tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post5539234389568628992..comments2023-10-16T07:13:12.123-05:00Comments on A plain blog about politics: Women in Politics, 1984 vs. 2011Jonathan Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15931039630306253241noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-28289410799277695452011-03-31T15:22:51.519-05:002011-03-31T15:22:51.519-05:00the classicist makes a good point about the genera...the classicist makes a good point about the generations -- that what we've come "down" from is not an objectively better situation, but a time when hopes for rapid improvement were higher. That said, it's also just a reflex on the left to complain that things are never any better, or even that they're always getting worse. This combines with an unwillingness to acknowledge progress because, apparently, the word "progress" is thought to mean the whole Whig Interpretation of History, some notion that things get better inevitably and unstoppably. Which they don't, but they do clearly get better, in a sort of three-steps-forward-two-steps-back kind of way.Jeffnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-40480692426706836182011-03-31T13:56:57.169-05:002011-03-31T13:56:57.169-05:00I wonder whether she's really talking about th...I wonder whether she's really talking about the decreasing visibility of progress on female representation in the last twenty years, not thirty? (Since the Congressional "Year of the Woman," say.) She says that she was born in 1983 -- I was, too -- and people our age definitely don't understand viscerally how bad it used to be, but we also don't have the sense my mother's generation had that things were on the upswing and would keep improving.<br /><br />That said, in the last couple of years I have in fact felt that things were improving -- as women who are now around 40, who grew up with the fight already in progress (Kirsten Gillibrand, Gabby Giffords, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin -- and Kirsti Noem, etc.), have started to become visible. Well, visible to political junkies, anyway.<br /><br />Worth noting as well that a lot of the progress you note has been in appointed rather than elected positions.the classicisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08691196845661570282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-80341646545855682792011-03-31T13:09:30.964-05:002011-03-31T13:09:30.964-05:00Anon,
Thanks, fixed. Let's see: beginning in ...Anon,<br /><br />Thanks, fixed. Let's see: beginning in 1993, one at Justice, three at State, right? As with everything else, huge difference from 1984, nowhere close to 50/50.<br /><br />Kal,<br /><br />Yes, but. The record on this by the political system in the 1970s-1980s was awful, I'd say. Since ~1990, a lot of the story is just generational change taking a long time, with a major substory being the GOP falling behind.Jonathan Bernsteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15931039630306253241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-73077087128974522882011-03-31T13:03:08.117-05:002011-03-31T13:03:08.117-05:00Unfinished sentence in the middle of the post:
&qu...Unfinished sentence in the middle of the post:<br />"There had never been a woman at the top of any of the big four cabinet departments (State, Defense, Justice, Treasury);"Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-61870139202266765462011-03-31T12:58:23.236-05:002011-03-31T12:58:23.236-05:00Not to mention that changes like this take time, a...Not to mention that changes like this take time, and the world doesn't change overnight. Ferraro grew up and built a successful career during a more sexist time. Everyone who is a state-wide or federal elected official right now grew up before there was a female on a major party's Presidential ticket. Even Aaron Schock, the youngest member of Congress, was born before Ferraro was a candidate for VP.<br /><br />When women born in 1984 are 49 years old themselves, the same age Ferraro was in 84, they will have grown up in a much different world.Kalhttp://twitter.com/#!/Kalbelgarionnoreply@blogger.com