Women Share of CBC Membership Higher than Congress as a Whole
Tweeting about this post of mine, Dayo Olopade asked “Where are the black women in politics?”
This is probably too literal an answer, but they’re where you usually find influential African-American politicians—the United States House of Representatives. There are 74 women in the House of Representatives of whom 12 are African-American. That makes women about 30 percent of the Congressional Black Caucus, higher than their overall representation in the House which is about 17 percent. The black women in congress are all Democrats, and the Democrats have a higher women’s share in the caucus, but even so the Democratic caucus as a whole is only 22 percent female. Since most of the people who vote for Democrats are women, this is a pretty ridiculously low ratio, but the fact of the matter is that the African-American community seems to be blazing the trail in the direction of somewhat-less-inequality.
The world’s largest share of women parliamentarians is found in Sweden where men help take care of children and there’s a robust political tradition of “feminist natalism.” In the United States, voters show no inclination to discriminate against women who run for office but women are much less likely to be recruited to run.
11 Responses to “Women Share of CBC Membership Higher than Congress as a Whole”
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November 2nd, 2009 at 1:50 pm
If every member of Congress were like my Representative, Barbara Lee, there would be no more war, hunger, or disease, and humankind would prosper in a paradise on Earth.
November 2nd, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Correction, Matt:
The world’s largest share of women parliamentarians is found in Rwanda.
Women contesting in Rwanda’s second parliamentary elections since the 1994 Genocide, held on 15–18 September 2008, have secured 45 out of 80 seats, or 56.25 percent, making the incoming Parliament the first in the world to have women in the majority.
source:
http://www.unifem.org/news_events/story_detail.php?StoryID=736
November 2nd, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Sweden reaches a high level female participation in parliament because the political parties have quotas requiring that a certain percentage of seats are explicitly reserved for women. T
November 2nd, 2009 at 2:02 pm
“In the United States, voters show no inclination to discriminate against women who run for office but women are much less likely to be recruited to run.”
Odd sentence. Not voting for a woman candidate is a form of discrimination and its up to the men to recruit a woman candidate. Utterly ridiculous.
How strange to hear this kind of talk after the way leftist liberals treated Hillary Clinton in the primary. I guess sexism is acceptable as long as its useful – then its an indictment of our backwards culture.
November 2nd, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Sorry for not including this in my prior post.
The Social Democratic Party in Sweden explicitly reserves 50% of its candidates must be women. This is despite the fact that men in Sweden still seek elected office at higher rates than women.
Strong arguments can be made for the quotas because it is ultimately beneficial for society to have gender parity.
November 2nd, 2009 at 2:09 pm
The CBC having a higher percentage of women than Congress is probably due to higher academic and economic status of Black Women in comparison to Black Men.
November 2nd, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Wait, women make up only 9.5% of the Republicans in the House?
You’re telling me that the Republican House members are 91.5% white guys?
That’s seriously messed up. I had no idea it was that bad. OMG, are they living in 1963? That’s so freaking WEIRD, a major party that’s basically all white guys. Seriously, that’s newsworthy.
November 2nd, 2009 at 2:40 pm
You’re telling me that the Republican House members are 91.5% white guys?
They do have the Diaz-Balart brothers. So to be fair it’s only like 89.3% white guys.
November 2nd, 2009 at 3:27 pm
They do have the Diaz-Balart brothers. So to be fair it’s only like 89.3% white guys.
No, the Diaz-Balart brothers don’t have an ounce of Indian or Black blood in them.
They’re no less white than Radanovich, Issa, or Manzullo.
They just come from families that speak Spanish rather than Russian or Armenian or Arabic or Italian or whatever.
Meaning it really is over 90% white guys.
November 2nd, 2009 at 7:39 pm
The Atlantic Monthly’s “Atlantic 50″ of the most influential pundits in America (Matt is #41) is 96% white (98% Caucasian counting Fareed Zakaria), 2% black, and 0.5% Hispanic (Matt’s white Cuban grandfather).
It’s half Jewish. On a per capita basis, White Jewish men are about 50 times more likely to make the Atlantic 50 than other Americans.
November 2nd, 2009 at 7:39 pm
There’s Anh Cao. No Latino R’s in Texas since Henry Bonilla got bounced, I don’t think. I don’t wish to get too deep into the question of who’s white, but the only other members of the Republican Hispanic Caucus (Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Devin Nunes) are pretty pale folk. Tom Cole is a Native American, though.
…yeah, a pretty white and male crew.