How to close the massive gender gap in Congress

Submitted by Mastodon on Wed, 2019-08-14 14:45

Article here. Excerpt:

'The quickest way to get to gender parity is to require it.

“If you could do anything ... and be really transformative, the thing to do would be to adopt a quota policy,” says Diana O’Brien, a political science professor at Texas A&M University who focuses on the intersection of gender and politics.

Quotas are now used in some capacity by half the countries in the world — including in many of those that currently rank above the US when it comes to gender parity. In places that have imposed a quota, like Tanzania and Rwanda, anywhere from 20 to 50 percent of representatives in the country’s federal legislature are legally required to be women. It’s a mandate that works.

The prime place to enact this could be in the Senate, O’Brien told Vox. An amendment to the Constitution or new legislation could mandate that every state elect at least one female senator, for example. The House is slightly more challenging since districts only have one representative, but half the seats in the lower chamber could also be effectively “reserved” for women.'

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... fixes the req'ts for Congressional office. Nowhere does it say any given candidate must be male nor female. It does however place a floor on the ages of the candidates: 25 for the House, 30 for the Senate.

The FFs clearly meant that those clauses in the Con'n set the req'ts for office.

In short, I doubt quotas would stand Con'l muster.

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Submitted by Matt on Thu, 2019-08-15 02:34

So, are we supposed to vote according to genitalia? Or according to "identity"? If a man (i.e., a person with external plumbing) wanted to go for a woman's slot, couldn't he just declare that he "identifies" as a woman? That seems to work in women's sports these days, and who can gainsay it without be tarred as "transphobic"? (Don't you just love those cute neologisms that end with "-phobic"?)
Realistically, though, I sometimes point out to people that women are the majority of the electorate, which means that no man gets elected without some measure of female approval, and that if women, as a voting block, wanted more women in elected bodies, they could make that happen any time. The comeback is always predictable: too many women have been brainwashed. Well, isn't that damning women with faint praise? Isn't that what they call "soft bigotry"? It's saying that women are too naïve and easily influenced to make up their own minds. If that's true, then why should they be trusted with positions of responsibility at all?

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Submitted by Roger on Thu, 2019-08-15 11:42