Previous research has documented that female state legislators are more interested than their male counterparts in supporting education and other public programs that meet the needs of families with children. To be sure, research to date leaves much more to be learned about the conditions that translate a female legislative presence into extra support for families. Democratic Party control of legislatures may magnify women’s influence, and so may an active women’s movement in any given state.

In addition to asking how women’s presence in legislatures translates into more support for families, we should also wonder about the extent of female legislative support. Does women’s legislative impact extend to policies that aim to help elders as well as younger families with children? And, if so, do states with more women in their legislatures actually prove to be better places for older people to live and flourish? We have investigated these issues as part of a broader project comparing state-level public policies that help people at various stages of aging.

Women Legislators and Age-Friendly Policies

Taking these varied priorities into account, we have identified and measured four key ways in which public policies in the fifty U.S. states make a difference for older residents – and we have checked to see if women in state legislatures tend to further each kind of public policy.

• Do states offer meaningful life pursuits through volunteer opportunities and supportive communities?
• Do states deliver quality health care for senior residents through Medicare-supported services from physicians and hospitals?
• Do states make high-quality facilities for long-term care accessible and affordable through Medicaid (which is jointly governed and funded by states and the federal government)?
• Do states adapt Medicaid to offer long-term care and services in the home and in community venues to aging residents who require extra daily help?

When we compare states according to how well they perform in these areas, legislatures with proportionally more women do make a difference, it turns out. For three of these four varying kinds of state efforts, we found that, as the proportion of state legislative seats held by women increases, so too does state support for age-friendly policies. In one policy realm, however, a greater female presence is associated with a less age-friendly outcome: states with more women in their legislatures are less likely to support accessible, high quality nursing home facilities funded by Medicaid. But this downside goes hand in hand with what might be considered an upside in the eyes of many older Americans, because states that do less to foster nursing facilities tend to support home and community-based forms of long-term care. Many seniors want non-institutional kinds of care, so it may well be that women legislators are more in tune with the preferences of their states’ older residents than are their male counterparts.

Age-Friendly Policies Make a Real Difference

Hip hip hooray for women legislators! Photo by Salvation Army USA West via Flickr.com

In our comparisons of the U.S. states as sites for meaningful, healthy aging, we went beyond just tallying up different kinds of community facilities and public programs – to see if different policies add up to real-life differences for older people. In key respects, the answer is yes; different state policies do matter. States with strong community supports and volunteer opportunities do enhance the sense that life is meaningful for older residents, and good quality health care through Medicare is positively and strongly related to life expectancy. Healthier seniors live longer in states with good quality care. In addition, both accessible, good quality nursing facilities and community-based long-term care programs also lengthen lives and improve the quality of life for older men and women.

A clear bottom line thus emerges from our research exploring political, policy, and social patterns across the U.S. states. A stronger presence of women in state legislatures turns out to be good for older men and women. Just as female legislators weigh in on behalf of meeting the needs of families with children, they also appear more likely than male legislators to further policies that make a real difference in medical care and community support for senior residents. As the United States moves deeper into an era where support and care for older people will be an ever more central concern in society and public policy, the growing presence of elected female legislators will almost certainly help the United States face these issues and find family-friendly solutions. Toward the end of life as well as at its beginning and during the middle, women in office seem sensitive to the practical concerns of families and individuals in need of support. Across America, the states whose voters more often send women to serve in their legislatures are therefore likely to be the states best prepared to meet the growing challenges of an aging population.

Until last year, the state of Maine took advantage of this flexibility to provide extended help to less than 15% of its caseload. Some people could continue to get benefits if they complied with all welfare rules, including the rule about seeking or preparing for employment. But in 2011, the Maine legislature voted to make the sixty-month limit virtually absolute. Exceptions would be granted only if people were awarded a special hardship extension due to coping with disability, domestic violence, or the need to care for a disabled family member.

When the new law took effect in 2012, more than 2,000 Maine families were affected. About 44% requested hardship extensions, but only a quarter of all people scheduled for termination got the exception. Since January 1, 2012, more than 1,500 Maine families, including 2,700 children have lost cash benefits. Who are these families and what are their circumstances? To answer this question and consider whether welfare has adequate protections for the most vulnerable, I surveyed a sample of 54 Maine families whose benefits were stopped and did some additional in-depth personal interviews to probe people’s experiences more deeply.

What We Know about Families Who Need Long-Term Welfare Assistance

Findings from other states tell the same story. Research studies consistently show that a small subset of recipients of Temporary Aid to Needy Families require specialized assistance and ongoing support to be able to provide for their families, because they are grappling with one or more severe difficulties such as physical or mental health problems, caring for a disabled child, the aftermath of domestic violence, or educational deficits and learning disabilities.

