Congress has seen more women, especially women of color, elected in this recent Congress elections. Before these midterms, less than 1%of Congress identified as LGBT and only 7% were women of color. Now, of course, all women have more representation relative to their population size, but there is still a disparity between the representation and what would be proportionate to various groups of women. Vox goes into the details about the benefits that these women bring to Congress. They more openly talk about certain topics such as education and the minimum wage in addition to bringing in 9% more federal spending. Not to mention that they sponsor more bills than their male counterparts. Yet we don’t see a proportionate number of women in Congress because many women feel they do not have what it takes to be in Congress. They may even believe that people won’t vote for them based on that mentality or because of their gender. However, as we see more women in office, more women believe that they too could be in office and have an impact on their communities.
So why has this happened? From a young age many girls are taught to act a certain way, different from boys. This is called gender role socialization, all our lives we learn what it means to be a girl or feminine, usually to be polite, be mild-mannered, wear clothes that are flatter our bodies, etc. The same is true for boys, but they are told to be tough and driven. This coincides with social learning, how our actions and behaviors come across to others and how that plays a part in our society. So, when girls reach adult hood and they are starting a life for themselves, finding their place may be difficult. The tools they were given in child hood (essentially to not rock the boat) are not the ones required to enter a male dominated field. We see this in Congress. Our Congress may be the most iconic thing of our patriarchal society, were men have the most power in a certain society. We most likely all have an idea of what the people in our Congress have looked like… it’s not too diverse looking. But as more women give inspiration to others to run for office, it is starting to look how America looks. This trend of women in government falls into the larger movement of third wave feminism. These women (and many others) are promoting the idea that any identity any one may have deserves equality and representation.
This is where the diversity of Congress stands according to senate.gov. Out of 435 members…
-115 are women
-21 women identify as African American
-10 women identify as Hispanic/Latina-46 in all (a record number)
-11 women identify as Asian/Pacific Islander
As a whole, 116 members identify as a person of color (there may be some overlap as some members identified with more than one ethnicity). That combined with 115 women is 231, our most diverse Congress yet.
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https://www.senate.gov/CRSpubs/b8f6293e-c235-40fd-b895-6474d0f8e809.pdf
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