[EL] Collateral Damage to Gender Diversity in Government?

[David A. Holtzman]

Women and men are different, people say.Even in government.

For instance, former Los Angeles City Councilmember Joy Picus recently 
suggested 
<http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/la-le-0201-friday-mayor-woman-20130201,0,4802412.story> 
that women leaders in public life pursue different policy priorities 
than men, creating "positive change."Los Angeles Times columnist Jim 
Newton bemoaned 
<http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-newton-column-women-in-los-angeles-politics-20130401,0,1390358.column> 
the possible absolute lack of women on the L.A. City Council, quoting 
former City Controller Laura Chick as saying "it makes a difference.Our 
brains are different. We have different perspectives...."

There is much concern about the paucity of female elected officials in 
general.There is a reception 
<http://www.american.edu/spa/wpi/upload/Invitation-for-policy-report-launch.pdf> 
this week at American University for a report 
<http://www.american.edu/spa/wpi/upload/Girls-Just-Wanna-Not-Run_Policy-Report.pdf>, 
prepared by an institute <http://www.american.edu/spa/wpi/> there whose 
mission <http://www.american.edu/spa/wpi/mission.cfm> is "to close the 
gender gap in political leadership." The Governor of Vermont cites the 
report as evidence in an article titled "We Need More Women in 
Governorships 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gov-peter-shumlin/women-governors_b_3037730.html>," 
concluding, "It's time we stopped just minding the gender gap and 
actually closed it."

*One of my favorite possible ways to alleviate this problem is to 
construct legislatures with one woman and one man elected from each 
district. *I remember from childhood in New York State that the local 
Democratic Party governing body had one "committeeman" and one 
"committeewoman" from each election district.The "committeewoman" from 
my election district was a veritable goddess, Hazel Dukes.

*The salient feature of this sort of arrangement is that it constructs 
teams of two, with every team of two consisting of one person from each 
gender.* If women and men are different, there are decent commonsense 
(rational? important? compelling?) reasons for this sort of 
arrangement.If in the aggregate, one gender is weaker (either gender at 
any time), requiring gender diversity in teams of two can assist the 
weaker one, perhaps helping to remedy a history of discrimination.And if 
members of each gender bring different things to the table, requiring 
gender diversity in teams of two can benefit society by providing more 
and different things to work with.And society can benefit from the 
complementarity, each whole team perhaps being greater than the sum of 
the parts.

Now *I'm concerned that a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court 
establishing same-sex marriage as a constitutional right would damage 
the ability of states and municipalities to construct gender-diverse 
legislatures through the "teams of two" model.*

Teams of two can come from electing representatives separately, one from 
each gender for each district, or from having gender-diverse teams of 
two run together as running mates (so to speak).A recent New York Times 
article 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/education/phillips-andover-girls-leadership-debated.html?pagewanted=all> 
describes an effort to provide gender diversity in an elected student 
office at a private school (Andover) by requiring candidates to run as 
teams of two.The effort failed because same-sex teams were allowed; 
(spoiler alert:) two boys won.

*To determine the potential extent of collateral damage to existing 
gender-diverse-by-mandate political institutions, I have a query for the 
list:

Are you aware of any legal provisions that specify the sex or gender of 
people to be elected in an election conducted either by the government 
or by a political party regulated by the government?Or provisions that 
simply require some sort of sex or gender balance?*Please send citations 
to help me construct a compilation on the topic.

- David Holtzman


p.s. Same-sex (or same-gender, or same-sexual-orientation) marriage and 
gender-diverse legislature mandates would not necessarily be mutually 
exclusive if they both come via state legislation or constitutions, 
without SCOTUS ruling on U.S. Constitutional rights.

p.p.s. Where would tennis be without mixed doubles?



-- 
David A. Holtzman, M.P.H., J.D.
david at holtzmanlaw.com
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