Feminist Interventions in Political Representation in the United States and Canada: Training Programs and Legal Quotas

Abstract

the early front-runner in the 2016 Democratic primary, the United States may join Germany, Brazil, and Argentina as democracies with women as their top leaders. Yet, according to Steven Hill, the alarming reality is that American women are still vastly underrepresented in elected office all across the nation and losing ground when compared to other nations. i In 2014, women held 18.5% of the seats in the U.S. Congress, 20.0% of the seats in the Senate, and 18.2% of the seats in the House of Representatives. The United States ranked eightyfourth in the Inter-Parliamentary Union's (IPU) ranking of women in national parliaments. Thus far, no political party has adopted quotas for the selection of candidates for the House of Representatives or the Senate. Women's representation in the United States Congress is a paradox. By socioeconomic and cultural indicators, conditions in the United States are among the best in the world. Yet comparative studies have consistently shown that women's representation in Congress trails that in other advanced industrial democracies. ii 2 With women representing 25.1% of delegates elected to the House of Commons, as of the May 2011 election, Canada was ranked fifty-fourth by the IPU. Canada has been stagnating between 20 and 25 percent, and fell from 21.1% in 2004 to 20.8% in 2006. In Canada, there is no natural progression in percentages of elected women from one election to the next that would make equality in gender representation in politics an Feminist Interventions in Political Representation in the United States and C...

Em meio ao domínio masculino

“…Para Norocel (2018), há uma predominância da questão da maternidade para as mulheres que participam da política, reiterando a ideologia conservadora esperada pelo tradicional papel das mulheres. (Villarga, 2015), Canadá e Estados Unidos (Maillé, 2015), Estados Unidos (Aygün, 2017) e Inglaterra (Berthezène;Gottlieb, 2019).…”

“…As pesquisas trazem dados que mostram que a atuação dos movimentos feministas não apresenta um impacto real no aumento do número de mulheres eleitas na política, reafirmando a necessidade de políticas mais efetivas (Villarga, 2015;Maillé, 2015). Para Villarga (2015), isso pode ser explicado pelo fato de o movimento levantar questões polêmicas (legalização do aborto, reforma agrária, agrotóxicos, adoção entre casais do mesmo sexo) em países com um eleitorado conservador, como o Paraguai, onde foi realizada a pesquisa.…”

“…Já no que diz respeito às iniciativas de movimentos femininos, verifica-se que eles trabalham a favor da promoção da mulher na política, porém os grupos resumem suas atividades em uma tentativa de treinar mulheres para a política eleitoral. Esses grupos não mobilizam para a solicitação das cotas de gênero na política, auxiliando na permanência da estrutura que exclui as mulheres do poder (Maillé, 2015).…”

Making medical leadership more diverse

“…One way to increase representation among medical leadership is quotas. Government quota policies exist in more than 130 countries,21 and corporate quotas have expanded considerably in Europe22 and the US 23. Quota policies are consistently effective for increasing diversity in government and business 2425262728.…”

“…Opponents of quotas often invoke arguments about merit 212529. Critics equate merit with selection based on intrinsic talents, meaning that those who are selected are inherently more suited to leadership than those not selected; however, merit harbours implicit biases and perpetuates non-transparent selection processes 2934.…”