The Lives of Impoverished Maine Families Who Lost Benefits

The families I surveyed for the Maine Time Limit Study look like those all across America who ask for more than temporary welfare assistance. More than two-fifths of the Maine respondents losing assistance in 2012 had less than a high school education; 39% reported they had a work-limiting disability, and 26% reported a child or other dependent with a disability.

After benefits were cut off, many of these respondents, including families with children, were left facing increasingly draconian circumstances.

• Very low incomes. The typical (“median”) income of families losing assistance was $260 a month, or $3,120 a year – which equals only 16% of the federal poverty level.
• Very low wages, if any. The average wage for the respondents who were working at the time they filled out the survey was $9 per hour.
• Sometimes no money. About 40% had no income at all after losing cash assistance.
• Barriers to finding or holding jobs. Survey respondents who were not working pointed to barriers ranging from personal health issues or the need to care for a disabled family member, to a lack of affordable childcare, inadequate skills for the available job opportunities, and the overall scarcity of jobs.
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  Photo by DrivingtheNortheast via Flickr.com

  Disruptions in daily life. Nearly 70% of the terminated families reported that they had to go to a food bank after losing benefits; more than one in three lost a utility service, such as electricity. One in five reported being evicted from their home and having to relocate, often to overcrowded living conditions or to a homeless shelter.

Some findings in our study seemed surprising, given that Maine provides educational programs to welfare recipients and still allows very needy people to apply for hardship exceptions to the five-year limit. But such extra help had not reached many of the respondents I studied:

• Three-quarters of those who said they needed more education to find a job did not have a high school diploma, yet only a handful had participated in an educational or training program sponsored by Maine’s welfare system.
• One in four respondents said they did not understand they could apply for a hardship extension – and many of those who knew they could apply said that their caseworkers discouraged them from doing so.

What Should Be Done?

If welfare in Maine – and beyond – is to meet its core objectives of protecting families and enabling employment for people who can work, several new steps are clearly called for:

• Improve assessment of health problems and family or educational barriers to employment, so that they can be addressed earlier, well before families hit the five-year limit.
• Ensure more effective administration of applications for “hardship” extensions, so that people clearly qualified for such help do not fall through the cracks.
• Make hardship extensions possible for welfare recipients who cannot find jobs – due to high unemployment in their area or because they lack a high school diploma, speak little English, or suffer a learning disability.

The kinds of policies that can reduce violence against women are well known – but not all countries adopt them. What makes governments respond to the problem of violence against women? Why do some countries adopt policies earlier than others? To unravel the factors at work, our research probes developments in 70 countries between 1975 and 2005. We conclude that international norms and autonomous feminist organizational efforts are the keys to getting the problem of violence against women on the agenda and prodding governments to take action.

Policies That Work

We know how to stop violence against women. Experts, activists and more than 180 governments have agreed in principle on the most important steps that can be taken:

• Instead of relying on general laws about murder or assault, adopt laws that name violence against women as a specific crime.
• While prosecuting abusers, provide counseling, shelters, and other housing and legal assistance to help women recover from family abuse or leave abusive relationships.
• To improve victims’ experiences with public agencies, provide special training and create units of police, social workers, judges, and other professionals dedicated to dealing with violence against women.
• Educate the general public to raise awareness of the scourge of violence against women and spread knowledge of laws against such violence.
• Make specific, extra efforts to help particularly vulnerable groups of women, such as immigrants, rural women, and women from disadvantaged racial and ethnic backgrounds.

The Role of International Norms and Autonomous Women’s Advocacy

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Today, people across the globe see violence against women as a violation of human rights – but this is a relatively recent development. Combating violence was not always seen as central to women’s rights advocacy or human rights efforts. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948 failed to mention violence against women, and when the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979, it did not mention fighting violence against women as a priority for action. Today’s global consensus about this issue reflects the growing influence of feminist advocacy and ideas.

The key to change has been autonomous feminist mobilization in national and transnational settings. Research reveals that broad transformations – such as economic development, political democratization, or changing societal attitudes about gender roles – do not, in and of themselves, push the issue of violence against women to the fore. Women in high office do not suffice, and mixed-gender organizations such as political parties or government bureaucracies may not recognize this priority – unless feminist groups organize on their own to push for remedies.

Feminist organizations can promote international and regional agreements, conventions and declarations – such as the 1994 Inter-American Convention on Violence Against Women, and the 1995 Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Feminists have cooperated across national boundaries to create such conventions, which turn out to be helpful in shifting public opinion within many nations.

