By Brooke Baldwin, CNN
Cara McClure explains her decision this way.
“I wasn’t planning on running, and then I woke up that morning feeling guilty … Because I have so much to offer.”
McClure once battled homelessness as a single mother. But her determination and grit through the years earned her a job as a grassroots organizer, a home for her family and, eventually, gave her the nerve to run for office. Last fall, she was one of the thousands of black women who helped deliver victory for Doug Jones — the first Democrat to represent Alabama in the US Senate in 21 years.
And that got her thinking: Why should she merely support someone else? Why not be the change herself.
She’s far from alone. There’s an unprecedented wave of female candidates — many of them first-timers — running for office up and down the ballot this year. So far, 61 women have run for governor in 2018, nearly doubling the record of female candidates set in 1994, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers.
Women have also set a new record in the race for seats in the US House of Representatives, with a total of 185 women — Democrats and Republicans combined — landing a major-party nomination to run.
And since Donald Trump was elected President, 36,000 women have expressed interest in running for office, according to Stephanie Schriock of Emily’s List, a progressive pro-choice organization that recruits and funds female candidates.
Think about that: 36,000 women.
In Texas, that includes Gina Ortiz Jones, who is running for Congress. If she wins, she’ll be the first Filipina-American to do so — ever. She’s also an Iraq war veteran, first-generation American and a lesbian. Dismayed by the current political climate, Ortiz Jones felt called to step up and serve.
“We’re being tested,” Ortiz Jones said. “The real cost is in 5-10 years from now when I’m looking in the mirror: ‘Did I do everything I could do?’ If the answer isn’t yes, then I failed — this country has given so much to me.”
Equally motivated to serve her community, Paulette Jordan in Idaho has faced down a barrage of predictably dismissive comments. “I’ve heard: ‘She’ll never do it,’ ‘she doesn’t stand a chance,’ ‘never in hell,’ ‘she doesn’t have the money,’ ‘why would she run?’ and ‘she’s wasting her time,'” Jordan said. “People think it needs to be a white male.”
If anything, those comments have made Jordan even more determined to make history and become the country’s first female Native American governor.
I created the series “American Woman in Politics” to learn more about McClure, Ortiz Jones and Jordan — to lean into women who are what I like to call, “extraordinary ordinary women.”
These are women from all corners of the country whose names you might not know but whose stories so many Americans will be able to relate to. They’ve made sacrifices and dared to do more than just complain about politics around the dinner table. They jumped into the deep end, learning how to raise money, create a campaign message and reach voters for the first time in their lives.
These women told me over and over: “We have too much to lose.”
Who surprised me the most? Christina Hagan, a millennial candidate in Ohio and ardent Trump supporter who was running for Congress. There are three times as many Democrats as Republican women running for office this year.
“The Democrat Party has more embraced the idea of being forward with gender, forward with diversity, while the Republican Party is still a lot of old white men,” Hagan, who lost her primary election in May, is quick to point out.
Hagan is underrepresented in what she refers to as an “an old boy’s club.” She said that needs to change. She’s absolutely right.
I dedicated my first American Woman series to my mother. She and millions in her generation felt they couldn’t use their voices, but they taught their daughters they must use theirs.
I dedicate this second series to you, the women reading this right now. Perhaps you’ve flirted with running for student government or school board or Congress. Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to be elected to US Congress, once famously said that “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”
Watch these episodes. Be inspired. Rise up. Act. Soon enough, you won’t need to bother with a folding chair.
Women In Politics – The Fight To End Violence Against Women
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Despite being featured in 2011 and 2012 by Forbes as the third most powerful woman in the world, former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff had her competence, capacity, and skills constantly challenged and undermined back home. In one of many examples, a magazine cover portrays the former president as an unstable, crazy, and hysterical woman unable to run the country. The cover headline, translated from Portuguese, reads: “The President’s nervous outbursts.”
Brazil is certainly not alone in disparaging its female leaders, and women in politics from around the world have received similar comments from newspapers for years. The same discourse accusing female politicians of being aggressive, unbalanced, and unfit to represent their countries was used to attack Hillary Clinton in a political report that highlights her “explosive attitude,” and leveraged against Cristina Kishner, who was characterized as someone to be feared due to her aggressive actions. The resemblance between these stereotypical reviews is astonishing.
During Dilma Rousseff’s term as Brazil’s first female president, she received an unprecedented number of attacks in the form of memes, jokes, and comments, which quickly escalated into pure harassment.
