Comments on: Comparison of Female Elected Officials by Political Orientation

By: lauren

lauren — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:11:06 +0000

Secoded.
The FDP may call itself aliberal party, but obody herein Germany would consider them to be left-leaning. They are very much a party that favours politics usually more associated with the Republican party in the US, such as lowering taxes for big buisnesses, demanding less state intervention etc. Not a left party at all.
TheCDU/CSU is definitely a conservative party though, which has us currently gowerned by a coalition of a cionservative, and a very capitalist-liberal party.
The more left leaning parties (who are part of the Bundestag) would be the Left, and the green party. The SPD used to be a left party, but they lost that definition when they won an election by declaring themselves “the new middle” and put into place some veryanti-social laws, losing the support of many of their traditional voters and directly leading to the creation of the Left party (which includes the old PDS,which itself was created after the German reunion)

By: AmandaLP

AmandaLP — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:31:08 +0000

As Rachel pointed out above, Rwanda has election quotas. However, *every* country listed above the US (in the list) has election quotas.

http://www.quotaproject.org/country.cfm

The analysis on the political leanings of the women in power are interesting, though, and are not quite explained within the quota system.

By: Comparison of Women Legislators by Party and Country « Feminist Looking Glass

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:02:03 +0000

[...] of Women Legislators by Party and Country Posted on November 17, 2009 by Mike Thanks to Sociological Images for pointing out statistics on the percentage of women in the U.S. Senate and House of [...]

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:39:52 +0000

As I am probably a minority on this site (a conservative) let me share a few thoughts with you. First, I would love to see more women and minorities representing my party. We are the party of Lincoln after all. And contrary to some thoughts passed on here, strong and intelligent women are preferred. But we also welcome women who prioritize raising their family without guilt or shame, thats a choice too. That being said, perhaps the left in this country should stop targeting the women and minorities who are conservative. Palin rises and is savaged, Clarence Thomas is nominated and is attacked, several conservative hispanics have been chased out of Washington for being too dumb. Palin is gone, now they attack Bachman. It goes on and on. Please tell the DNC to stop targeting our minorities if you would like to see more of them in the Republican party. But I think liberals actually like it that way.

By: chocolatepie

chocolatepie — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:17:19 +0000

Thomas Frank addresses this in What’s the Matter with Kansas? In previous elections, random colors were used with no staying power at all, but because of the media circus surrounding the 2000 election, the colors on the map became linked to the identities of the political parties. Who knows whether red/blue will stick around forever.

By: Jon

Jon — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:50:14 +0000

There are a number of factors that need to be analyzed to even attempt to explain some of these differences, and electoral method is one such factor that might play an important role.

As Rachel indicated above, Rwanda reserves some seats in the Chamber of Deputies for women. The Chamber of Deputies contains 53 seats that are elected directly based on proportional representation (PR) and 24 seats for women that are elected indirectly through provincial councils. Sweden and Argentina also uses PR for their elections, and Germany employs a mixed member proportional representation system for Bundestag elections.

The PR system, not without its own problems, allows for a wider representation of political parties in national legislative bodies (even with minimum thresholds). But I also wonder if the PR system allows for greater female representation within legislative bodies since parties can provide equal number of men and women on party lists. Sounds like a topic for additional research…

By: Stephanie Z

Stephanie Z — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:30:19 +0000

According to the Pew Research Center, while women are more likely to be affiliated with the Democratic Party than Republican, the disparity isn’t anything like that seen in the House and Senate.

http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=750

By: Rachel

Rachel — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:20:41 +0000

It’s worth noting that Rwanda, and perhaps a few other countries on the list, reserves some seats in its legislature exclusively for women.

By: Maggie

Maggie — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:57:23 +0000

Iraq and Pakistan, both of which have Muslim majorities, have more women legislators than the US, UK, France, or Canada.

Boy, it’s a good thing the US keeps bombing Middle Eastern countries. We need to free the women from those universally terrible Muslim men! But Saudi Arabia’s cool with the States, since they play nice, and we give them a slap on the wrist every once in a while to remind them who’s boss…I guess their zero women legislators are already Free.

By: KD

KD — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:20:20 +0000

Contrarily, I can’t stand the term “female” because it’s used so often – by people that are uncomfortable with discussion of gender, and, probably, real women – to sound clinical and scientific. “Woman” is an identity and “female” is an anatomy.

By: A

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:03:08 +0000

I’d encourage you to say “female senators” exclusively instead of “woman senators.” You wouldn’t say “man senators.”

By: A

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:59:39 +0000

But then we have 30 anti-woman senators who voted against the Franken amendment.

By: MallMonkey

MallMonkey — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:30:49 +0000

There’s a nice NY Times article about it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/08/weekinreview/08zell.html

Wikipedia also has an article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_color#Exceptions_and_variations

By: Jeff Kaufman

Jeff Kaufman — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:27:02 +0000

Wikipedia suggests [1] the us color scheme came from the repeated showing of the electoral map in the aftermath of the messy 2000 presidential election. News outlets standardized to each other, which happened to give results backwards compared to the rest of the world.

Though, if you think of it as: the democrats would, in most countries, be a standard “right” party, and so are blue. The republicans would, elsewhere, be a minor party, and so would be expected to take the best remaining color, which in this case is red.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states#Origins_of_current_color_scheme

By: gwen

gwen — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:00:41 +0000

That makes sense (esp. with the association of Communism with red). Do you know what caused the U.S. color scheme to emerge? I didn’t know it was so recent.