The Oppression Of Women In Politics

In the United States government we have a small number of women running for office or are even represented in office. Why is that? The media shows multiple women, who run for office in local, state, and even national elections. Although, their male counterpart seems to always come out as the winner. Although, does it really matter, numerically, how many men and women candidates there are? Or it is that women govern issues differently than men, and are better able to represent women’s issues. In order to find a solution to this growing problem, we have to find the barriers that divide female and male candidates, then understand why we have so few women represented in the government, and finally combating some alternatives to fix this problem.

The first one being, descriptive representation, where women represent women in politics. This can be beneficial assuming women, with different ideologies, share the same characteristics like religion or race will also share the same interests. This means there will be more women thinking “they are just like me!” and they will be more open to collaborating together. The second one is, symbolic representation, address the same definition as descriptive representation, although. it adds a more emotional symbolic element to women representing women in politics. In politics women need to have someone that makes them feel like their interests are being represented. For example, in the government you see a lot of all male and all white committees, and we need to have more female leaders in government, but in order to do that we need women standing for other women. If we have more women doing so, then it begins to change this mental image of what a leader is in the political world. This brings about the third type of representation, substantive. According to the text, substantive representation means “when women act for other women by pursuing distinctive interests and policy preferences unique to women” (Fords , Chapter 5). This is the most important representation, and the hardest to implement. Women representatives all have different ideologies, backgrounds,

Female role models especially in the Political Science field of study, encourage other women, older or younger, that women belong in government. These female role models, show other women in the public that they care about women’s issues, that they have fought the same fight, and have made it out on top. Also, they can encourage other women to be “go getters” in their daily lives, and fight for the “corner office”. In addition, there’s needs to be an equal representation of female role models from different ideologies, ethnicities, religions, or sexual orientations in government. This way, women all over the country can be represented, no matter if your a Democrat, Republican, or Independent; or are White, Hispanic, African American, Asian, or Native American; or practice Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, or no religion at all; or if you are straight, gay, bisexual, or asexual. All in all women need to have role models from all sorts of