Pink Power

50.8% of the population of the United States is female. Yet in corporate America, “Women currently hold 4.2 percent of Fortune 500 CEO positions and 4.2 percent of Fortune 1000 CEO positions.” Catalyst.org, January 1^st. In financial institutions, that number falls to an almost inconsequential 3%.While “[o]ver 200 women have served in the House of Representatives; there [were] 76 women (constituting 16.6% of all representatives [in the 112^th Congress, but the 113^th Congress has moved that total to 17.9%]) serving there. Women have been elected to the House of Representatives from 44 of the 50 states in the United States. The states that have not elected a woman to the House are Alaska, Delaware, Iowa, Mississippi, North Dakota, and Vermont-- though both Alaska and North Dakota have been represented by women in the United States Senate…

“There have been 39 women in the United States Senate since the establishment of that body in 1789. The first woman served in 1922, but women were first elected in number in 1992. As of 2012, 17 of the 100 senators are women. Thirteen of the women who have served were appointed; seven of those were appointed to succeed their deceased husbands. The 113th Congress will have 20 female senators, the most ever in U.S. history.” Wikipedia

Getting women elected? It’s like pulling teeth! Democrats appear to be more open to women and minorities. Women seem to have risen in the GOP body politic only by embracing their party’s extremes, most notably powerbrokers like Michele Bachmann (Minnesota) and Sarah Palin (Alaska). In other states, notably blue-leaning California, staunch Democratic power in the Senate rests entirely with the two women, Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, who are rising in Senatorial seniority with each passing year.

But nowhere in the United States is pink power more obvious than in tiny New Hampshire, where the Governor, both U.S. House Representatives and both U.S. Senators are women. New Hampshire is the first state in American history to have sent an all-female delegation to Washington. While one of the Senators is Republican, the balance of these elected women is Democratic. Why is this state different? “These women did not rise to the top together overnight. Nor was there an orchestrated movement to elect them. Each toiled in the political vineyards, climbed the ladder in her own time and campaigned hard for her job…

“Although the women in New Hampshire are serving all at once by happenstance, women have long held prominent positions in New Hampshire government… One reason is the size of the State House, a typical pipeline for aspiring politicians. It has 400 members, making it the largest of the states and the fourth-largest governing body in the English-speaking world (after the United States Congress, the British Parliament and the Indian Parliament). With so many seats available, women have a better chance of being elected in New Hampshire than they have in many other states.

“New Hampshire also has a long history of volunteerism, and serving in the General Court, as the legislature is known, amounts to an act of volunteerism because it pays just $100 a year, plus mileage. Every year since 1975, more than 100 women have served…  Even if the legislature in New Hampshire is big, the state itself is small. That makes it easier for everyone to know everyone else, and most of the women in the Congressional delegation have intricate ties to one another.” New York Times, January 1^st.

Whatever the basis for more equal representation, the time for change is now. Since the 1980s, women have been enrolling in college in increasing numbers until today where there are more women with graduate and undergraduate degrees than men. So we certainly have more qualified younger woman than men! Predominantly-male-oriented Wall Street and corporate America brought us the irresponsible economic collapse where raw greed trumped common sense and even the slightest social concerns, and the man-cave we call Congress has led us into three unwinnable post-WWII major wars (Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan) that sapped our sense of moral high ground and created the unsustainable deficits that define our times but most recently embarrassed themselves with the way they handled the “fiscal cliff” (can we retire that phrase?). No one is saying that a female-dominated legislature or a woman president would make any difference… but then we really don’t know, do we?!

I’m Peter Dekom, and it’s time for women to get a New Deal to replace the Raw Deal they’ve been living with for so long.