FairVote Feed: Women's Representation

International Women's Day: Time for Political Equality

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 08:13:43 -0800

The day will come when men will recognize woman as his peer, not only at the fireside, but in councils of the nation. Then, and not until then, will there be the perfect comradeship, the ideal union between the sexes that shall result in the highest development of the race.

Susan B. Anthony

Today marks the 101st celebration of International Women's Day. As we take a moment to honor women all across the globe and observe the progress that has been made, we must also use this opportunity to reflect on the work that still needs to be done. Though women have made gains in education and the workforce, gender parity in elected offices has been a painfully slow work-in-progress:

Women make up 51% of the world's population.

Women hold 16.8% of seats in the United States Congress and 23.6% of state legislative seats.

Women constitute 19.5% of parliaments worldwide.

Take a second to let those numbers sink in. No, they do not reflect the state of women's representation 50 years ago. Sadly enough, they depict a harsh modern-day reality that the world has a long way to go before achieving political equality.

Our nation is over two hundred years old, yet there has never been a woman president—let alone a female presidential nominee from one of the major parties. Only six states have a female governor currently, and four states have never sent a single woman to Congress. Despite a slow and steady climb over the past three decades, 2010 was the first time Congress actually saw a decline in women's representation—this occurring as the first woman speaker of the House symbolically returned the gavel to the hands of a man.

And there is a good chance these numbers may get worse in 2012. There are currently no female candidates for president, and not a single delegate will be awarded to a woman in this year's presidential primaries. Bev Perdue of North Carolina and Christine Gregoire of Washington, two of the six female governors, have decided to forgo another term, and no women have stepped into either race. Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine has decided to call it quits, with Angus King favored to replace her, and Sen. Claire McCaskill faces a tough re-election in Missouri. In the U.S. House, Rep. Jean Schmidt just lost to a man in a Republican primary in Ohio.

As we stomach these abysmal numbers and prepare for the possibility that the state of women's representation worsens, we have to wonder if we are doing everything we can to ensure women have an equal shot at elective office. Looking to other countries around the world, we can see that gender disparity is not an entirely universal problem.

For instance, in two countries (Rwanda and Andorra), women compose at least 50% in the national legislature, and another seven countries have at least 40% women in their lower or single house of parliament. Despite America's attempts to lead the world in protecting human rights, it ranks 78th on this list, well behind Afghanistan at 33rd.

So how have other countries made such progress? Nine of the top ten all use some form of proportional representation (PR), while most of the countries at the bottom of the list use majoritarian systems. And it's no mere coincidence. PR has worked for women in the U.S. too, as cities and states using proportional systems have systematically elected more women.

But what does a voting system have to do with it? Scholar Doug Amy contends that PR pressures parties to nominate more women, since it looks blatantly sexist to nominate an all-male slate of candidates in a multi-member district—that's a key reason why women candidates have earned a significantly bigger share of elections in multi-seat state legislative districts than in single-member districts. Furthermore, it is difficult to overcome incumbent advantage in a majoritarian system, and in the U.S., most incumbents are obviously men. If the U.S. shifted to a proportional system, women would not have to run one-on-one against men, a situation which often draws attention to gender rather than to the issues.

Obviously, implementing a new voting system will not solve all of our problems. We still need women willing to run for office, we need parties and other groups to actively recruit women candidates, and we need to make sure women have adequate resources to run legitimate campaigns. When there are female candidates, we must also hold campaigns accountable so that they do not stoop to misogynistic tactics. These simple changes will go a long way to improving representation of women.

However, we cannot wait until tomorrow to see the changes that we need today. Please consider taking action in your community to support a voting system that encourages greater representation of women, and stay tuned for FairVote's new resource pages on women and representation to be released later this spring.

Parity law adopted in Tunisia

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 08:43:01 -0700

"The love of a democracy is that of equality." This quotation from one of the founding father of the Enlightenment period, French philosopher Charles de Montesquieu, seems to be understood today by the Tunisian people.

After the political revolution that struck their country earlier this year, Tunisians are now experiencing a genuine revolution of the mind. In an earlier blog post, I worried about the length of time the Tunisian interim government was taking to implement key measures .However, recent developments have eased my fears considerably.

Indeed, the high commission responsible for planning elections in Tunisia, one of the first institutions of the new political system, decided on April 12 to introduce a decree establishing equality between men and women and full proportional representation for parties for the upcoming July elections. Article 16 of the new law that will govern the next legislative elections mandates that half of the assembly will be for women. This constitutes a major advancement for this Arab country where, despite the relatively good condition of women compared to the rest of the region, sexism and social prejudices still linger.