International treaties make the most difference when local activist organizations can invoke their provisions and push for relevant domestic measures. In many nations, women’s organizations have raised awareness about rights recognized by transnational treaties and invoked treaties to help train judges, police, and other officials. Pointing to international agreements can help activists mobilize support, alter the expectations of domestic actors, and lobby national legislatures to change discriminatory laws.

Lessons for the Future

• Especially when regionally focused, international agreements can be important tools to advance women’s rights, but their effectiveness depends on actions by autonomous women’s groups operating within each nation and local context.
• General-purpose, mixed-gender organizations usually will not do enough to advance women’s rights and safety. Of course, political parties, government agencies, and human rights organizations can be important allies, but real progress in combating violence and advancing specific rights for women depends on initiatives by autonomous civil society organizations devoted to such goals. Supporting and nurturing such feminist organizations is a critical mechanism for advancing women’s rights across the globe.

But what caused rates of imprisonment to shoot upward in the first place? Explanations abound, yet many obscure as much as they reveal because they either ignore or minimize the consequences of crime. Americans of color are more likely to be incarcerated – and they are also more likely to be victims of violent crime. My research explores the political and policy consequences of the facts about victimization. How did people of color, specifically African Americans, respond to rising crime rates? What role did black politics play in the development of mass incarceration?

Looking Closely at Harlem

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Numerous studies connect mass incarceration to drug policy, and many identify the passage of the Rockefeller drug laws in May 1973 as a critical watershed in the spread of punitive criminal justice policies and the turn toward imprisoning more felons for longer times. My research looks
more fully at the social realities behind the enactment of new drug laws. Rather than focusing on Albany, the New York state capital, I look closely at Harlem, an African American community that was hit hardest by rising rates of crime and drug addiction. Using a variety of primary sources, I track how African American activists framed and negotiated the rising drug problem in their neighborhoods and pushed for certain policy responses. The black middle class, I show, did a great deal to shape the tough criminal justice policies that ended up propelling mass incarceration in America.

The Black Middle Class Grapples with Drug Addiction

By the early 1960s, drug addiction had become a huge problem in African American communities. More than half of all registered drug addicts in the United States were African Americans, and half of those narcotics addicts lived in New York state, mostly in New York City – where the problem was concentrated in a few neighborhoods. A high number of drug-related deaths, mostly deaths of blacks, were reported from upper Manhattan, in and around Harlem.

As crime rates increased, working and middle-class African Americans became understandably alarmed. Drug addicts and dealers, they felt, were dangerous to “respectable” or “decent families,” threats to the hard-won gains and orderly lives of “hardworking, good citizens.” Rising concerns could not be ignored by African American community leaders and politicians. By the late 1960s, many started lobbying Governor Nelson Rockefeller and other white politicians for more aggressive police responses to the drug threat. They called for more punitive anti-drug policies to protect “decent” members of the community.

Results from a New York Times poll taken in late 1973, after the most controversial Rockefeller drug laws were enacted, show that support for punitive anti-crime measures was widespread within the African American community:

• Blacks were the group most concerned about crime and drugs, and African Americans and Puerto Ricans were the respondents least likely to report that their neighborhoods were safe (or safer than other neighborhoods in New York City).

• 71% of Blacks favored life sentences without parole for drug “pushers.”

• Furthermore, methadone treatment and heroin maintenance for drug addicts were not very popular ideas. Fifty-five percent of New Yorkers opposed the placement of methadone centers for addicts in residential areas, including 53% of blacks.

Throughout the 1960s, African American mobilization against the drug threat had tilted the political environment in a more punitive direction. Nelson Rockefeller exploited the opportunity afforded by widespread citizen concerns to push for the punitive drug laws, looking in the process for ways to improve his political chances in the Republican race for the presidency.

A Full Solution to the Prison Boom

• Reducing chronic joblessness of young men of color in American cities, a key cause of crime and crime-related problems.

• Rebuilding the civic infrastructure of urban communities by bolstering religious organizations and civic associations that can cultivate healthy remedies for urban poverty.

Strategic politicians will always either address or exploit popular fears for political advantage. The only way to change incentives for politicians is to reduce and prevent crime in the most ravaged neighborhoods – so that citizens, including minorities, will not demand get-tough policies or support carting many miscreants off to prison.

