[EL] Same-sex marriage v. Gender-diverse representation

[J.H. Snider]

The various citizen assemblies on electoral reform in British Columbia, Ontario, and the Netherlands had stratified random samples, where one of the criteria was gender.  For example, in British Columbia, there were two randomly selected representatives from each of 79 ridings/districts.  One representative had to be a male and the other a female.  My Facebook Group on Constitutional Convention and Citizens Assembly Based Democratic Reform can be found here<https://www.facebook.com/groups/20942842125/>.  My current focus is on the ongoing Irish constitutional convention, which includes 66 randomly selected citizens.

Informal gender balance to achieve "descriptive representation" in public bodies appointed by public officials is fairly common.  You might check their charters to see if gender balance is an explicit criterion.  For example, if you checked the charters for the more than 1,000 federal advisory committees, I'd bet you'd find some with such an explicit gender criterion of balance.

--J.H. ("Jim") Snider, Ph.D.
President of iSolon.org<http://isolon.net/> and Non-residential Lab Fellow at Harvard University's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics<http://www.ethics.harvard.edu/the-center/mission>


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: Monday, May 13, 2013 3:05 PM
To: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Subject: [EL] Same-sex marriage v. Gender-diverse representation

Hello Again,

I'm still looking for examples of required gender diversity in political representation.

And I still think such diversity, and gender-diversity mandates in general, would be threatened by a broad U.S. Supreme Court ruling making same-sex marriage a constitutional right.

So far I've heard about gender-diversity rules for the Democratic Party of the U.S., and for parties in Indiana, Alabama, California, Massachusetts and New York.  In some states, statutes authorize parties to make such rules.  In Indiana's Democratic Party, any two positions like chair and vice-chair must be occupied by people of different sex.  If the coupled positions become filled by people of the same sex, "the lesser office" is automatically vacated.  (For other positions there, "Party members are encouraged to make determined efforts to create equal gender representation....")

Please help me find more examples of places where official delegations are, or may be, required to have gender balance.  For example, where party committees are composed of a committeewoman and a committeeman from each district.  Or where the candidates in an election are gender-diverse teams of two.  Or where state law authorizes party conventions, party committees, or other governing bodies to require gender balance.

Any examples (and citations) you can provide would be much appreciated!

  - dah



On 5/7/2013 7:33 AM, David A. Holtzman wrote:
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>



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