The fact that Tunisian women already enjoy the best condition of life in the Arab world was mainly due to the fact that the Tunisian independence movement, led by the founding father of the nation Habib Bourguiba, held fast to the key concept of "laïcité", a French word which stands for the factual separation between state affairs and religion. In 1956, the "Personal Status Code" abolished polygamy, established the judiciary divorce, fixed the minimum age of wedding for girls at 17 and instituted a financial independence for women.

If this law is fully executed as apparently planned, now women will hold half of their nations parliamentary seats. By comparison, women hold only 17% of the U.S. Congres and, 15% of Ireland's parliament. France laboriously reached the threshold of only 13% in local elections despite a law designed to boost representation of women.

The European Union, through the voice of foreign office Chief Catherine Ashton, praised Tunisia for this amazing progress:

"It demonstrates that Tunisia intends to ensure full participation of women in political life. By putting these principles at the heart of all ongoing political reforms, Tunisia can be a beacon of innovation for the region and beyond. Now Tunisia has the opportunity to further consolidate gender equality and end all forms of discrimination against women in law and in practice".

The Egyptian Center for Women's Rights also praised Tunisia, judging that the decree "insures women's rights and enhances their status in the decision making positions." Within Tunisia, the parity law has substantial support. Even the Islamist party Enahda agrees with the rule, making Tunisia the Arab leader on political reforms.

Yet there remains a controversial part in this law. The new rules also exclude every single member of the last decades' governments to run for a seat. The future will now tell us whether this decision is an efficient way to bury all the old skeletons of the past - or an unfortunate decision that will lead to loss of some element of quality that could have helped the new regime.

Still, with an electoral system based on party list proportional representation, the country holds real promise for establishing a fair political system and to present itself as a regional and international model.

Representation of Women in the Primaries

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 11:45:15 -0700

The GOP, The Grand Old Party, could be referred to as the men’s club. But women are slowly making their way into GOP ranks this primary season. Anne Kornblut from The Washington Post addresses this issue in an article entitled “In primaries, female candidates didn’t make gender an issue.” A number of Republican women ran well in the June 8 primaries, and several won their nominations or are favored in upcoming runoffs. This represents a growing trend of increasing numbers of women running for congressional and statewide offices – with a significant increase in Republican women.

Some key candidates that garnered attention by making strong showings in statewide primaries on June 8 are: Sharron Angle (Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Nevada); Carly Fiorina (Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in California); Nikki Haley (who won more than twice the share of the votes of any of her competitors in the race for the Republican nomination for governor in South Carolina, but fell just short of avoiding a runoff); Blanche Lincoln (who surprised many with her victory in a runoff for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Arkansas); and Meg Whitman (who trounced her competition for the Republican nomination for governor of California). These candidates strived not to make gender a focal point of their respective campaigns. Rather, they aimed to project themselves as strong, hard-working, and independent candidates. Even in the face of controversy and pointed accusations, they did not cry out “sexism!” or declare themselves as victims.

This is especially true of Nikki Haley, a state representative running in South Carolina’s Republican primary for governor. She had claims of infidelity thrown against her, which she calmly but steadfastly denied. If Haley is able to clinch the Republican nomination in the June 22 runoff election and eventually become governor in November, she will not only be the first female governor of South Carolina but also the first to be of a racial minority (she is Indian-American) – a possible victory that is all the more notable in that the South Carolina state senate is the only state legislative chamber in the U.S. without any women. Keep in mind, however, that Haley herself would not draw attention to the possibility of two “firsts”; she would rather draw attention to “ ‘South Carolina . . . moving forward for reform.’ ”

In California there were 51 female candidates for congressional and statewide offices (Election 2010: Women Candidates). Of these 15 are Republicans and 31 are Democrats. Meg Whitman, a former eBay CEO, clinched the Republican nomination for California governor and will run against Attorney General Jerry Brown for the office. Carly Fiorina, a former Hewlett-Packard CEO, clinched the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat and will run against incumbent Sen. Barbara Boxer for her seat. Although Fiorina and Whitman won handily in the primaries (Fiorina: 56.4%, Whitman: 64.1%), they both face a challenging general election. This is because they stuck to the hard right on major issues such as immigration, making them general election underdogs. If either candidate wins her respective general election, it will mark the first time since 1970 that California has elected a Republican woman in a statewide contest.

