| |
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
CAWP Research Confirms: Representation Matters
|
Women in Congress--across partisan lines--know their presence makes a difference. That is a key finding in a new CAWP research report,
Representation Matters: Women in the U.S. Congress
. Women in both the House and Senate in the 114th Congress (2015-16) confronted a difficult political environment, characterized by sharp partisan divisions and legislative gridlock. Women were underrepresented across parties, particularly in the party in power.
Yet the CAWP study, based on interviews with 83 of the 108 women who served as senators, representatives, and delegates, finds that women on both sides of the aisle believe their presence and their voices mattered, and they provided considerable evidence of achievements despite the overall environment and the gender-based challenges they continue to confront. Women of color--who constituted a record number of members in the 114th Congress--emphasized the significance of their presence and the imperative of including diverse perspectives more generally in the policymaking process. The lawmakers also reported that gender-related obstacles to winning congressional seats are tougher than the challenges of serving as women in Washington once elected.
The report is
available here.
The study was made possible by generous support from the Political Parity program at the Swanee Hunt Alternatives Fund.
|
Last Call: Tame Your Fear of Public Speaking!
|
 Anxious about public speaking? Seventy-five percent of women answer "Yes!" That's why the latest Ready to Run® interactive workshop, on Thursday, June 29 from 9:00 - noon at the Eagleton Institute of Politics, will focus on effective public speaking and presentation skills. Led by Professor Karla Jackson-Brewer, a skilled and encouraging trainer, participants will learn how to deliver a message more powerfully and how to identify their own authentic style, along with secrets of verbal and nonverbal communications techniques to capture and maintain any audience's interest and tips for dealing with speech anxiety.
|
|
Election 2017--Preview of 2018?
|
 |
|
|
|
Top left: NJ gubernatorial candidate Kim Guadagno; bottom left: Louisiana state treasurer candidate Julie Stokes; right: Virginia lieutenant governor candidate Jill Vogel.
|
Just two states, New Jersey and Virginia, have statewide and state legislative elections in 2017. But they could foreshadow candidacies of women in 2018, when many more states will hold elections. Both states feature Republican women on statewide tickets. New Jersey's GOP candidate for governor is Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno. In Virginia, businesswoman Jill Vogel is the party's candidate for lieutenant governor. In New Jersey, where both houses are up for election, a record number of women seeking state legislative seats won their primaries. Virginia, where only the House of Delegates is up, has not yet published a complete candidate list including those who faced no primary opposition, so characterizing the results is not yet possible. Also on the ballot in a special election for state treasurer in Louisiana is CPA and State Representative Julie Stokes. Read CAWP's post-primary release
here
and get full candidate information on CAWP's
Election Watch 2017 page
.
|
NEW Leadership™ Preps Future Leaders around the Country
|
NEW Leadership™ NJ
CAWP's NEW Leadership
™
New Jersey summer institute welcomed 34 Garden State students for six days of learning how to be "troublemakers," as keynoter Loretta Weinberg, New Jersey's Senate majority leader, urged. They met powerful activists, including program alumna Maria del Cid-Kosso, a vocal advocate for immigrants and this year's winner of the Hazel Frank Gluck Award; Susan Wilson, who dedicated decades of work to promoting family life education; and closing speaker Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, creator of the popular Muslim Girl website. A day in Trenton introduced the group to women lawmakers, including Senator Diane Allen, and staff. For their action project, the students delved into police use of body-worn cameras, proving that they can master a complex issue quickly, as elected officials must.
|
|
|
Keynote speaker NJ Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (second from left) with 2017 Faculty in Residence: Arlene Quiñones Perez, Hunterdon County Democratic Committee chair; former West Virginia Delegate Meshea Poore; and Emily Everson, deputy director of communications, NJ Senate Republicans. Closing speaker Amani Amani Al-Khatahtbeh signed copies of her book,
Muslim Girl: A Coming of Age
, for students. State Senator Diane Allen spoke to the students in the NJ Senate chamber.
|
|
NEW Leadership™ National Network Partners
Meanwhile, NEW Leadership™ partners offered their own versions of the program across the nation, including the first-ever program at the University of Montana.
|
|
|
Top left: Constance Harvey Slaughter, former assistant secretary of state and former general counsel for the state of Mississippi, was the NEW Leadership™ Mississippi keynote speaker. Top right: Denise Juneau, former state superintendent of public instruction and the first Native American woman elected to statewide executive office in Montana, was the keynote speaker for NEW Leadership™ Montana. Center left: Jo Ann Davidson, former speaker of the Ohio State House of Representatives, keynoted NEW Leadership Ohio. Center right: NEW Leadership™ Texas students met State Senator Dawn Buckingham at the State Capitol. Bottom left: Terie Norelli, former NH state House speaker and president and CEO of the New Hampshire Women's Foundation (second from left), keynoted NEW Leadership™ New England, with other former legislators in attendance. Also shown: Elizabeth Ossoff, professor and chair of psychology, Saint Anselm College and NEW Leadership™ New England co-director (right). Bottom right: Caption: A NEW Leadership™ South Carolina student tried out the gavel on the bench at the SC Court of Appeals.
|
|
Resisting Women's Political Leadership: The Video
|
The conference "Resisting Women's Political Leadership: Theories, Data, Solutions," which coincided with the 30th anniversary of the graduate women and politics program of the Department of Political Science at Rutgers-New Brunswick, offered international scholarly takes on tough topics. You can see video of sessions from the five-day conference
here
.
|
It's time to help women get involved in shaping our government.
Make a contribution to CAWP today!
Thank you.
|
Women Rule, Per Politico
Keep Talking
In an opinion piece in
The Washington Post
, Christine Emba suggests that if women spoke up more, the U.S. Senate and Uber might avoid problems like those they have encountered recently.
What's Up with Republican Women?
Glamour
tells the story of Jennifer Pierotti Lim and Meghan Milloy, co-founders of Republican Women for Progress, who seek to bring back "traditional Republican ideas, especially concerning fiscal issues, national security, and trade policy" and hope to improve the GOP's communication with women and minorities. And political scientists Michele L. Swers and Danielle M. Thomsen, in The Washington Post's "Monkey Cage," offer an explanation for the paucity of Republican women in Congress: money.
Could She Be the First African American Woman Governor?
Two GOP women, Nikki Haley and Susana Martinez, became the first women of color to serve as governors when they were elected in 2010. But no African American woman has been elected as a state's chief executive, and Georgia's Stacey Abrams is attracting progressive support around the country in her bid to do that, as reported in The Washington Post.
Celebrating a Record Number of Women--or Not?
The Telegraph
reports that history was made as Britain elected a record number of women to Parliament. But in
The Washington Post's "Monkey Cage
," political scientists Mary Nugent and Diana Z. O'Brien caution that the "results represent only an incremental change" and offer thoughts about why the record may not be as significant as it seems. And gender and politics scholars Sarah Childs, Meryl Kenny, and Jessica Smith, in the
British Politics and Policy
section of the London School of Economics and Political Science website, describe the election results as "scratching, rather than smashing the glass ceiling."
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
| |
|
|