Why is the Tea Party enjoying so much success? Partisans and some commentators point to its stated support for fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, and reduced regulation. But support for such long-standing conservative preferences is not all we see in Tea Party politics. Many Tea Party goals – and the angry style of politics – are anything but “conservative” in the sense of favoring social stability. Tea Partiers make flamboyantly extreme claims about President Obama – for example, that he wants to confiscate guns from Americans in order to facilitate massacres of whites. And they have urged Republicans to refuse to raise the debt limit and default on America’s debts, even if that would forfeit our nation’s good credit rating and push the world economy into financial crisis.

Getting at the true wellsprings of the Tea Party requires that we look again at what the late historian Richard Hofstadter famously called the “paranoid style in American politics,” a recurrent tendency characterized by “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy.” In a survey I directed between January and March 2011, questions were put to 1,504 adults across the country. The results show that the paranoid beliefs and political style Hofstadter described have recurred in the Tea Party upsurge of the early 21^st century.

Historical Precursors

This claim may seem far-fetched. After all, the Klan of the 1920s was full of violence-prone bigots, often from rural areas, whereas the businessmen who ran the later John Birch Society disavowed violence and overt racial prejudice and claimed only to promote economic conservatism. Even so, both the Klan and John Birch Society were stocked with white, middle-class, middle-aged, Protestant men who believed the American way of life to be under dire threat – from assertive Negros, Catholic immigrants, and wealthy Jews according to the Klan; from the Civil Rights movement and eastern elites with Communist sympathies in the eyes of the Birchers. In sum, the evidence suggests that America’s recurrent reactionary movements of paranoid bent have been committed to holding the line against the perceived encroachment of minorities and political leftists on the proper status and prerogatives of white citizens.

The Tea Party and Paranoia about Obama

Today, the Tea Party recapitulates many elements of this stance, as we can see by comparing responses by various kinds of self-identified

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conservatives to questions about President Barack Obama and his policies. If all that is going on in the Tea Party is garden-variety conservatism, we should observe little or no daylight between responses from Tea Party supporters and answers from other conservatives who do not identify with the Tea Party. But as it turns out, more than straightforward conservative belief is at work.

• Averaging across all self-identified conservatives, 36 percent say President Obama is “destroying” the country. But that obscures the huge divide between Tea Partiers, 71 percent of whom hold this paranoid belief, versus all other conservatives, only six percent of whom think the same way.
• Twenty-seven percent of Tea Party respondents see the president as a practicing Muslim, compared with 16 percent of other conservatives. Is Obama a Christian? Nearly half of mainstream conservatives say yes, versus 27 percent of Tea Partiers.
• Only two-fifths of Tea Party conservatives believe that President Obama was born in the United States, compared with 55 percent of non-Tea Party conservatives.

Perhaps the Tea Party perception that Obama is some sort of alien explains why 76 percent of such conservatives want Obama’s policies to fail. Only 32 percent of other conservatives yearn for such failure. Similarly, three-quarters of Tea Party conservatives dismiss the President’s policies as “socialist,” compared to 40 percent of other conservatives who make such a claim.

Consequences for the Republican Party and American Democracy

If the views of Tea Party conservatives are at such variance with others, who do so do many Republican candidates and office-holders cater to Tea Party demands? The answer, quite simply, is that Tea Party people are unusually politically engaged. During the 2010 election cycle, my results show that fully 85% of Tea Partiers were interested in politics, compared to two-thirds of other conservatives. Tea Party supporters were twice as likely to attend political meetings, more likely to vote, and much more supportive of GOP candidates.

The result of such passionate engagement on the paranoid edge of Republican politics is fierce, uncompromising GOP opposition to President Obama and persistent deadlock in Congress. The Tea Party tug on Republicans makes the two parties more polarized now than at any time since the 1890s. This sad situation is likely to persist until the Republicans turn away from catering to extreme, angry constituents – and decide, instead, to speak for core conservative ideals and seek compromises with Democrats to further the national interest. When that happens, America will be a safer, more prosperous, and more politically stable democracy than it is today.

Professionally-vetted research, including studies I have completed with my colleague Edward Thompson, Jr., reveal that lifestyles can have a powerful effect on extending both the quality and quantity of the years available to each person as he or she grows older. Optimal choices require people to be well-informed and exercise good judgment about everything from eating habits and physical activity, to keeping in touch with other people and making regular visits to the doctor.

