Sorry, I just can’t see the disconnect. What is it about political representation that you think disconnects it from apolitical population groups? Are we still hung up on the 51%? I thought we were not, but I really cannot see where your other objections lie.
Consider a hypothetical.
[ul][li]Group X is unambiguously identifiable in the general population.[/li][li]Group X is not identified by an unambiguous political stance.[/li][li]Every citizen is either X or Y, but more people are X than Y.[/li][li]Group X receives infererior rights and protections under the law than group Y.[/li][li]Rights and protections are guaranteed/assigned by a representative government.[/li][li]The members of group X have an implied interest in receiving equal or superior rights and protections, though this is not their only interest.[/li][/ul]
Is it the last stage that troubles you? Are you concerned that some members of group X might prefer fewer rights and protections?
Hey You
a while back (yesterday) you asked why not? what interests?
as to what interests? - I don’t know, ask a woman; better yet vote for one.
as to why not?
A little more difficult to explain, but I’ll try. It’s not that a man can’t represent female interests, it’s that he is more likely to represent the interests that are closest to his own first. Those happen to be closely linked to his gender.
-Think of it as being like eating fast food. It’s there, it’s available, i’m hungry, it sounds good at the time. Not really the best choice nutritionally, nor would it be as good as a well-prepared meal, but McDonalds has served billions and billions.
people, when given choices, especially difficult choices, will try to make them as easy as possible; and what’s easiest is what’s within arms’ reach. It’s a stretch to make any issue relevant to the opposite gender and thus this aspect of policy making is likely to be overlooked.
If that were a numbered list, Spiritus, nothing would trouble me and we would never have to get past the fourth point, Group X receives infererior rights and protections under the law than group Y. And if this is the claim then I have nothing to say on the matter, that is indeed a problem.
I do not understand how that problem is brought to my attention by the comments irishgirl made which I first responded to.
Are women a minority? In fact, no, they have a tenuous majority in terms of population. Rebuttal: Aha, but they only constitute a minority of the population of politicians! Me: This is what I don’t understand. Of course the historic treatment of women, and their continued position in society, is suspect. I don’t see that this is in fact, or even could be, indicative of the problem.
The ‘this’ in “I don’t see that this” (the last sentence) is the percentage of women population. I don’t see how that is an indicator of a problem with women’s role in society. Sorry.
irishgirl’s post was clearly a direct response to Eljeffe’s statement: They could be considered an “underrepresented group”, but even that’s becoming less accurate, as there aren’t many real bars left to inhibit women’s advancement.
“Underrepresented” is not high on my presonal list of causes, and as I noted above a strict population breakdown among legislators can never be more than suggestive, but I do think that the difference between 51% and 10% suggests. As with all evaluations of human nature and motivations, evaluation of the data is necessarily subjective.
Now, whether an underrepresentation in the legislature actually indicates a problem with women’s role in society is yet another question. I would argue yes, but only because of the historical inequities to which women have been subjected. Had we started from a level playing field (or even unambiguously obtained one in recent history) then I would argue the opposite.
It suggests that the residual effects of legal and social barriers which once barred women from positions of legislative power have not yet been overcome. While I admit that an overwhelming disinclination on the part of women as a population group to become legislators might be one explanation for this, my own experience with women makes me doubt it as a compelling explanation for the disparity.
Single women could own property. The only thing that changed as a result of the Married Women’s Property Acts was that married women now retained the property they brought into the marriage. And in certain states, women owned an interest in marital property equal to the man’s interest even before these acts were passed (in Louisiana, for instance.) The traditional remedy for this imbalance was alimony. Distribution of property after a divorce or other dissolution of the marriage went by the title system. The man had the title, so he kept the property in a divorce, but had to pay alimony to compensate for the imbalance in property distribution. And nothing stopped the man from bequeathing the property to his wife upon his death. Women were not nearly as restricted in property ownership as is commonly believed, and what restrictions there were, though unjust, were at least somewhat compensated for by the legal system.
