“A few years ago I took my children on a tour of the state Capitol building. My daughter was very interested in the art — the woodwork, the decorative tiles, and the paintings. After viewing the gallery of governor portraits, she turned to me and asked, ‘Where are all the girls?’”
Bernadette Austin, associate director of the University of California, Davis, Center for Regional Change, studies regional issues and demographics in California, and told this story in a recent newsletter to stakeholders.
“We know that representation matters,” she wrote. “When we see people like ourselves in positions of leadership, it signals that someone who shares our history and worldview is making decisions that reflect our interests and values.”
California, as Austin’s daughter observed, has never had a woman governor, although nationwide, 44 women have served or serve as governors of U.S. states, with a handful having served as governors of U.S. territories. Nine women currently serve as governor of a state.
Persistent gender gap over most of half century
As the 2020 elections draw near, an all-time record of six women ran for president on the Democratic ticket. One candidate, Sen. Kamala Harris, dropped out in late fall 2019. Some might call that number — which tripled the previous record — a victory for women’s representation in politics.
Not so fast.
While women have made great strides in entering the workforce, running companies and getting elected to Congress, there has remained a persistent gender gap in politics over the past 40 years, according to Xiaoling Shu, a UC Davis professor of sociology who studies this phenomenon.
The facts about women in political office:
U.S. House of Representatives: 102; or 23 percent
Senate: 25, or 25 percent
Heads of state: About 24 women at any given time
Women remain less than a third of all elected officials in the nation in 2019 (Source: Rutgers)
Shu’s latest research shows those attitudes have changed slightly since 2016, when the U.S. electorate nominated the first woman ever to a major political party, Hillary Clinton. She ran against Donald Trump for president and won the popular vote by almost 3 million votes, but ultimately lost in the Electoral College, which cost her the election.
The 2020 Presidential Election
As of February 2019, six women had formally announced their candidacy for president:
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii)
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York)
Sen. Kamala Harris* (D-California)
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota)
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts)
Marianne Williamson
This is the first time in history that more than two women competed in the same major party’s presidential primary process. (Source: Center for American Women and Politics, Rutgers)
*Harris dropped out of the race as this story was being written. Read UC Davis research about how Harris’ support may transfer to other candidates.
“Of all (gender) attitudes analyzed,” said Shu and her co-author of a recent paper, Kelsey D. Meagher, also of UC Davis, “Americans hold the most liberal attitudes toward women in politics, with no gender gap and little educational difference on this issue.” Their findings were published in May 2019 by the American Sociological Association. Women and men agree that both sexes are equally suited emotionally for politics, according to the survey the researchers used — General Social Survey of 57,000 people — but the period between 2016-18 saw a larger increase among women than men in supporting for women in politics.
“Women’s support for women in politics jumped between 2016 and 2018 after two decades of minimal growth,” Shu said.
Public polls tell a similar story. In 2018, a Pew Research Center study found that 61 percent of Americans felt positive about more women running for office in 2018. The number of people voicing support for women in politics was higher than in previous Pew surveys. There was little consensus, however, in these surveys, as to whether more women in politics would bring change to policy and politics, and even less agreement on whether women were being elected in larger numbers for a reason, such as the #MeToo movement, President Trump, or because Hillary Clinton was almost elected.
In recent decades, women in the United States have cast ballots in elections at higher numbers than men.
In the 2016 general election, 63 percent of the citizen voting-age population of women in the U.S. turned out to vote in the 2016 general election compared to 59.3 percent of that population for men, according to Mindy Romero, a UC Davis alumna who is founder and director of the California Civic Engagement Project at University of Southern California. She researches political behavior and race and ethnicity in voting for the university’s Sol Price School of Public Policy in Sacramento.
A hundred years of voting
Still, 100 years after women got the right to vote by amendment to the U.S. Constitution, women make up more than half the population, yet account for less than one-third of all elected officials at city, state and national levels combined.