Choices that Improve Personal Health

• Don’t smoke – or stop smoking. Tobacco use is estimated to be the leading cause of preventable death. Not smoking or chewing tobacco is one of the best ways to reduce chances of disability, pain, and premature demise. The longer and more a person smokes, the greater the health risks – including a greater likelihood of suffering from lung cancer, heart disease, or a stroke. Once a person quits, the risk of heart disease, stroke, and several cancers declines dramatically over time; and so does the risk of contracting various infections. Circulation and lung functioning improve, oxygen levels increase and lungs clean themselves, and blood pressure and pulse rates decline. Also, the air becomes cleaner for other people who live or work with the former smoker.
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  Photo by pshutterbug via Flickr.com

  Eat well. Overeating, eating too fast, and eating the wrong things – all can lead to unhealthy outcomes. Healthy diets include fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat dairy products. Fiber, unsaturated fats, complex carbohydrates, and lean protein are recommended; but refined sugars, trans-fats, and saturated fats should be avoided. Cholesterol and salt intake need to be limited, but drinking water throughout the day boosts health.

• Stay physically and mentally active, and monitor weight. Regular physical activity is vital for older as well as younger people – the key, along with diet, to making sure that weight is within the proper range for each age group. Being active reduces risks for certain illnesses such as diabetes and heart diseases. Regular physical activity increases blood circulation, regulates metabolism, boosts energy, and improves mental sharpness and mood.
• Drink in moderation. Drinking too much alcohol has a long list of negative effects on physical and mental health. As people get older, their bodies do not process alcohol as effectively and efficiently as they did when they were younger. People who take multiple prescription drugs, as many older men and women do, can also experience negative side effects from drinking alcohol at the same time. Unfortunately, the risk of alcohol (and other substance) abuse is increasing among older adults, and this problem is expected to continue to rise as baby boomers enter into old age.
• Get plenty of sleep. Getting enough sleep is just as important as eating well and staying active. Adequate sleep increases your energy, capacity to exercise, mood, memory, ability to concentrate, skin elasticity, muscle and bone healing, sexual performance, and immunity levels. It also reduces your body fat, cholesterol, and blood pressure levels. Most people should get seven hours or more of sleep every night although there are variations from person to person. Regular aerobic exercise and strength training will help you sleep better and longer.

Social Ties and Regular, Preventive Health Care

• Connect to people and the world. Maintaining personal relationships and helping others is good for people physically and emotionally. Research reveals that people who live without friendships or family ties are more likely to suffer chronic illnesses and early death, while people in committed relationships and those who have regular social contacts get sick less often and recover faster when they do become ill. Being able to turn to a network of family, friends, and neighbors for enjoyment and support reduces life’s stresses. Volunteering in the community also helps older adults to feel better and enjoy improved health.
• Visit the doctor regularly – and do the recommended tests. People over the age of 50 should schedule a doctor’s visit annually and keep their doctors fully informed about health and lifestyle developments. Follow-up tests to catch health problems early are just as important as regular visits to the doctor. Older people, above all, must get all of the preventive screenings that are recommended – including blood tests, urinalysis, rectal exams and colonoscopies, blood pressure tests, electrocardiograms, and tuberculosis tests.
• Avoid stress and find ways to relax and blow off steam. People who find themselves in antagonistic or stressful situations – and cannot relax easily – have been shown to be at higher risk for many health problems that often strike older adults, such as diabetes, infections, stroke, heart disease, hypertension, cancer, memory loss, and migraine headaches. Depression can also plague people who experience too much stress. Time to relax and exercise can stave off trouble, although sometimes psychological treatment and medication are also necessary.

Making the “right choices” as suggested by the best available research on aging cannot prevent illness or decline in later life. Nevertheless, combined with a bit of luck and good family genes, adhering to an optimal lifestyle game plan can add happy and healthy years to most people’s lives.

Limiting Majority Rule

Political elites in America have always understood just how much institutional rules matter. At the time of the nation’s founding, for example, the leaders who wrote the U.S. Constitution wanted to protect elite prerogatives against the threat that popular majorities might quickly and radically redirect policies. They created the Senate to represent small and large states equally, and they instituted such arrangements as the Electoral College (where state delegations rather than citizen majorities vote for the president and vice president).

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Beyond Constitutional provisions, election arrangements have been repeatedly used to reduce the influence of particular segments of the population. For example, America’s system of electing single representatives from each Congressional or legislative district was implemented to defeat nascent workers’ parties early in the 19^th century. Those parties might have won enough votes to select one of several representatives in a district, but they usually could not get 51% of the votes. In addition, at the turn of the twentieth century, many U.S. cities consolidated power in the hands of unelected city managers and moved it away from elected city councils thought to be overly influenced by popular interests.

