[EL] Collateral Damage to Gender Diversity in Government?

Tue May 7 13:17:27 PDT 2013

Actually, the "teams of two" model addresses that issue directly by 
giving women better opportunities to win if they run.

Qualified women frequently run for L.A. City Council without 
winning.Perhaps they need Larry.:-)

- dah

On 5/7/2013 8:17 AM, Larry Levine wrote:
>
> 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-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 <mailto:david at holtzmanlaw.com>
>
>
> -- 
> David A. Holtzman, M.P.H., J.D.
> david at holtzmanlaw.com
>
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