Women in Congress
Women have increased their representation in the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as the Senate, in recent years. Today’s House of Representatives has 126 women, which amounts to 23.6 percent of seats. In the Senate, there are 25 women, accounting for a quarter of the seats. The 116th Congress was the first to include Native American and Muslim women. Credit: Center for American Women and Politics, Rutgers University
The share of candidates who are women varies by office type. Whereas women make up 42 percent of all school board candidates, they are only 27 percent of all city council candidates, according to research co-written by UC Davis assistant professor Rachel Bernhard. She is a political science researcher who focuses on gender, class and race in politics.
An even smaller share of mayoral candidates are women, coming in at 21 percent, researchers said.
“One thing we really see in this study is that women are doing great — but mostly in offices where people assume they are qualified due to their gender, like school board races.” — Rachel Bernhard
“When the stereotype is that women aren’t qualified — mostly in executive offices like mayors — they do worse than male candidates, even though they have more government experience,” Bernhard added.
There are tremendous challenges to achieving parity, echoes a nationwide study, “Unfinished Business: Women Running in 2018 and Beyond,” from Rutgers University Center for American Women and Politics.
For instance, women of color made historic gains in the 2018 election, but remain far behind Caucasian women and certainly behind Caucasian men, who dominate politics. Moreover, gains for women in the 2018 election were concentrated among Democratic women at every level of office, while the number of Republican women in office fell short of previous highs, according to Rutgers researchers.
“Achieving gender parity among candidates and officeholders will be unlikely without Republican women,” the Rutgers researchers said.
“The Republican Party’s reaction to women’s losses in 2018 and recruitment efforts in 2020 will serve as one indicator of whether the party serves as a gateway or gatekeeper to Republican women’s candidacy and officeholding.”
Women’s rights and suffrage
Despite the persisting political gap in officeholders, American women have a long history of fighting for their rights in politics. The United States was a “pioneer in the development of women’s rights, ideas and activism,” wrote Ellen Carol DuBois, UCLA professor of history emerita, in “Women’s Rights, Suffrage, and Citizenship, 1789-1920.” This is the 20th chapter in The Oxford Handbook of American Women’s and Gender History, edited by UC Davis historians Lisa Materson and Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor.
“Nothing about the history of women’s rights, especially women’s political rights on a national level, reflected the automatic workings of American democracy,” DuBois continued. Instead, she wrote, it was women who were determined to have an equal place in the nation’s political affairs, who pushed long and hard, who were able to achieve anything. It took more than a half century of steady political effort.
Women played an active role in the republic being established as 13 colonies broke free of British rule. They persevered, for example, in rejecting imported fabric in favor of the cloth they made at their wheels and looms. They formed “daughters of liberty” clubs to match the “sons.” One of the first histories of the American Revolution was written by a woman, Mercy Otis Warren, of Boston. Some even fought along with soldiers, in addition to nursing, cooking, washing, and raising money for them. But, DuBois documented, they went unrecognized as being part of the polity.
Abigail Adams in 1776 famously admonished her husband, in her letters, to “remember the ladies,” in the “new code of laws” governing the United States.
She pointed out to John Adams and other members of the Continental Congress as they prepared to declare independence from Great Britain that the harsh English laws governing marriage could make husbands “tyrants” over their economically dependent wives. Yet those laws stood.
A Progressive turn, and California
Women have increased their representation in the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as the Senate, in recent years. Today’s House of Representatives has 126 women, which amounts to 23.6 percent of seats. In the Senate, there are 25 women, accounting for a quarter of the seats. The 116th Congress was the first to include Native American and Muslim women. Courtesy, Special Collections, UC Davis Library
By 1912, Progressives formed a third political party, taking some of those in the Republican party and women supporters with them. But many black women remained loyal to the party of Lincoln. As with most third parties in history, much of its growth split the votes, both literally, with the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson in 1912, and figuratively, through party loyalties to women’s suffrage and other issues.
“In California, by contrast, a 1911 referendum stimulated by the rise of Progressivism narrowly succeeded in enfranchising the state’s one million women,” wrote DuBois. A network of women activists formed clubs, unions and suffrage societies and organized what would now be seen as a typical campaign using pictures, telephones and modern graphic design to promote “votes for women” rather than the old-fashioned “suffrage.” They printed leaflets in Spanish for Latino voters and supported labor reforms.
By 1915, 10 states, all west of the Mississippi, had revised their constitutions to enfranchise women. It was clear, wrote DuBois, that the only way to get all women the vote was through an amendment to the federal Constitution.