Modifications of election rules that pose obstacles to popular participation are still very much in the spotlight:

• Controversy swirls around “felony disenfranchisement” rules used by states to limit the voting rights not just of convicted felons currently in prison, but also of ex-prisoners who have completed their sentences and parole terms.
• Heavy-handed gerrymandering of the boundaries of election districts is another currently controversial practice, as parties holding office in the states following each Census look for ways to protect or advance their candidates by redrawing districts in fine-tuned and often highly-contorted ways.
• Shifts in voter registration rules, early voting rules, and rules about the kinds of identification citizens must show to vote are all currently debated because such practices can restrict and reduce participation, perhaps to the benefit of certain candidates or parties.

The Challenge of Eliminating Anti-Democratic Arrangements

Could Americans just decide to rule out all manipulations of election rules that unfairly restrict citizen rights? That sounds good, but it would not be easy to achieve for several good reasons:

• Institutional permutations are almost infinite. Scholars have shown that even small shifts in voting rules and decisions about district boundaries can have a significant impact on which groups gain leverage in government. This can be seen with something as simple as the decision to allow early voting. Maybe some groups are helped or hurt by the days chosen, but the effects are subtle and usually outweighed by the benefits of greater participation.
• Particular rules are not usually inherently “undemocratic.” Even the practice of felony disenfranchisement, which may seem to be on the shakiest ground, can be justified in democratic theory. What makes this practice so contentious in the United States right now is that felony convictions have been disproportionately higher for certain minority groups.
• The way institutions function is highly dependent on the context. A practice that excludes groups in one setting may help them to achieve their goals in another. For example, the use of referenda can help minority communities bypass intransigent legislatures; but referenda can also be used against minority communities who do not have the resources or organization to mount effective campaigns.

Steps We Can Take

Census data, for example, are very important to decisions about electoral rules – these data help people understand the composition and needs of different communities and the implications of decisions about election rules. But census data can be expensive to obtain, and tools to analyze political implications are often not available or easy to use. Computer software to reveal the implications of alternative ways to draw election district lines has been developed in recent years, but most applications are costly and hard to use without highly specialized knowledge. We should find ways to make census data easy to use with accessible software – so that many groups could easily figure out the implications of redistricting choices.

Electoral institutions are inherently complex, allowing insiders and elites to manipulate the rules in their own interests. We cannot get rid of the complexity, but we can include more voices to improve the chances that rules will maximize rather than restrict citizen participation.

Researchers are showing that empathy also matters in crime and punishment, and recent findings suggest important steps that can be taken to reduce juvenile delinquency and improve relationships between communities and police.

How Empathy Matters

My associates and I have reviewed recent research and done some additional analyses to pin down what is currently known about empathy – and perceptions of empathy – in the realm of crime and justice. When other factors, like age, sex, race, education, and income are taken into account, empathy turns out to matter in several ways:

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• Empathetic people are less likely to engage in delinquency or crime. But those who have trouble perceiving how others feel, and have difficulty sharing those feelings, are more likely to engage in wrongful acts – everything from minorjuvenile delinquency to the most serious of violent crimes.
• Empathy affects how people think about crime and punishment in complex ways. People capable of empathy tend to support tough punishments for crime, but at the same time they are less likely to call for the harshest punishments, such as the death penalty.
• Empathy and perceptions of empathy help to shape the interactions of police and members of the communities they are assigned to protect. Research on citizen interactions with the police has consistently indicated that the way officers behave determines how they are evaluated by people with whom they interact. When we probe in detail, it turns out community members have more positive evaluations of the police when officers communicate that they understand the issues that matter to community members. Studies specifically show that the police are more likely to be trusted and considered effective at their jobs when they display empathy with the community’s concerns.

Researchers have more to learn about how empathy and perceptions of empathy help to shape crime and interactions between citizens and agents of the justice system. But enough is known already to help us make improvements. Policymakers, police and courts, and nonprofit and community groups are already taking useful steps toward these improvements – and more can be done in several key areas.

Preventing and Dealing with Juvenile Delinquency

Few social issues are more pressing than heading off misdeeds by children and teenagers that lead to trouble with police and courts – and can set young people off on the wrong paths in adult life. Empathy research shows that we can make real gains by paying careful attention to how people think, feel, and perceive others in their surroundings, including how young people learn to identify with others and show concern for their feelings.

• Reaching children early with efforts to help them understand how others feel can reduce the likelihood of youthful wrongdoing. Schools, for example, can do role-playing exercises that ask children how the others feel about a mishap.
• When delinquent acts do happen, part of the response should go beyond punishment (and efforts to separate the perpetrator from misbehaving peers) to include educating the delinquent about victims’ reactions and feelings.