However, even six years after her impeachment, memes about the politician continue to spread throughout Brazilian social media. Such jokes tend to be cruel and often rely on sexual and prejudicial approaches.
Worldwide, despite increases in the number of women at the highest levels of political power, widespread gender inequalities persist, according to the 2021 edition of the IPU-UN Women Map of Women in Politics, with disparities in female representation in governments around the globe remaining. According to the World Economic Forum, the greatest gender inequalities are in politics, and, at our current pace of progress, it will take 135.6 years to close the gender gap worldwide. In a political and economic climate unfavorable to women and mostly dominated by men, it is not difficult to understand how, with the support of private media groups, internet memes criticizing both Brazil’s former president as well as female public figures around the world become successful.
It’s certainly possible for politics and entertainment — collectively known as “politainment” in some circles — to positively interact and even democratize important public debates. Internet memes, which are easy to understand, digest, and circulate, represent a large portion of politainment due to their simple and colloquial language. However, the success of this kind of entertainment depends on the attention it receives on social media and the number of shares and reactions it can trigger. Consequently, politainment can also allow for the spread of extreme and grotesque language through social media algorithms and other means of popular communication. Scientist Hilda Bastian affirms this duality, writing that “Humor can be used to create a quick bridge between people. But it can also reinforce outgroups’ otherness and relatively marginal social status.”
These ostracizing impacts of malicious political humor are exemplified nowhere better than in Brazil.The image spread on Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter throughout her last months in office, during which she had her worst public approval ratings. The slander was so vile that United Nations Women Brazil explicitly condemned the act.
The worst aspect of these rumors, jokes, and comments targeting female political leaders is that they have nothing to do with actual politics or policy. Moreover, the meme format of much of these communications seems to circulate freely on social media, regardless of such posts’ misogyny or prejudice, thus normalizing cruel and offensive language. Her case and that of many other female public figures are clear examples of female objectification and sexualization, both of which only encourage continued discrimination and violence — not democratic debate.
Even though Dilma Rousseff’s story is evidence of how far-gone and extreme sexist jokes can be, it is important to understand the reasons behind their rapid and intense escalation. More recently, Amaral received violent comments after she proposed legislation that would guarantee feminine hygiene products in public spaces. According to the congresswoman, sexist jokes and comments normalize denigrating attitudes towards women and allow for those comments to escalate into harassment, stalking, and threats.
This is damaging not only because it encourages society to question the competence and intelligence of highly-qualified women breaking glass ceilings in politics, but also because it reinforces unrealistic expectations related to the beauty and femininity of public female figures. As discussed at the beginning of this article, strong women who express their thoughts and opinions are pegged as “hysterical,” “unbalanced,” and less feminine. Research has already found that women who do not represent the ideal female — the stereotypical polite, empathetic, passive, and naive subject — tend to receive less appreciation from the public, and consequently fewer votes in elections.
As an example, the constant comments about Hillary Clinton’s fashion choices and appearance during the 2016 presidential election focused not on her political proposals or experience, but on her choice to wear pants. In another situation, a Fox News representative stated that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez needed to get pregnant to “further her political career,” dismissing productive political discussion by bringing a traditional expectation of women to the table.
It’s true that traditional media and political memes communicate political and civic developments to the masses in important ways and can be mechanisms for democratic debates on social media. There is no doubt people should discuss politics through fun, colloquial, engaging, and relaxed speech. However, it is important to interrogate the motive behind a joke involving political characters: Are we engaging in a conversation about public policies and decision-making, or are we reinforcing old prejudices against underrepresented groups?
This harsh reality keeps many women from staying in politics or joining the sphere at all, and as the issue of gender asymmetry in politics persists, the concerns of the world’s 3.9 billion women may remain unaddressed. The fifth sustainable development goal established by the United Nations for 2030 is gender equality for a reason: Empowering women, half the world’s population, in all fields is essential for an equal and sustainable global society, and to do so, we must start with the basics — respect and empathy toward women in the upper echelons of political power and in our everyday lives.
This goal has implications beyond politics: Master of Public Policy candidate at Harvard Kennedy School and founder of EmpoderaClima Renata Koch Alvarenga explained in an interview with the HPR that women are statistically more vulnerable to climate change due to socio-economic factors, while studies conclude that nations with higher proportions of women representatives have a greater probability of ratifying environmental treaties.
In an effort to diminish the gap in the representation of women in politics, some countries have adopted inclusive policies. Both women and men exercising political leadership must commit to the women’s rights platform among the highest political priorities.”
Thanks buzziova