Once again, nothing prevented a single woman from deciding where she was to live, and consent has always been a requirement for a valid contract of marriage. It is true that many women were dragged away from their extended families on the eastern seaboard during the emigration westwards here in the States in the first part of the 19th century, that’s the specific example I’ve read about just to name one. However it would be totally naive to presume that all these husbands just decided “babe, we’re going to Texas and I don’t give a hoot what you think about it.” The man may have had ultimate legal authority to master the household, but that doesn’t mean it always worked out that way in practice.
Again, this is not true for a single woman. And again, this depends on how marital property was structured in the state they lived in. In some states, neither partner’s wages were counted as “their own”, all assets acquired during the course of the marriage (other than by gift, bequest, or devise) were jointly held marital property in the several “community property” states. The woman had a protected legal interest in such property just as the man did.
AFAIK, this is true during certain periods of history, but not universally.
**
So?? Men were restricted by some laws that didn’t affect women at all. A man was responsible for the debts of his wife, but the wife would never be responsible for the debts of the husband, regardless of the size of each partner’s assets (the so-called “doctrine of necessaries”, which was not finally abolished in it’s sexually distinguishing form until 1984 in North Carolina.) And a man could never recieve alimony, even in those situations wherein the woman had access to vast resources after marriage (through inheritance, for example) and the man had nothing. This didn’t change in some Southern states like Alabama until the mid-70s.
A man could be jailed for being away from his wife for more than a half-year or so if she was pregnant or had small children, even if his departure had been through no fault of his own, I read a case in criminal law in which that precise thing occured.
Just because the law in some cases treated men and women differently does not mean that men were given all the power and women made into slaves in some sort of John Norman fantasy world.
When laws against adultery were enforced, it was usually the man involved who faced punishment. In fact, a man could be sued for “seduction” or “alienation of affection”.
**
What, you’re complaining about the right to publish pamphlets about birth control. This was a protestant country, after all, it’s not like you couldn’t just walk down to the frickin’ drug store and buy a condom. No birth control was very effective in those days, and options were limited by technology, so there wasn’t much use for informational pamphlets. And an unwanted pregnancy was every bit as inconvenient for the man, or perhaps you’ve never heard of the “shotgun wedding”?
And why you bring abortion into this I don’t know. Whether or not “terminating a pregnancy”, as you put it, is a right is still hotly contested, even among women. It may have a number of social benefits to women, but I wouldn’t yet be so positive about calling it a “right”. Both sides of that issue have exerted much effort to classify their position as a “right.” NARAL can trumpet the so-called “women’s right to choose”, and the anti-abortion groups can shout “right to life” from the rooftops, but sayin’ it don’t make it so.
Men face a strong cultural pressure to provide for their family, and to work their lives away so that their wife has that freedom to stay home and raise a family if she so chooses. In the olden days, women faced a similiar pressure to quit work and raise that family. Nowadays, women are actively encouraged to choose whichever road they desire to travel down. The same cannot be said for men, who are looked down upon if they aren’t working and bringing income into the family.
…and don’t forget that women have the one thing that men in their productive years often want more than almost anything else, something they will go to great lengths to get. This has been true since the dawn of man, and since women have mostly reclaimed their power over that thing, I’d say they have alot of power to wield. Perhaps the reforms and changing social attitudes that accomplished that did more to turn the imbalance of power away from men and towards women than anything else.
But how many women ever run for office? If women are a majority of the population, shouldn’t they be able to elect women to office just by sheer numbers?
This same principle drives me nuts when people like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton complain that there aren’t enough black coaches in sports. Show me a pattern of qualified candidates that weren’t hired, and then maybe I’ll believe that sports leagues have racist hiring practices.
I concur. It seems that to be consistent, Al and Jesse would also have to believe that blacks are over-represented as professional sports players (because way more than 12% of all professional athletes are black).
This is what I don’t understand. Of course the historic treatment of women, and their continued position in society, is suspect. I don’t see that this is in fact, or even could be, indicative of the problem.