The Emotions of Criminals and Victims

In addition to efforts to prevent deficits in empathy among children and young people, criminal justice authorities can also look for ways to have criminals provide restoration to victims. Restorative justice measures – such as required community service, or having perpetrators learn about and teach others about the sad effects of misdeeds on families, friends, and themselves – might help to prevent future crimes and build confidence and satisfaction about the criminal justice system. Certain kinds of restorative justice can also promote a sense of healing among those victimized by crimes.

Take Account of Empathy in Police Training

This is one of the most promising areas for improvements. Curricula for the training and retraining of police can provide officers with ways to be more effective and improve community reactions to their efforts. Training can include steps to help officers learn about and show empathy for the concerns of the specific communities and neighborhoods where they work. Likewise, training can show new officers how to display their understanding of community values and needs when they interact with citizens. Showing such empathy, we know, increases trust and confidence in the police. And when citizens have greater trust in the police during daily interactions, officers get more cooperation and find it easier to protect themselves along with the communities they serve.

This omission is unnecessary and unfortunate. The Second Amendment can and should incorporate the longstanding and sensible practice of regulating guns differently in rural and urban areas. Firearm localism would help us move forward from the current stalled debate.

Recognizing the Urban-Rural Divide about Guns

Although most Americans agree on many Second Amendments precepts, “pro-gun” and “anti-gun” sentiments are not evenly distributed throughout the country.

• Rural areas are centers of both gun ownership and strong opposition to gun regulations. This is understandable, given that rural people enjoy hunting and other recreational gun uses. Such pursuits are primary reasons for gun ownership in rural areas, along with the desire of many people to have means of self-defense in sparsely populated areas where police take a long time to arrive.
• Yet gun violence exacts high human costs in cities, and hunting and other recreational uses for guns are less in vogue in urban areas. City-dwellers are less than half as likely as rural residents to own a gun, and they are twice as likely to support stronger gun controls.

Anyone familiar with today’s gun control debate knows how difficult it has been to bridge the divergent values and perspectives of rural and urban residents. For many Americans, in fact, guns are not just a policy question; guns symbolize distinct cultural values and ways of life. This makes compromise – even reasoned argument – difficult to achieve, frustrating both sides.

Localizing Second Amendment Doctrine

Yet America’s geographic divide about guns suggests a better way forward. One of the great virtues of the U.S. political system, after all, is the

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space it offers for local self-governance. Under American traditions of local rule, if people in Montana want to shoot elk with rifles, that should not prevent people in Manhattan from trying to keep residents from shooting each other with handguns. Manhattanites should be able to establish gun regulations to address their own local issues without weakening rural gun rights, either in Montana or in rural upstate New York.

Of course, just because something might make for sensible policy does not make it constitutional. From the perspective of the Second Amendment, we must ask not what kinds of gun control are desirable, but what kinds are permissible. In the wake of Heller, at least two approaches to the issue of permissibility have emerged:

• The majority of the Supreme Court Justices ruling in Heller approved “longstanding prohibitions” such as the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, suggesting that well-established laws have a special claim to constitutionality. And no characteristic of gun control in America is more “longstanding” than the stricter regulation of guns in cities. At the time of the nation’s founding, major cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and New York heavily regulated firearms. Boston, for example, prohibited people from keeping loaded guns at home. Similarly, in the supposedly “wild” nineteenth-century West, frontier towns had gun control laws stricter than any jurisdiction today. Even as guns were used for hunting and self-defense in the countryside, visitors to Dodge City and Tombstone had to check their guns at the city limits.
• Another line of argument was developed by Supreme Court Justice Breyer in his dissent to the majority opinion in Heller, and similar arguments have appeared in many federal courts. This approach evaluates the constitutionality of gun control based on the degree to which a given law serves the public interest while protecting private interests. In this way of thinking, the case for local variation in permissible gun regulations is straightforward, because in fact cities and rural areas face different challenges with regard to guns, and their residents have different sets of concerns.

Moving Forward

City limits are an important part of the story of guns in America, and the Second Amendment need not ignore this fact – good news for both sides of the gun debate. If we insist only on rigid national resolutions, rural residents may some day find their cherished Second Amendment rights diluted, as policymakers maneuver to find ways to allow some level of urban regulation in the name of safety – just as today’s urban-dwelling Americans are frustrated by the imposition of rural gun practices that make their lives less safe. Urban efforts to prevent handgun violence should be able to coexist with the understandable desire of rural residents to use very different kinds of guns for hunting and recreation. The urban-rural divide need not remain a barrier. It could instead make for better neighbors, by enabling a granular compromise that allows rural and urban Americans to regulate themselves and respect one another’s very different gun cultures.

