Measuring the Gender Gap
September 22, 2008
by Sheryl Lee
|3 Comments
A U.N. study released Thursday examines the intersection between the percentage of women in government and legislative action on issues affecting women. I’ll go over the interesting bits of the study tomorrow, but for now, have a look at the numbers.
Women in political office in America:
- 74 of 435 members of the House of Representative (17%)
- 16 of 100 Senators (16%)
- 8 out of 50 Governors (16%)
This puts the US at 68th among nations worldwide for percentage of women in government. Tajikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Uganda all rank ahead of the US. Rwanda has the world’s first ever woman-controlled parliament after last week’s elections awarded women 44 seats out of 80 (55%).
Issues that disproportionately affect women:
- Women face unequal pay for equal work, earning on average only 77¢ for every dollar earned by men.
- Funds have been cut for student loans, Medicaid, child support enforcement and federal childcare assistance.
- Paid family and medical leave and access to quality, affordable childcare are often unavailable.
- Social Security is threatened by tax cuts and efforts to “privatize” the system. Women are especially dependent on Social Security’s guaranteed, lifetime benefits.
- 17 million women in the U.S. have no health insurance at all, and one in every five women reports that she did not fill a prescription last year because of cost.
- Women’s ability to control their reproductive lives and health is under attack. Roe v. Wade is in danger of being overturned because of new judges on the Supreme Court, confirmed by a majority in the Senate.
- Access to birth control is also under attack.
Source: National Women’s Law Center
Dawn, thank you. These points are exactly what needs to be repeated, over and over again until change happens.
I look forward to learning more.
Lisa, I see from your blog that you’ve joined The New Agenda.
Welcome.
“# Women’s ability to control their reproductive lives and health is under attack. Roe v. Wade is in danger of being overturned because of new judges on the Supreme Court, confirmed by a majority in the Senate.
# Access to birth control is also under attack.”
I thought we weren’t supposed to care about that at The New Agenda?
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