Gender inequalities in political involvement remain an issue of critical research interest and a subject of significant political debate in the United States and elsewhere across the globe. A recent photograph of the leaders in the G20 summit in Buenos Aires taken on November 20 and that appears in Henao (2018) is a clear reflection of these disparities. Of the thirty-seven people in this photo, only two were women. The disparities mean that the traditionally low levels of women participation in the politics of democracies around the world continue to persist and the p rogress of closing this gender gap in politics remains glacial. Even so, nations such as France have made great strides in adopting and implementing political parity laws to ensure equal political representation of women and men. In the United States, such laws are yet to be endorsed in a political environment in which unequal political influence remains endemic as Griffin et al. (2017) suggest. Examining whether the political parity laws used in France could apply in the U.S. context is greatly significant in changing the face of American politics by encouraging women participation in these politics.
Overview of Parity Laws in France and Women’s Roles in France Government
According to Lambert (2001), France ratified its laws on political parity in 2000 and implemented them for the first time a year later. These laws required all French political parties including equal numbers of male and female political candidates on their party lists as a way of encouraging and endorsing equal access to political representation or what was termed as a proportional representation for both genders (Southwell, 2013a). Following the ratification and subsequent implementation of this legislation, the proportion of female elected in the offices of town councilors rose from 25.7% in 1995 to 47.5% in 2001 in municipalities that had above 3,500 residents (Praud & Dauphin, 2011; Southwell, 2013a). Furthermore, the number of female senators increased from 5 to 20 in all the 74 senatorial races in which the political parity legislation was applicable. Bird (2002) and Southwell (2013b) attest to these facts and add that gender representation in the remaining 28 senatorial contexts in which the laws were not directly applicable did not change as the number remained at 2 female senators.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The statistics above indicate that the political parity laws were somewhat successful in augmenting women participation in political influence, hence lessening their underrepresentation in French politics. Indeed, these political parity laws have continually curved a superior place for French women in politics by transforming their political roles from mere voting to eligibility to stand for elections and actively serve in office. Today, French women are appreciably represented in political offices evidenced by the fact that the National Assembly of President Emmanuel Macron’s administration has 223 seats for women out of a total of 577. This is 38.65% of the seats in National Assembly, marking a new record for French women representation in the parliament as documented Mazoue (2017). These notable advances in women representation in the French politics through adopting the political parity laws is an authentic political ideal that the American political community should consider towards encouraging a gender-balanced parliament through the augmentation of women participation in the United States politics.
Reasons Women in the American Congress Are Few
Gender differences in political behaviors and participation have persisted for years in the American democracy, but the particular reasons underlying the deficiency of women participation in American politics are superficially addressed in contemporary discourses. Delving into some of these reasons is crucial in establishing the applicability and usefulness of the French political parity laws in changing the situation where women serving in the current Congress hold only about 20.5% of the 535 congressional seats (Center for American Women and Politics, 2018).
The first reason we have only a few women in Congress is the ideology of persistent incumbency. This construct involves the idea that men were and are already in office before their female counterparts. Their earlier presence in office gives them a greater reelection advantage over women. What is habitually apparent is that the vast majority of incumbents of the most winnable political seats are American men, which makes chances of American women to win such seats slim (Schwindt-Bayer, 2005). Boyle and Meyer (2018) have suggested that in open seat races without a running incumbent, female political candidates do just as well as their male counterparts indicating that women’s political participation is hampered by incumbency.
The second reason is the endemic persistence of lingering gender stereotypes. From the perspective of gender stereotype, some scholars argue that the American electorates are to bear some blame for the inadequacies of women participation in politics. For instance, Boyle and Meyer (2018) contend that a significant portion of voters have maintained gender-specific stereotypes relating to male and female candidates, which might culminate in automatic stereotypical perceptions and assumptions that women candidates lack important political skills and negotiation aptitudes, hence not deserving to serve in political offices. Others assume that American women can only do better in social skills needed in areas such as social welfare, education, and women rights advocacy and not dealing with political matters (Palmer & Simon, 2012).
