Aug 17th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
She Should Run
Women are severely underrepresented in political office in the United States. And, interestingly, the best available evidence indicates that women who secure a major party nomination for elective office don’t face any unique disadvantages. Instead, we have few women in elected office because they don’t run as often largely because of structural barriers and also simply because party leaders are disinclined to recruit women to run.
Part of the solution is the She Should Run campaign (via Nicholas Beaudrot) run by the Women’s Campaign Forum. The idea is to suggest a woman who you think the WCF should ask to run. It’s a good idea.
25 Responses to “She Should Run”
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August 17th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Sure, like using one broad to dump another broad, as the Republicans intend to do with Boxer.
Of course, we could eliminate all our references to broads, dames, and bitches if Yglesias quit pushing the ethnic and sexist quota system. There is always the Yglesias nonsense, as in ‘lets elect X because X is a (female, Latina, Black, disabled, blind, missing two feet, part animal, etc).’
August 17th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
I don’t think this really implies that women don’t face special challenges in elections and that therefore if we get more women to run, the number of women elected to office should increase by the same amount. Rather, the filtering at lower levels probably means that women who do run are of a higher quality than their male peers. If what we can reasonably hypothesize to be higher-quality women doing about evenly with lower-quality men, there are probably some handicaps at the electoral level as well, just as an informal observer of (for instance) media coverage of female politicians might suppose.
August 17th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Hillary Clinton.
August 17th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Indeed. We wouldn’t have to worry about any of this patriarchy stuff if liberals could just drop the ethnic and sexist quota system, which is the very worst racial politics.
August 17th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
because X is a (female, Latina, Black, disabled, blind, missing two feet, part animal, etc)
Interesting order that you chose.
August 17th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
This is great. Political Science research indicates that women who run tend to do as well or better than their male counterparts. However, women often don’t run, or do so only after nudging from friends and other elected officials.
My personal experience backs up these findings, and I think its great a group is being proactive about this.
August 17th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
right conclusion, wrong analysis.
[women] don’t run as often largely because of structural barriers and also simply because party leaders are disinclined to recruit women to run.
Ergo, the women who do run are exceptional.
the best available evidence indicates that women who secure a major party nomination for elective office don’t face any unique disadvantages.
Ergo, exceptional women do about as well as typical men.
So, typical women are disadvantaged relative to typical men. Thus, we should do more to support women and try to erase this disadvantage.
August 17th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
@ matthias
Not sure if I buy the “higher quality” idea. Palin and Bachmann certainly don’t fit that bill.
August 17th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Will they ever stop their moronic identity politics bullshit? Nah, I guess they won’t, will they.
People who want to run should run, and people who don’t want to run shouldn’t.
August 17th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
It’s quality at getting elected that matters here, not any other sort of quality. Sarah Palin is an idiot, but nobody went to McCain-Palin rallies to hear McCain.
(Of course we’re talking about averages here; and of course it would be difficult if not contradictory to construct a measure of campaigning talent that was separate from voter/media prejudice towards incidental characteristics, &c.)
August 17th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Mind you, this only applies to liberal women. Conservative women will be vilified, trashed, their clothing and style mocked, and subject to many forms of abuse from liberals that conservative men don’t receive.
August 17th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Hillary Clinton.
Of course, the liberal blogosphere hated that idea, and trashed her with a misogynistic vengance normally reserved for conservative women like Sarah Palin.
August 17th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
I recently was asked to run for a leadership position in the political organisation I’ve been active with for many years, but declined in favour of running for a Vice Chair position, even though I wanted the job and thought I could be better at it than the person doing it.
Why? Because the incumbent decided to run again, and I have always gotten along with him and didn’t want to step into the ugliness of a competitive race against him.
So: was I being wussy? (I suspect so.) And if so, does anyone think my wussiness is related to my femininity? (It may be…)
We ask a lot of our leaders, running for office is an ugly game, and it means making a lot of enemies. I’m not surprised that a lot of people, especially women – who are conditioned to avoid raw conflict – back away from it.
August 17th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Wow, is that an awful name/brand for that initiative.
The first thing that comes to mind when I hear “she should run” is a domestic violence + economic/psychological dependence situation. Just a really, really poorly thought out name.
August 17th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Can we drop the bullshit about that stupid cunt Palin being the victim of sexism?
August 17th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Looks like Orly Taitz is considering running.
August 17th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
I totally think that Michelle Bachmann should run for president in 2012.
August 17th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Ever notice how Matt’s feminist posts are typically his lamest?
It’s almost as if his heart isn’t in them and he’s just filling his quota to avoid trouble.
August 17th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Clever.
August 17th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Discrimination against women candidates is a lot like how the average Chinese player in the NBA is taller than average, so therefore it’s obviously only prejudice that keeps the NBA from adding hundreds more Chinese players, since we can tell from the Chinese players already in the NBA, such as Yao Ming, that Chinese people are at least as tall as American people or European people on average.
August 17th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Whenever I see a blonde bimbo Josephina Plumber, I wonder if Republicans aren’t putting women out their to take the blame for their losing.
August 17th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Structural barriers?? What about choice?
“Fortune 1000 CEOs typically paid their dues with 60-90-hour workweeks for about 20 years. Yet women are less than half as likely as men to work more than 50 hours a week. And women are less likely to agree, every few years, to uproot themselves and their families to far-flung places to get the necessary promotions.”
from http://www.martynemko.com/articles/why-men-earn-more_id1226
Being a politician has similar demands then being a CEO. How do you justify the claim of underrepresentation?
August 18th, 2009 at 12:41 am
Ah. It couldn’t possibly be that fewer women, as compared to men, have the basically power-hungry or hypercompetitive temperament needed to succeed i the nihilist gladiatorial arena which is American politics? Or that women tend to use modes of moral reasoning that are less ideological and more based around concrete human relationships, thus giving them less interest in seeking political power. Or any one of a variety of other reasons that imply that, in a fair and just society, fewer women than men, for reasons of innate temperament and psychology, will seek out political power or be highly endowed with the necessary qualities to win power in the type of political system we have.
Of course not. Because we have something better than solid theory grounded in evolutionary biology: we have feminist dogma. If the second wave feminist yahoos say it, it must be right. Give me a f*cking break, Yglesias. Grow up, put down the bong and the Foucault, and read a good introductory textbook on animal behavior. That men and women are equal, which they are, does not mean they are the SAME. It means they are complementary, and different: different though equal. As the text from yesterday reads, we have many talents and abilities, and are all organs in one body, of which the head is Christ Jesus.
August 18th, 2009 at 12:42 am
You know this is a hopeless train wreck of a thread when the most insightful comment is made by the professional race-monger and Klansman of our time, Steve Sailor.
August 18th, 2009 at 10:01 am
[...] This seems cool: nominate a woman who you think ought to run for office! [...]