Sunday's edition of "Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria" had, as usual, some fascinating facts between segments. One of them was called "Women in Congress/Parliament," and it showed the following statistics:
Saudi Arabia: O%
Iran: 4%
Pakistan: 21%
Iraq: 31%
And the United States? A humbling 15%.
There you have it. There are actually Moslem nations with more women in their national legislature than in the good old USA. What would have been even more fascinating is if Foreign Exchange had first quizzed a random sampling of Americans to match up the percentages with the nations. I'm willing to bet that a vast majority would haved guessed we had the 31%.
I say this not to bash on my own country, but to point out what should be obvious to a nation whose majority of citizens call themselves Christians: that humility is one of the greatest virtues, and we as a nation ought to be more humble, particularly in our opinion of ourselves as Americans. Patriotism can often cross a fine line into idolatry, and it has become fashionable for some politicians and commentators to gleefully rail against those who seem to believe "America is a fundamentally bad nation." Never mind that these same critics often describe America as a modern day Sodom; the point is that any sane, sober and reflective American knows our nation has many shortcomings. We can and should talk about them, and even better, do something about them.
We rant about the need for democracy and opportunity in areas of the world like the Middle East, and yet our own democracy is in many ways less democratic than our parliamentary cousins across the ocean. Do we have runoffs for the presidency? Do we have proportional representation? Do we have more women in Congress than the Pakistanis do in their parliament? Do we have a healthy multi-party system where a party formed only two months ago can win a national election?
The answer to all of these questions is no. Maybe instead of criticizing the speck of dust in our brother's eye, we ought to remove the plank from our own.
6 comments:
Not to defend our relatively paucity of women legislators, but some countries (Iraq included, I think) actually reserve seats in their parliaments for women or require political parties to meet a quota of women on their candidate lists. In Europe, the Greens reserve half their lists for women and have for years.
While we're at it, I wonder if the problem in America is that women tend not to win elections or that women tend not to run? If so, those are two distinct phenomena, though they might have the same cause.
Based purely on my own experience, most women I've known just aren't that interested in politics, or if they are, they have no ambition of running for office. They're more likely to get involved in non-profit organizations oriented toward various areas of social justice. I'm tempted to conclude that there's something inherently masculine--in the most negative sense of the word--about politics that just turns most women away. Why that's more true in the U.S. than in some other countries I can't say for sure, but it may be that women in younger democracies have more enthusiasm and believe they can make a difference through politics, whereas women in older democracies may gravitate toward more practical professions where they really CAN make a difference.
This is a stretch, but it may also have something to do with our majoritarian, winner-takes-all approach to politics vs. more equitable systems of proportional representation. Women might be more inclined to get involved when there are more choices of party and affiliation, in contrast to what they may perceive to be two good-old-boy clubs taking turns in power.
So in other words, I don't really know.
"So in other words, I don't really know."
Yes, but we all respect your ability to turn any political topic into an argument against first-past-the-post elections...
(bows head)
I just want attention.
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