The third reason is the bias in the media coverage of women candidates, their politics, and their campaigns in election times. Several studies have confirmed the inferiority, inequality, and unfairness surrounding the media coverage of women in politics compared to men either empirically or otherwise. For instance, a study by the Council of Europe Committee Experts (2017) established empirically that women, including those in politics form merely 24% of people heard, read, and seen on traditional media. McIntosh (2013) also confirms that the media is largely inclined to ignoring the induction of women into politics by failing to depict their involvement in politics as positive social development. Further, Haraldsson and Wängnerud (2018) criticize the media for elevating men’s political positions over those of women by propagating and adhering to misleading stereotypes that undermine women’s status and the upward mobility in politics. All these arguments indicate the insignificant media coverage of American women’s political ambitions, campaigns, and endeavors, which impedes their political visibility and participation.
The fourth reason is the issue of redistricting or gerrymandering that seems to majorly target the American women as Simon, Palmer, and Villarreal (2014) argue. Redistricting or gerrymandering entails the process of manipulatively drawing the electoral district boundaries of an electoral constituency to favor particular political class or party in the United States. The significant impact of gender gerrymandering on women candidates is that it makes it tougher or nearly impossible for previously elected women to be reelected or regain their incumbency positions, particularly in the northern United States. So, redistricting singles out elected female candidates to bear the brunt of the machinations of political parties as the redraw the political lines. Other reasons highlighted briefly include women’s inferiority of political campaign funding, their exclusion from important global negotiations, and their investment in non-lucrative fields that diminishes their political financing capabilities.
Applicability of Political Parity Laws in America
The reasons for the misrepresentation and inferior participation of American women in politics means that they need a new incentive to enhance their political involvement. Such an incentive could be political parity laws such as those already working in France. In particular, the United States lawmakers could formulate, ratify, and reinforce the implementation of new political parity legislation requiring the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, and Libertarian Party including equal numbers of women and men political candidates on their party lists. Such laws should have clearly outlined clauses on how incumbency should be treated to ensure that it does not bar women from political participation. This would serve as an incentive for encouraging and advocating the proportional representation for both genders, along with enhancing equal access to political opportunities and representation similar to the French people as Southwell (2013a) provides.
When meticulously formulated, such parity-oriented laws for gender equality encouragement and gender parity promotion would work in the United States in three ways. Firstly, they will reform political eligibility by using strict quotas to eliminate unhealthy incumbency effects that usually hamper women political participation and equality in political performance advocated by Boyle and Meyer (2018). Secondly, these laws will offer a legal basis for mandatory recruitment mechanisms that target to identify, recruit, and support the candidacy of American women based on merit. This would signal a greater commitment to reducing gender disparities while ensuring the unremitting recruitment of politically qualified women candidates. Lastly, they will ensure that the initial gains in women’s’ political representation do not come to stagnation. It is worth highlighting that the ratification and full implementation of political parity legislation would not be devoid of challenges. These challenges would include resistance from existing incumbents and other political elites, a lack of women volunteers for inclusion in the party lists, and potential dejection of universalism in political representation (Lambert, 2001).
Things to Do to Encourage Women to Run For Office in America
Apart from endorsing political parity laws similar to those used in France, the United States can encourage American women to run for political offices using other approaches that supplement these laws. One of such techniques is to advocate for internal gender parity plans that specify the commitments of legislatures’ and government branches to attaining gender sensitivity in politics. These plans would offer a gender mainstreaming framework characterized by supportive accountability procedures, gender parity prioritization, and concerted disparity-elimination assignments as Htun and Piscopo (2014) suggest. The second approach entails establishing gender parity targets to be attained by political action committees. The third method of encouraging women to run for office includes instituting controlled fund-raising initiatives to assists American women at the grassroots in overcoming their candidate financing challenges. The last technique is to expand the American ranked-choice voting system to reduce negative campaigning incentives while supporting the recruitment of a more diverse slate by political parties’ officials.
