However, I’m really not sure it’s made a difference in terms of policy. Proportional representation came in and 1996, and I’m pretty sure that the only legislation that is advantageous to women is Prostitution law reform (and obviously there are different views about that). There have been far more attacks on women, such as cuts in the domestic purposes benefit.

I’m not actually sure this shows that women legislators are more interested in women’s issues bills than men. I suspect they probably are, but I am not sure this data proves it. A lot of the reason for this may be that women are more likely to be chosen to sponsor women’s issues bills for political reasons than men. I would think votes would be a better way to judge this.

I think an ideal House of Representatives would have 500 members chosen from the American people by lot. This would be a large enough sample to provide a statistically accurate representation of the general public. You would have instant correct proportional representation of women and minorities of every stripe.

Barring that pie-in-the-sky fantasy, though, ms xeno is right. Elected proportional representation would be far superior to what we have now. What is really sad is that, in theory, we could partially do it now without changing the Constitution. Representatives have be chosen on a state-by-state basis, but within each state, the state legisature can decide the method of election. So a large state like mine COULD chose elect Reps to the House by proportional representation. But of course no member of a major party would propose that in the state legislature. It would have to be done by ballot initative, if it could be accomplished at all.

A request. Please expand upon critical mass, when related to gender/feminist political actions and reactions.

Thanks

Steve

Since as far as I know no one every passes legislation protecting female but not male sexual minorities, it’s a distinction without a difference. If you consider protecting lesbians to be an example of a woman-friendly policy, then the places which have such a policy are the places which have passed legislation providing protections to sexual minorities.

The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 was a generally reactionary piece of legislation, however it “reduced the age at which homosexual acts are lawful from 21 to 18, and altered the definition of rape to include anal rape of men. Those provisions could be classed as “man friendly”. Women already had legal protection from rape, and there was no age of consent for lesbian sex at all, none of which changed, so I cannot see how this could possibly be construed as “women friendly”.

The topics are related. The same structural features that discriminate against women work against minorities.

So? That doesn’t make legislation which benefits minorities “women friendly”. It makes them “minority friendly”.

I didn’t think that writing, “I don’t know,” was really going to contribute anything.

Rachel, there may not be that many women here lately talking politics, but that’s hardly a sign that they aren’t talking. There are dozens of boards out there dominated by women talking politics. Here, I do think that a lot of us are simply weary at butting heads with the same old posters, who are often men, over and over again on the same issues. We also lost some articulate women in the wake of Amp’s announcement about the domain sale.

My own POV can be summed up pretty succinctly, now that I’ve been repeating it over and over in various forums over the years: The average Lefty I run into online is White, male, and willfully ignorant (sometimes hostile) about feminism. The average feminist I run into online is White, Democratic, and willfully ignorant (sometimes hostile) about issues of 3rd Party politics and electoral reform. I said in my own space that I fully expect to be dead and rotting in the ground before this ever changes, and certainly nothing that’s happened IRL in the last week has changed my mind on this one iota.

The topics are related. The same structural features that discriminate against women work against minorities. The point is that proportional voting systems promote diversity and balanced representation, while winner-take-all systems homogenize and exclude.

Ms-xeno, There is a part of me that believes that many women like to avoid politics as a general subject. (Lately there have been a bunch of guys on the board, so I don’t know why they don’t chime in.) I have experienced this before at parties or in my classes. We will start talking politics and suddenly most of the women tune out. I don’t like to stereotype, and I don’t know what the data says about gender and political interest, but this often lingers in my mind in these discussions.

Since as far as I know no one every passes legislation protecting female but not male sexual minorities, it’s a distinction without a difference. If you consider protecting lesbians to be an example of a woman-friendly policy, then the places which have such a policy are the places which have passed legislation providing protections to sexual minorities.

That’s not what I was implying.

I’m saying that specifically classifying some policy as Women-Friendly, does IMO refer to policies that are made for the benefit of women (thus the gendering on this term either excludes men: Like some forms of BC, or benefit more women than men [pretty much all the rest]) except this one.

In some ways, putting this under the umbrella women-friendly makes about as much sense as putting (say) and anti-racial discrimination bill under that said umbrella. Obviously, people can be non-white and women (!), but in effect this makes the “Women-Friendly” qualifier nonsensical.

Am I making myself clear?

Why is this classified under “Women-Friendly Policies”? Sexual minorities include women as well as men in roughly equal numbers (AFAIK).

Since as far as I know no one every passes legislation protecting female but not male sexual minorities, it’s a distinction without a difference. If you consider protecting lesbians to be an example of a woman-friendly policy, then the places which have such a policy are the places which have passed legislation providing protections to sexual minorities.

My question is why does it seem that nobody on this site except for you and I gives a damn about this subject. When I posted, I got about two responses.

No clue. I never understand why some topics get lots of comments and some hardly any.

My concerns in this case are 1) the numbers are changing very fast and 2) there may be a “tipping point.”

The numbers aren’t changing fast enough for me! :p

The House will add at least three women and the Senate will add two, bringing the total number of female members of Congress to at least 86 — 70 in the House, 16 in the Senate.

So women will be 16% of the House and 16% of the Senate. I agree that it’s possible that there’s a “tipping point” effect, but I intuitively expect it to be significantly higher than 16%. More like 35-45%, if I had to guess.

As long as I’m quoting statistics from that article, let me stick this depressing area of no gain in:

There will continue to be 40 black House members and one black senator — Democrat Barack Obama of Illinois. The number of Hispanic House members will stay at 23 and the number of Hispanic senators will remain at three.

Hispanics are the fastest growing demographic group in America, making up nearly 15 percent of the population, but they account for only 5 percent of Congress. Blacks make up a little more than 13 percent of the population, but just 8 percent of Congress.

More than once in my fabulous blogging career, I have cited a piece at the Center For Voting and Democracy that attributed the larger proportion of women in several other countries to the existence of proportional representation.

I’ve read that women and minorities do better in proportional democracy because voters vote for an entire slate of candidates, rather than individual candidates. Since voters like seeing diversity, slates that have a mix of races and genders tend to do better in elections than slates that are mainly uni-sex and uni-racial.

Unfortunately, I don’t know where it was I read that; it was something I read in a class in college. Do you have the URL for the article, Ms Xeno?

It’s tough to be 3rd party advocate amongst feminists, and vice versa. I’m losing the urge to discuss either issue with anyone. Frankly, I’d rather retreat quietly to my homepage and collage instead of dealing with dual-source agita all the time.

More than once in my fabulous blogging career, I have cited a piece at the Center For Voting and Democracy that attributed the larger proportion of women in several other countries to the existence of proportional representation. Every time I posted it, I was treated to utter silence or some snide remark about my own party affiliation (or lack of one, these days). Eventually, I just gave up.

I find that a little disturbing. I thought this would be a hot topic.

The first, “Does Women’s Representation in Elected Office Lead to Women-Friendly Policy?” (pdf link) looks at how many laws benefiting women, such as “protection from violence, access to income support (through welfare and child support collection), women-friendly employment protections, legislation protecting sexual minorities, and reproductive rights,”

Why is this classified under “Women-Friendly Policies”? Sexual minorities include women as well as men in roughly equal numbers (AFAIK).