strike this project to gain the attention of the national media.
Women play a huge role in society and are becoming more predominant in parliament as the years progress. The issue? They only represent 38.6% of seats in the upper house/senate (Women in national parliaments, 2016). This is a huge problem considering women make up 50% of Canada’s population. Does that statistic prove that women are not getting adequate representation in parliament? The rights of women need to be addressed, maybe not in parliament, but through representation in numbers in parliament. Women are just as equally qualified for parliamentary jobs as men, and the more that this truth is pushed, the more representation women will get. This truth is only realized by some, as the numbers previously show, but the only way for women
Within the past 50 years, there has been an increasing amount of women in the government. Whether these women hold powerful positions such as Secretary of State, or hold minor positions such as PTA President, a political revolution is brewing. The United States of America is lacking substantially with regards to females in office, in fact if one were to look statistically at the amount of women in the government, the United States is failing tremendously. Although the United States likes to claim that they are the land of opportunities, it seems as if the only ones reaping those benefits are cis white males. But, there are women who choose to break the glass ceiling and attempt to explore the opportunities that are in front of them, and one
Wilson points out that women are steadily gaining traction in legislature, but at a severely slow pace when compared to other Western democracies. Over 30% of all Democratic state legislator are women. Conversely, fewer than one in six Republican state legislators are women. The chances of a woman winning or losing a political election is no greater than a man’s chances.
Swers evaluates whether female representatives in Congress are more inclined to support and promote women’s issues than male representatives. Using original data regarding women’s issue legislation in the 103rd and 104th Congress and qualitative data in the form of survey questions, Swers concludes that gender does in fact make a difference. After controlling for institutional factors and party affiliation, Swers finds that female legislators were more likely to introduce social welfare
With women making up approximately 50.2% of the population, you’d think they would have a stronger level of representation in parliament compared to the 29% we grip to with heavy hearts. Yet despite the under-representation and the unwillingness to do something about the issue, women are still trying to overcome the barriers that prevent them from climbing the career ladder offered in the Australian political playing field.
While America has improved over the past few decades, females are still very underrepresented in the government today. As Lili Gil quotes in her article entitled The Gender Crisis in Politics: U.S. Congress Fails at Equality, “The Nordic countries (Sweden, Iceland, Finland, Denmark, and Norway) lead the world regionally with 42.1 percent female representation in national legislatures” (Congress Research Service para 3.) It is very sad to see that America is beginning to fall behind in modern day thinking. While those countries may lack a modern landscape, they do not fail in modern thinking regarding gender equality. Iceland was the first country to elect a female into office 35 years ago, they also required that females have a 40% representation on the board of publicly traded companies, or for the companies to go out of business. Another shocking fact is that America, while being a progressive, democratic and developed country, has “greater gender disparities than Rwanda, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Bolivia and many other “developing” nations” (Gil para 3.) As proven in these successful countries, females being in higher positions do not hurt the country's prosperity, but help the countries in the long
When Sylvia Bashevkin wrote “ the higher, the fewer” it was to indicate a pattern in women's political participation. The number of women in politics drops as one moves upward to the upper tiers of government, federal or provincial. The gap between the number of women involved in politics to the number of women in the country is still too wide. Over half the population is female and yet less than 25% were Members of Parliament in 2011. As of 2016 only 31% of senators were female. This gap highlights the need to continue to pursue the feminist movement.
New Zealand was the first country to give women the right to vote in 1893, however, since then we have dropped to 27th when it comes to gender representation in government, out of 188 countries. One of the many reasons as to why women are under represented in parliament can be linked to the issue of the political obstacles that face women. This is when they want to be in parliament, women whom are in parliament, and the many women who this is not an option for due to lack of opportunity. Women have to face this “masculine model” of politics and government. Men are dominant in parliament, meaning that political life revolves around male norms and values (Shvedova). This can be extended, politics is very much about competition and confrontation. Rather than politics being