Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Hundred city halls lead to White House
Luanne Traud
Recent columns
- Marking a difficult anniversary
- My daughter, the voter
- A few new Voices would be nice
- A rush to legislate
From the RoundTable blog
Ordinarily I would pay as much attention to National Women's History Month as I would to March's dual designation as National Noodle Month. Unless pasta makers improve on the eight-century-old noodle by extricating its hip-padding calories, comfort food or not, it's hardly worth noting.
However, last week while attending the Roanoke City Council candidate forum at Raleigh Court, I didn't need to be lashed with a pound of wet noodles for it to strike me yet again that when it comes to women and politics, it's still largely a man's world. Women in the last few decades have made tremendous strides in education and business, but they lag far behind in public office. Women express interest in politics, as the audience, roughly an equal mix of men and women, demonstrated. But they still aren't encouraged and groomed to run for office in numbers great enough to make an impact.
Until women gain more ground in municipal posts they can't hope to achieve higher offices. That reality hasn't stopped pollsters recently from finding amusement in posting the hypothetical presidential match-up of Hillary Clinton versus Condoleezza Rice. Neither apparently would win. It's not that Americans aren't ready for a woman in the White House; they adamantly tell pollsters that they are. Just not those women.
Well what about Olympia Snowe? Kay Bailey Hutchison? Susan Collins? Barbara Boxer? Who? Exactly.
Perhaps the more politically astute could peg them as U.S. senators, but, I suspect, most people, if pressed, would sound as astute as Leno's Jaywalkers in identifying these women who are among the most prominent in American politics.
Just 14 U.S. senators are women, and not a one of them is a Virginian. This shouldn't come as a surprise. The commonwealth has yet to send a woman to the U.S. Senate, and it has had just three women members of the House -- having elected the first, Leslie Byrne in 1993 and then limiting her to just one term. Currently two of Virginia's 11-member delegation are women -- Thelma Drake in her first term and Jo Ann Davis elected in 2001 -- about on par with Congress, as a whole, which is composed of 16 percent women.
Since Congress began admitting women, altogether just 203 women have won election to the House of Representatives and 33 to the Senate. If they all had served at the same time, they would still fall far short of gender parity.
OK, so maybe Americans aren't really ready for a woman president or even equality in Congress. Perhaps women are being groomed in state houses. Let's look to Richmond. No woman has yet occupied the top two positions: governor and lieutenant governor. How about the General Assembly? Not much headway there, either. Just seven of the 40 senators and a mere 15 percent of the House of Delegates are women.
As much as generalizations are usually faulty, the rationalization could go: Women aren't serving in Richmond because they remain the prime family caretaker, and a couple of months away from the home front might prove burdensome. Perhaps then, women are finding government service closer to home.
Not if home is the Roanoke Valley. Just one woman currently serves on city council and one on the city school board. They both have declined to seek a second term. Of the 10 candidates vying for three council places, only one is a woman.
Roanoke County fares no better. Not one woman serves as a county supervisor and just one holds a position on the school board.
Even the PTA president at my daughter's elementary school is a man. Not that he isn't doing a fine job; he is. So are many dedicated men in public service, and I don't wish to diminish their role by suggesting that they might wish to give up some of their political seats to women simply to achieve a perception of gender equality.
Rather, some consideration should be given to recognizing that women are just as adept and capable of developing leadership skills and that drawing on their life experiences would enrich policy-making, especially when it comes to discussions of health care, schools and social issues.
Until, at the local level, the public becomes more comfortable in letting women run city halls, the truth that Americans don't want to admit, even to anonymous pollsters, is they really aren't ready for a woman in the White House.