Potential Influence of Involving More Women in Government on American Politics
If more women were running America, the United States politics would be different in some ways. One of them is that women in Congress would more significantly and supportively cosponsor and sponsor political bills that target and prioritize civil and human rights, universal education, national security, social welfare, and healthcare policies more than their male counterparts (Atkinson & Windett, 2018). Secondly, the feminization of the American parliamentary composition would bring about significant political shift in the speed of building consensus and coalitions in international bilateral and multilateral summits involving American politicians. Thirdly, if more women were to run the United States government, the quality of administrative deliberation and the legitimacy of the American democratic process would slightly bolster. Lastly, it is almost apparent that the engagement of more women in the American government would alter the politics surrounding federal funding of overseas military action, along with lessening the utilization of political coercion and sanctions in the American foreign policy.
For years, American women have had to fight for political equality in the United States through suffrage. Even after enfranchisement, their participation in elections and running for office has traditionally been deficient. The commitments and endeavors to close gender gaps in women participation in politics and give them a better seat at the American political table can be achieved through political parity laws similar to those used in France. The use of these laws to address gender inequalities in the political interest has the potential of broadening the scope of American policy demands and transforming the nature of the United States democratic process.
References
Atkinson, M. L., & Windett, J. H. (2018). Gender stereotypes and the policy priorities of women in Congress. Political Behavior , 1-21.
Bird, K. (2002). Does parity work? Results from French elections. Feminist Studies , 28 (3), 691.
Boyle, K. M., & Meyer, C. B. (2018). Who is presidential? Women’s political representation, deflection, and the 2016 election. Socius , 4 , 1-16.
Center for American Women and Politics [CAWP]. (2018). Women in the U.S. Congress 2018 . Brunswick, NJ. Rutgers University, Center for American Women and Politics. Retrieved December 10, 2018, from http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/women-us-congress-2018.
Council of Europe Committee Experts. (2017). Study on media coverage of elections with a specific focus on gender equality. Media Pluralism and Transparency of Media Ownership (MSI-MED) 11rev5 .
Griffin, J., Hajnal, Z., Newman, B., & Searle, D. (2017). Political inequality in America: Who loses on spending policy? When policy is less biased? Politics, Groups, and Identities , 1-19.
Haraldsson, A., & Wängnerud, L. (2018). The effect of media sexism on women’s political ambition: evidence from a worldwide study. Feminist Media Studies , 1-17.
Henao, L. A. (December 2018). A look at what happened at the G-20 summit in Argentina. MSN News . Retrieved December 10, 2018, from https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/a-look-at-what-happened-at-the-g-20-summit-in-argentina/ar-BBQo4La#image=BBQm5bY|14.
Htun, M., & Piscopo, J. (2014). Women in politics and policy in Latin America and the Caribbean. In Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum CPPF Working Papers on Women in Politics (Vol. 2).
Lambert, C. (2001). French women in politics: The long road to parity . Brookings Institution, Center on the United States and France.
Mazoue, A. (June 19, 2017). Women to take more than a third of seats in France's parliament. Retrieved December 10, 2018, from https://www.france24.com/en/20170619-france-elects-record-223-women-parliament-national-assembly-legislative-vote.
McIntosh, H. (2013). Women and Politics in the Media. Global Media Journal , 6 (2), 99.
Palmer, B., & Simon, D. M. (2012). Women and congressional elections: A century of change . Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Praud, J., & Dauphin, S. (2011). Parity democracy: Women’s political representation in fifth republic France . UBC Press.
Schwindt-Bayer, L. A. (2005). The incumbency disadvantage and women's election to legislative office. Electoral Studies , 24 (2), 227-244.doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2004.05.001.
Simon, D., Palmer, B., & Villarreal, S. (2014). Gendermandering: The impact of redistricting on the success of women candidates. Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association . Orlando.
Southwell, P. L. (2013a). Gender parity laws in France have been undermined by electoral reforms which work against female candidates. LSE European Politics and Policy (EUROPP) Blog .
Southwell, P. L. (2013b). Gender parity thwarted? The effect of electoral reform on Senate and European Parliamentary elections in France, 1999–2011. French Politics , 11 (2), 169-181.
