[EL] Collateral Damage to Gender Diversity in Government?

[Larry Levine]

The solution proposed ignores one of the major causes of the situation.
There was a time in the 1970s when I had elected more women to public office
than any other professional political consultant in the nation. Now, we are
hard-pressed to find women who will run for office. The drop in the number
of women on the L.A. City Council and in the state legislature is more the
result of a shortage of women candidates than it is of an inability to elect
women. Requiring district representation by two people of different genders
won't solve the problem if women don't want to run for office. 

Larry

 

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of David A.
Holtzman
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2013 7:33 AM
To: law-election
Subject: [EL] Collateral Damage to Gender Diversity in Government?

 

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-2
0130201,0,4802412.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-Repo
rt.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.h
tml> ," 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-leadersh
ip-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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