By 1921, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the 19th amendment granting women the right to vote only applied to the states, so Puerto Rican women and Filipinas would organize separately, which didn’t succeed fully until more than a decade later.
The continuing gender gap in voting
On the whole, women lean significantly more Democratic than men, often by 10 percentage points, said Romero. In California, that gap is even wider. Among women, notably, married women lean slightly more Republican than single women.
In surveys, women consistently cite the economy, health care and education as crucial issues that determine how they vote — rating them more highly than men do. As a group, women often find themselves more affected by economic declines. They vote issues that affect their economic vulnerability and are more likely to prefer an active government that produces a stronger social safety net — a key difference in viewpoint separating Republican and Democratic party platforms, Romero said.
“Race is a key contributor to the huge gender gap in our diverse state,” Romero said.
“Female voters of color, led by California’s significant Latina population, are driving the gender difference in voting. And both California’s already large proportions of single women and women of color are on the rise.” — Mindy Romero
Women and the black vote
A black woman votes in a recent election. Black women have played an integral role as active voters in the United States. Credit: UC Davis/Getty Images
Despite the large gap that remains for women of color in politics, black women also had an important part of grassroots politics even before they had the right to vote, and it is this strong tradition dating back to Reconstruction that helped pave the way to propel Barack Obama into the presidency. These are the findings of UC Davis historian Lisa Materson, author of the 2009 book For the Freedom of Her Race: Black Women and Electoral Politics in Illinois, 1877-1932.
Materson, associate professor of history, illustrates in her book that as African American women migrated beyond the reach of southern white supremacists, they became active voters, canvassers, suffragists, campaigners and lobbyists. They mobilized, gaining a voice in national party politics and electing representatives who would push for the enforcement of the Reconstruction Amendments in the South. When black men got the right to vote in 1870, black women, though disfranchised, helped them to remain informed and vote for causes important to their communities.
Obama’s national victories, she wrote in a blog as he entered his second term as president, emerged out of the specific historical context of Chicago politics and black women’s political activism.
“That the nation’s first African American president holds deep political ties to Chicago is no coincidence because Chicago has long been a key historical site of black political power in the U.S.” — Lisa Materson
The gender difference in voter turnout continues today, and is greater for blacks than the general population or whites, noted Romero, of USC. African American women have had much higher turnout than their male counterparts in every election during the past two decades. In 2016, Romero said, African American women voter turnout was 9 percent higher than for African American men. This marked the largest difference in black voter turnout since 1996.
Historically, achieving the vote came in stages
The first women vote in a general election in California. Courtesy California State Library
“Women in Illinois acquired voting rights in three stages: suffrage for school officials in 1891, expanded suffrage for many municipal and federal offices in 1913, and the full franchise in 1920,” wrote Materson in the introduction to her book. It was similar in other states, with women getting pieces of voting rights a little at a time before the enactment of the 19th Amendment.
Between 1915 and 1928, black voters in Chicago helped to put more black men into office than any other American city, including a black Congressman, Oscar DePriest, said Materson. His 1928 victory made him the first black American to serve in Congress since 1901. Black men continued to win in Chicago, and Obama was no exception. He lost one election, but won a seat in the U.S. Senate that made him the nation’s fifth black senator, giving him national recognition and eventually, the presidency.
Women candidates and the ‘double bind’
Scholars are looking at how women candidates are viewed differently than men, particularly in media coverage. Erin C. Cassese, associate professor of political science at University of Delaware, is among many researchers looking at the “double bind” — or the need for candidates to embody a particular mix of both masculine and feminine traits in order to appear palatable to American voters. “The double bind was a challenge for Hillary Clinton’s candidacies in 2008 and 2016, and we will evaluate how it manifests in 2020,” she said in an analysis published by Rutgers.
At this writing, Elizabeth Warren was a frontrunner among Democratic challengers to President Trump. Christine Jahnke, a nationally recognized speech coach and author based in Washington, D.C., and founder of Positive Communications, said Warren has a style that differs from her male counterparts in the election.
“Warren is continuously redefining what leadership looks and sounds like. It’s exciting how she energized huge crowds with policy solutions, not bombastic rhetoric,” Jahnke wrote in the Rutgers analysis.