In the 2010 Governor races, there have been 21 major party women candidates in the 36 states with gubernatorial races. In the U.S. House, there have been 196 major party women candidates. In the U.S. Senate, there have been 21 major party women candidates in the 36 states with senate races.

Although I commend these candidates for not using their gender to gain votes and garner attention, I believe that it is important to recognize and acknowledge the strides that women in politics are making. The issues and a candidate’s character should take center stage, but one should not ignore the historical significance of women in congressional and statewide offices.

The day FairVote decided to vote on lunch

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:10:48 -0700

Tuesday lunch is a well-established tradition at the FairVote office here in Takoma Park. Each Tuesday, FairVote buys lunch for its employees, and it’s a perfect time for informal discussion and debate. Today was actually my last one, since my internship ends at the end of the week, but that is not my point.

Today, we could not decide on what to order and realizing that we are the voting system experts, we thought it would be great to cast votes before making any decision. So here were our candidates: Chinese food, Middle Eastern food and Pizza. Only one of them could win.

The main issue was: which system should we use, so that we get fair results? Different systems can indeed get different winners and this was a great opportunity to test their fairness and impact.

	IRV	Range Voting (rate from 0 to 10)	First-Past- The-Post	Top-two Runoff	Condorcet Method
Neal	1- Pizza 2- Chinese 3- Middle Eastern	Pizza: 10 Chinese: 0 Middle Eastern: 0	Pizza	Chinese	Pizza vs. Chinese: Pizza Pizza vs. Middle Eastern: Middle Eastern Middle Eastern vs. Chinese: Chinese
Adam	1- Chinese 2- Middle Eastern 3- Pizza	Pizza: 0 Chinese: 10 Middle Eastern: 0	Chinese	Chinese
Pauline	1- Middle Eastern 2- Pizza 3- Chinese	Pizza: 7 Chinese: 0 Middle Eastern: 10	Middle Eastern	Middle Eastern
Rob	1- Middle Eastern 2- Pizza 3- Chinese	Pizza: 5 Chinese: 0 Middle Eastern: 10	Middle Eastern	Middle Eastern
Amy	1- Chinese 2- / 3- /	Pizza: 0 Chinese: 10 Middle Eastern: 0	Chinese	Chinese
Winner	Chinese Food	Pizza	Tied Between Chinese Food and Middle Eastern	Chinese Food	No winner: tied

Because we were only five voters, the potential for tied results was high. And, even if there are different methods to decide who the winner should be in the case of tied results (based on the age of the candidate, or on a runoff between the top two candidates for instance), I thought that it would be more interesting to keep them tied, as a testimony of how split our votes were today.

In the case of the traditional system of first-past-the post, voters chose one candidate and the one with the most votes won. No choice received a majority of the vote, which means that resolving the tie results would not make a majority of the voters happy about the results. In either case (Chinese Food or Middle Eastern winning), 60% of the voters did not choose that possibility, which does not seem fair.

In the case of a top-two runoff, Neal was the tiebreaker: his first choice was out of the game, so he had the opportunity to refine his preference by choosing between Chinese food and Middle Eastern food. In that system, one choice had to win a majority of the vote, which seems pretty fair.

Then we had instant-runoff-voting (IRV), where voters ranked their choices according to their preferences. In the first round, Chinese Food and Middle Eastern Food both received two votes, and Pizza one vote. No choice got a majority, so Pizza was eliminated because it had the fewest votes. However, since Neal had expressed a preference by putting Chinese food as his second choice, the instant runoff determined that Chinese food now had three votes and Middle Eastern food, two. Consequently, Chinese food won a majority of the vote and was declared the winner.

Another method that we thought to use was range voting. With that method, voters had the possibility to score each of the candidates from 0 to 10. We added up the scores and the candidate with the most votes, Pizza, won. This system is worthy of note, because it enables voters to have a strategy: if you really want your candidate to win, you have an incentive to give him/her the maximum score and to give the minimum score the others. It is also interesting to see that Pizza won in that case: it was the preferred candidate of only one voter, but a good compromise candidate. However, Adam and Amy obviously both voted strategically, which makes it a bad system to use: we cannot make sure that people will vote sincerely.

Finally, the Condorcet method ended up with tied results. However, it is an interesting way of electing someone, since the winner would be the candidate whom voters prefer to the other candidates, when compared to them one at a time. This means that the winner would be the most preferred candidate overall, compared to the one being the first preference of most of the voters. This is a way to get the best compromise candidate.

So, there is obviously no right result, rather results that make a majority of voters happy or not. We went with instant-runoff-voting because we are convinced that it is the fairest system, were happy with Chinese Food and had a great Tuesday lunch!