Only twenty women are found among the 100 U.S. Senators, and 13 of these are the first women to represent their state. Women hold only 77 seats in the House, fewer than 18%. Four U.S. states have never sent a woman to Congress: Delaware, Iowa, Mississippi and Vermont. The U.S. ranks 77^th among the world’s nations in women’s representation in the lower legislative chamber – right behind Sao Tome and Principe and just ahead of Madagascar. Not counting ties, the U.S. actually ranks 92^nd.

Before the 2012 elections, USA Today had predicted another “Year of the Woman” given an “upward trend of female candidates for Congress.” What actually happened is better characterized as a relatively good year for Democratic women amidst continuing female under-representation. Although neither major U.S. party has nominated sufficient numbers of women for Congress, Republicans nominate fewer and when GOP women are nominated, they very often lose. The difference between the percentage of women in Democratic Congressional delegations and the percentage of women in GOP Congressional delegations hovered between 7% and 11% from 1993 to 2002, but now it has grown to a remarkable 19.5 %.

A Closer Look at the 2012 House Elections

The details of nominations and victories in contests for the House of Representatives in 2012 tell a lot about what has been happening to spur the partisan gender gap.

• For the House, 118 Democratic women stood as candidates, a 30% increase from the 91 women who ran in 2010. But only 48 Republican women ran in 2012, just one more than stood for election in 2010. Democrats ended up accounting for almost three-quarters of the women running for election to the House in 2012, compared to two-thirds in 2010.
• Electoral successes followed from the contrasting party nomination rates. In 2012, 58 Democratic women were elected to the House (ten more than in 2010). But only 19 Republican women won House seats in 2012 (down by five from 2010).

Lagging nominations and victories for Republican women were especially surprising, because the 2012 elections involved many districts reapportioned following the 2010 Census. New contenders for Congress have their best opportunities in newly drawn districts with no incumbents. In 2012, reapportionment produced eleven new House districts: two in Florida; four in Texas; and one each in Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, Utah, and Washington.

But the results for female Republicans fell short. Even as Democratic women did well in states that lost or did not gain seats, and also won three seats in newly created House districts in Arizona, Florida and Washington, Republican women did not make gains. No Republican women were nominated for open House seats in Georgia and South Carolina. One Republican woman ran for a House seat in Utah, but she lost. In Texas, where four new seats were added, three non-incumbent Republican women ran for election, but all were defeated.

What Would It Take to Achieve Gender Parity in Congress?

When 1992 was dubbed the “Year of the Woman,” the female Congressional presence doubled. But even if that suddenly happened again, women would still constitute only 35% of the House. American voters would still need to elect 64 more women to the House to achieve gender parity.

Could quotas for women help? Formal or informal quotas have boosted the presence of female delegates to both the Democratic and Republican national conventions. But quotas cannot do much to ensure nominations. Unlike parliamentary parties in many other nations, U.S. political parties do not have sufficient control over nominations nationwide to ensure rough gender equity. Even legal quotas of the kind used in some nations in Latin America, Europe, and Africa could not work to control nominations by state parties in the United States.

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren. Photo by Leader Nancy Pelosi via Flickr.com

The bottom line is that progress for women in the U.S. Congress rests on enhanced recruitment, plus extra material support for female candidates in each major party.

• Democrats have recently launched projects to build on earlier gains. The junior Senator from New York, Kristin Gillibrand, has established the “Off the Sidelines” initiative to publicize women’s under-representation in Congress, encourage more women to run, and improve funding for them. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is sponsoring the “Women LEAD” project, chaired by House members Lois Frankel of Florida and Chellie Pingree of Maine “to build a network of people around the country dedicated to electing more women to the House of Representatives.” On the Senate side, Washington’s senior Senator Patty Murray started years ago to organize networks to encourage women candidates and now, as chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, she is making special efforts to encourage and support female contenders for the Senate.
• In 1982, the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee pledged the maximum campaign contribution to any Republican woman who won nomination or considered running for Congress. But in more recent years, the efforts of the Republican National Committee and women’s groups in the party have been largely exhortatory, leaving potential women candidates, like men, largely to their own devices in launching and funding campaigns.

The United States, in sum, continues to have an uphill climb toward ensuring equal representation for women in Congress; and much depends on faster progress by Republicans. To avoid falling still further behind, Republicans may have to revive earlier efforts at formal support, and launch new multi-pronged projects of the sort Democrats have recently created to expand their female contingents in the House and Senate.