“Warren calls out corruption while speaking empathetically for those who’ve lost the most. And voters are listening.”
Amber Boydstun, associate professor of political science at UC Davis and a specialist on elections and media said it remains to be seen if Warren will continue to energize the electorate. “We’ll need to wait and see whether voters’ enthusiasm for Warren is enough to break through the double-bind barrier.”
OTTAWA – The federal agency that investigates election infractions found insufficient evidence to support suggestions Beijing wielded undue influence against the Conservatives in the Vancouver area during the 2021 general election.
The Commissioner of Canada Elections’ recently completed review of the lingering issue was tabled Tuesday at a federal inquiry into foreign interference.
The review focused on the unsuccessful campaign of Conservative candidate Kenny Chiu in the riding of Steveston-Richmond East and the party’s larger efforts in the Vancouver area.
It says the evidence uncovered did not trigger the threshold to initiate a formal investigation under the Canada Elections Act.
Investigators therefore recommended that the review be concluded.
A summary of the review results was shared with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP. The review says both agencies indicated the election commissioner’s findings were consistent with their own understanding of the situation.
During the exercise, the commissioner’s investigators met with Chinese Canadian residents of Chiu’s riding and surrounding ones.
They were told of an extensive network of Chinese Canadian associations, businesses and media organizations that offers the diaspora a lifestyle that mirrors that of China in many ways.
“Further, this diaspora has continuing and extensive commercial, social and familial relations with China,” the review says.
Some interviewees reported that this “has created aspects of a parallel society involving many Chinese Canadians in the Lower Mainland area, which includes concerted support, direction and control by individuals from or involved with China’s Vancouver consulate and the United Front Work Department (UFWD) in China.”
Investigators were also made aware of members of three Chinese Canadian associations, as well as others, who were alleged to have used their positions to influence the choice of Chinese Canadian voters during the 2021 election in a direction favourable to the interests of Beijing, the review says.
These efforts were sparked by elements of the Conservative party’s election platform and by actions and statements by Chiu “that were leveraged to bolster claims that both the platform and Chiu were anti-China and were encouraging anti-Chinese discrimination and racism.”
These messages were amplified through repetition in social media, chat groups and posts, as well as in Chinese in online, print and radio media throughout the Vancouver area.
Upon examination, the messages “were found to not be in contravention” of the Canada Elections Act, says the review, citing the Supreme Court of Canada’s position that the concept of uninhibited speech permeates all truly democratic societies and institutions.
The review says the effectiveness of the anti-Conservative, anti-Chiu campaigns was enhanced by circumstances “unique to the Chinese diaspora and the assertive nature of Chinese government interests.”
It notes the election was prefaced by statements from China’s ambassador to Canada and the Vancouver consul general as well as articles published or broadcast in Beijing-controlled Chinese Canadian media entities.
“According to Chinese Canadian interview subjects, this invoked a widespread fear amongst electors, described as a fear of retributive measures from Chinese authorities should a (Conservative) government be elected.”
This included the possibility that Chinese authorities could interfere with travel to and from China, as well as measures being taken against family members or business interests in China, the review says.
“Several Chinese Canadian interview subjects were of the view that Chinese authorities could exercise such retributive measures, and that this fear was most acute with Chinese Canadian electors from mainland China. One said ‘everybody understands’ the need to only say nice things about China.”
However, no interview subject was willing to name electors who were directly affected by the anti-Tory campaign, nor community leaders who claimed to speak on a voter’s behalf.
Several weeks of public inquiry hearings will focus on the capacity of federal agencies to detect, deter and counter foreign meddling.
In other testimony Tuesday, Conservative MP Garnett Genuis told the inquiry that parliamentarians who were targeted by Chinese hackers could have taken immediate protective steps if they had been informed sooner.
It emerged earlier this year that in 2021 some MPs and senators faced cyberattacks from the hackers because of their involvement with the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which pushes for accountability from Beijing.
In 2022, U.S. authorities apparently informed the Canadian government of the attacks, and it in turn advised parliamentary IT officials — but not individual MPs.