French Regional elections: With "proportional" system, the devil is in the details...

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 07:37:15 -0700

On March 14th and 21st, French voters elected their 26 regional councils (Conseil régional in French), which are the local governments of each of France’s 26 regions. Used, since 2004, the voting system combines elements of winner-take-all elections and proportional representation, and gender quotas have resulted in a a remarkable growth in representation of women.

In France, regions do not have any legislative autonomy, but they manage significant budgets and have a certain freedom of administration as part of the decentralization process. Thus, the responsibilities of the elected regional councils cover a wide range of fields, such as high schools, apprenticeships, vocational training, regional public transport systems, economic development, employment and regional spatial planning.

The left, taking 54% of the vote at the national level, won control of 21 of the 22 regions in mainland, and of 23 of the 26 regions. The National Front, a far right party, also did well with 11.42% of the national vote in the first round. Those results, combined with the historically poor score of the Presidential majority, which is the coalition supporting Sarkozy and his government (27% in the first round, 35.4% in the second round), constituted a major electoral setback for President Sarkozy. In addition, the turnout dropped to a historic low, barely reaching 46% in the first round and 51% in the second round.

A main point of interest, beyond the results, is how the number of seats won by parties, at a regional and national level, does not mirror the electorate. For instance, nationwide, the left received 68% of the seats with 54% of the vote and the Presidential Majority won 29.7% of the seats with 35.4% of the vote. Indeed, the semi-proportional system used for the regional elections distorts the electoral dynamics. This is why you want to take a closer look at it.

Critics considered that the closed-list system of proportional representation (PR) used before 2004 enabled third parties such as the National Front to be kingmakers. Since the 2004 elections, a majority rule has been added to the regional party-list system to ensure more efficient governance. Consequently, in each region, the list that receives the most votes (either a majority in the first round, or a plurality in the second round) automatically wins 25% of the seats, as a bonus. And in the case of a runoff, because no list won a majority in the first round, only the lists that won at least 10% of the votes in the first round are allowed to compete. As to the three other quarters of the seats, they are proportionally allocated between the parties that were part of the final round, according to their fair share of the vote. As a result, the party winning the most votes is likely to secure a majority in the regional council.

However, despite three quarters of the seats being allocated proportionally, the system does not provide voters with fair representation. The bonus given to the list with the most votes, and the threshold to be part of the runoff, significantly skew the process in each region, favoring major parties and providing voters with a representation that does not match reality: the left won 14% more seats nationwide than they should have according to their share of the vote and the Center party hardly got any representation at all (0.58% of the seats nationwide), despite winning 4% of the vote in the first round.

Another main point of interest of those elections, more encouraging, is women’s representation. The electoral law, since 2004, requires each regional party list to alternate genders to achieve equal representation of men and women in the elected regional councils. As a result, nationwide, 48% of the members elected in 2010 are now women, when women were only 27.5% of the members in 1998.

The electoral law also requires the regional governments elected by the regional councils to be equally composed from men and women. As a result, women now constitute 48% of the regional governments nationwide and 11 regional governments are made up of at least 50% women. Only two regions (Martinique and Guyane, which are not in mainland) fail to meet their obligations, with only 41.67% and 44.44% of women in their regional government.

Women’s representation still can be improved though, as to the region’s presidency: only two regions have elected a woman as their president, one of them being Ségolène Royal, who ran for president in 2007.

Usually elected for six years, the members of the regional councils elected last month have a four-year mandate, as part of a reform of the local government. Efforts to merge different levels of local governments have led to devising a new electoral system: 80% of the members of the local governments would be elected through a first-past-the-post system and the last 20% through PR. This proposed electoral system is definitely a step in the wrong direction: equal representation of women and men won’t be guaranteed anymore, and smaller parties will hardly get represented at the local level. Instead, it would make more sense to keep more list seats, and, for the district seats, to consider instant-runoff-voting, where voters have a real chance to express their preference.

Iraq’s 2010 Parliamentary Election - Part 4: Iraqi Women’s Political Reality

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:00:32 -0700

This blog series on the 2010 Iraqi parliamentary elections is all about how Iraq has been working on building an inclusive, fair voting system. So far, the main focus has been on the Iraqi open-list form of proportional representation (PR), designed to overcome sectarian rifts and stabilize the country. It is now about time to take a closer look at women’s role in the Iraqi electoral process.

Iraq’s 2010 parliamentary elections took place on the eve of the March 8th International Women’s Day, whose theme was “Equal Rights, Equal Opportunities.” The closeness of the two events is a great opportunity to think about gender issues.

First of all, the Iraqi constitution states that all Iraqis are equal before the law without discrimination based on gender (art. 14), which of course means that women are allowed to vote and to run as candidates.

Let’s consider some numbers. Women currently make up 25.5% of the Iraqi Council of Representatives, in comparison to 16.8% of the U.S. House of Representatives. According to the data collected by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the Iraqi level of female representation in parliament is also higher than the world average of 19.1%, and a lot better than in any of its neighboring countries. These figures are encouraging for the fledgling Iraqi democracy and revealing of a political will to establish high-quality representation.

The Iraqi Constitution requires at least one quarter of the Council of Representatives’ members to be women. This provision translated into a quota reserving 25% of the 325 seats for them. Concretely, the electoral law expected, for each list, at least one woman to be among the first three nominees, at least two women to be among the first six nominees and so on until the end of the list.

However, the 2010 election was held under an open list system, which means that for each winning list, the candidates with the highest number of votes will be elected, compared to the candidates listed first. As a result, ensuring that each third candidate is a woman won’t necessarily result in women being a third of the elected members. This is why a corrective mechanism will be applied if less than 82 women initially get elected through the open list system. To make a long story short, women who received the most votes without winning a seat after the initial allocation will be moved up the list to replace winning male candidates, until the total number of female winners reaches the quota. This is a way to protect women’s participation in the Council of Representatives.

It should also be noted that in a country where women constitute a majority of the population, ensuring that they receive a quarter of the seats was not an extreme measure. In fact, initially, the quota was to be set to 40%, but women’s rights were not American officials’ priority back in 2003 to 2005 when they were participating in the drafting of the Iraqi democratic system.

My point is not to discuss the benefits and disadvantages of a quota for women in itself, but rather, to show how its implementation was relevant in Iraq. In fact, the quota has been used in the male-dominated Iraqi society to give women a chance to have a political role and prove their competence and reliability in politics. And the quantitative results are good: a quarter of the current Council of Representatives’ members are women and out of the 6,200 candidates running for the March 7th election, 1,801 were women (30%).

From a larger perspective though, attitudes still need to evolve. Under the closed-list system, parties had a tendency to nominate women they could control. What’s more, in 2009, only five Ministers out of 40 were women and their portfolios were focused on what is generally perceived as “women’s issues,” such as Women’s Affairs and Human Rights. Besides, contrary to minority groups that won strength by constituting substantive groups in the Council of Representatives, women stayed marginalized despite being a quarter of the Parliament: they disagree on core issues, which prevents them from having a meaningful voice in the debate. However, by largely participating in the committees, they have begun to have a significant role in Iraqi politics.

The 2010 campaign for the March 7th election has undeniably showed improvements in Iraqi society's view of women. For the first time since Saddam Hussein’s ouster, some female candidates, such as Fairuz Hatem for the Iraqi National Alliance and Safiya al-Souhail for the State of Law Alliance, campaigned without any veil and appeared with their uncovered heads, wearing business suits and makeup on election posters and in televised debates. An all-female political party has also been created, which seeks to empower Iraqi women in the educational and economic sectors and has won the support of the Iraq Unity Alliance, a secular, cross-sectarian coalition.

Iraqi women now hope that their capability and ability will be widely recognized, so that they’ll be able to get rid of the quota system. For now, as long as some structural barriers remain, the quota system helps improve Iraq’s representation and gives women a say in the political process.

Stay tuned for our next post featuring the role of political coalitions in Iraq!

Women in Congress

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 13:20:45 -0700

FairVote Feed: Women's Representation

International Women's Day: Time for Political Equality

Parity law adopted in Tunisia

Representation of Women in the Primaries

The day FairVote decided to vote on lunch

IRV

Range Voting(rate from 0 to 10)

First-Past-The-Post

Top-two Runoff

Condorcet Method

Neal

Adam

Pauline

Rob

Amy

Winner

Chinese Food

Pizza

Tied Between Chinese Food and Middle Eastern

Chinese Food

No winner: tied

French Regional elections: With "proportional" system, the devil is in the details...

Iraq’s 2010 Parliamentary Election - Part 4: Iraqi Women’s Political Reality

Women in Congress

Coming soon: women's representation in the U.S. Congress.

Range Voting
(rate from 0 to 10)

First-Past-
The-Post

Top-two
Runoff

Tied Between
Chinese Food
and Middle Eastern