Genuis, a Canadian co-chair of the inter-parliamentary alliance, told the inquiry Tuesday that it remains mysterious to him why he wasn’t informed about the attacks sooner.
Liberal MP John McKay, also a Canadian co-chair of the alliance, said there should be a clear protocol for advising parliamentarians of cyberthreats.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.
WINNIPEG – The federal New Democrats have kept a longtime stronghold in the Elmwood-Transcona riding in Winnipeg.
The NDP’s Leila Dance won a close battle over Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds, and says the community has spoken in favour of priorities such as health care and the cost of living.
Elmwood-Transcona has elected a New Democrat in every election except one since the riding was formed in 1988.
The seat became open after three-term member of Parliament Daniel Blaikie resigned in March to take a job with the Manitoba government.
A political analyst the NDP is likely relieved to have kept the seat in what has been one of their strongest urban areas.
Christopher Adams, an adjunct professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba, says NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh worked hard to keep the seat in a tight race.
“He made a number of visits to Winnipeg, so if they had lost this riding it would have been disastrous for the NDP,” Adams said.
The strong Conservative showing should put wind in that party’s sails, Adams added, as their percentage of the popular vote in Elmwood-Transcona jumped sharply from the 2021 election.
“Even though the Conservatives lost this (byelection), they should walk away from it feeling pretty good.”
Dance told reporters Monday night she wants to focus on issues such as the cost of living while working in Ottawa.
“We used to be able to buy a cart of groceries for a hundred dollars and now it’s two small bags. That is something that will affect everyone in this riding,” Dance said.
Liberal candidate Ian MacIntyre placed a distant third,
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau say the Liberals have “all sorts of reflections” to make after losing a second stronghold in a byelection in Montreal Monday night.
His comments come as the Liberal cabinet gathers for its first regularly scheduled meeting of the fall sitting of Parliament, which began Monday.
Trudeau’s Liberals were hopeful they could retain the Montreal riding of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, but those hopes were dashed after the Bloc Québécois won it in an extremely tight three-way race with the NDP.
Louis-Philippe Sauvé, an administrator at the Institute for Research in Contemporary Economics, beat Liberal candidate Laura Palestini by less than 250 votes. The NDP finished about 600 votes back of the winner.
It is the second time in three months that Trudeau’s party lost a stronghold in a byelection. In June, the Conservatives defeated the Liberals narrowly in Toronto-St. Paul’s.
The Liberals won every seat in Toronto and almost every seat on the Island of Montreal in the last election, and losing a seat in both places has laid bare just how low the party has fallen in the polls.
“Obviously, it would have been nicer to be able to win and hold (the Montreal riding), but there’s more work to do and we’re going to stay focused on doing it,” Trudeau told reporters ahead of this morning’s cabinet meeting.
When asked what went wrong for his party, Trudeau responded “I think there’s all sorts of reflections to take on that.”
In French, he would not say if this result puts his leadership in question, instead saying his team has lots of work to do.
Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet will hold a press conference this morning, but has already said the results are significant for his party.
“The victory is historic and all of Quebec will speak with a stronger voice in Ottawa,” Blanchet wrote on X, shortly after the winner was declared.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and his party had hoped to ride to a win in Montreal on the popularity of their candidate, city councillor Craig Sauvé, and use it to further their goal of replacing the Liberals as the chief alternative to the Conservatives.
The NDP did hold on to a seat in Winnipeg in a tight race with the Conservatives, but the results in Elmwood-Transcona Monday were far tighter than in the last several elections. NDP candidate Leila Dance defeated Conservative Colin Reynolds by about 1,200 votes.
Singh called it a “big victory.”
“Our movement is growing — and we’re going to keep working for Canadians and building that movement to stop Conservative cuts before they start,” he said on social media.
“Big corporations have had their governments. It’s the people’s time.”
New Democrats recently pulled out of their political pact with the government in a bid to distance themselves from the Liberals, making the prospects of a snap election far more likely.
Trudeau attempted to calm his caucus at their fall retreat in Nanaimo, B.C, last week, and brought former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney on as an economic adviser in a bid to shore up some credibility with voters.
The latest byelection loss will put more pressure on him as leader, with many polls suggesting voter anger is more directed at Trudeau himself than at Liberal policies.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.
