Women in Politics. Where are you!?

It’s a question I am asked repeatedly.

Recently a friend was gobsmacked upon discovering the lack of both gender and racial diversity with the United States Congress. From my kitchen, some 2,000 miles away, I offered a sympathetic pat on the back and ‘there, there’ then subsequently wanted to reach through the computer, grab her shoulders and shout “YES! This is what I’ve been saying! What are we going to do about it?”

Each time I bear witness to one of the smart, capable women in my life coming across the statistics – 16.8% of congress (both the House of Representatives and Senate) is female though we are 51% of the population; there is currently one person of color serving in the United States Senate – it opens up a Pandora’s Box of sorts within my brain. I oscillate between anger that we are woefully underrepresented and shrugging at our lot. There is no shortage of groups around the country offering to train women to be grassroots organizers and to get involved but there is a shortage of women who are willing to do so. Why?

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Women, on average, need to be asked to run for office a minimum of three times. Meanwhile Ron Paul wakes up every two years, shaves and says “Let’s do this thing.”

Every time I hear this, I have a head-desk moment because I each and every woman I know has the inherent qualities of a good politician. We have the innate ability to be nurturers and caregivers. We want the best for our families and our neighbors. We can rally folks for bake sales and potlucks. As matriarchs and mothers we are the lobbyists, financial planners and CEOs for our children and our families.

Yet it’s 2012, and while leaps and strides are made in other areas – medicine, advertising, writing, etc. – this is the one area where we remain stagnant. We have been stuck in this political gender gap since the 1960′s, and while many exclaim that this is the year of the woman, we are still stuck. Again, I ask; why?

1. Politics is a dirty business. We witness it on even and odd number years as politicians from both sides of the aisle lob insults. With each election comes the onslaught of campaign advertising that has become increasingly negative. Though if you ask a current GOP contender if he put up an ad he’ll likely say no, but that doesn’t mean that outside groups, SuperPACs and independent expenditures, aren’t out there doing the dirty work. Recently Hillary Clinton said that after 2012 she is done with the ‘high wire of politics’. I understand it. To be in this business requires skin thicker than my left thigh and while I do it everyday, I still get upset and cry and have been stared down and mocked in meetings where people think that because of both my gender and my race, I cannot possibly understand what is going on politically. I keep doing it because I love it and to love something and be passionate about it often means attempting to brush things off your shoulder.

2. We don’t have role models. Speaking of Hillary Clinton, she is my role model. I once upon a time decided that I wanted to be a Senator because she was a Senator and then, no joke, I moved to Washington, DC for the sole purpose of being an intern in her Senate office. One day she stopped in the office I shared with one of her staff members and I remember being terrified that she would, like, talk to me. AND SHE DID. And I died. The end. In all seriousness, no one has really strong feelings about the Secretary of State or Nancy Pelosi the way that I do. We are few and far between, and because we don’t see women that look like us up on the dais or campaigning for any level of office, we assume that it just shouldn’t be done. I don’t know about you, but even if I know better, I find it harder to get up and go into things where I don’t see someone who looks like me. I feel like it makes it easier if there is someone to whom I share some similarities, whose behavior I can emulate, and with so few women in politics it gets harder and harder to find a woman for me to truly look up to.

3. Work/life balance. I’m not entirely convinced that there is such a thing as balance between work and life and family, and I have yet to meet a woman who says that she has found that sweet spot. There are always going to be things pulling us in various directions, and a nagging feeling of guilt. And to add in splitting time between a job in Washington, DC and being the representative of a state 200 to 3,000 miles away, I really scratch my head because I don’t know how there are parents that do it. But they do. My theory is this: A colleague once told me that for some people things are just a job, and for others, what they do is a calling. It sounds ethereal but it’s true, and I believe that the women who take on various roles in government are doing so because they felt called to do something to help. I know it’s rather Pollyanna-ish of me to say that many women feel altruistic and want to do something to benefit, not only their own families, but other. I have never met a women involved in this work who has not said that they wanted to help. They saw a problem and the pros for taking on that problem outweighed the cons. As I said, there is no perfect balance, no matter what, but I like when I see or hear of a woman who took the proverbial bull by the horns not just for their own herd, but for the good of society. Your kids/husband/mother/dog will appreciate it.

4. We don’t feel connected and capable. We don’t know the right people. We don’t have enough money. We don’t know all of the issues. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: (most) Men don’t either. They’re just much better at faking it. Men feel like they can because they are hardwired to believe that they can do pretty much anything, know everything and dammit, they’ll just take whatever the issue at hand is on. The rest of the details be damned. Women are more likely to make lists and not jump in with both feet without knowing all of the issues. I say this: I don’t know everything, but I’ve gotten really good at pretending and if I don’t know something, I say I don’t know. It’s crazy. I have found that with the ladies I know, there was one issue that they found a particular attachment to and though they had no expertise in other areas, they were smart enough to hire really good staff. Another secret? 85% of the time the staff are far more knowledgeable than the politician. You are capable. You just need the right people to have your back.

5. No one asks us. No one asks us because we don’t feel capable, we are nervous because we don’t have a role model and we have to get dinner on the stove. That’s just the way it is: our feelings can come off of our bodies like heat from a flame. It’s not just that others – men – are standing in front of us preventing us from moving forward, it’s a case of taking a good look in the mirror and wanting to fix something that we see in our town, city, state or country that we see is wrong. Women aren’t asked to run for office because we don’t put ourselves out there.

I don’t know if 2012 will be the year of the woman. I do know that I can write and dissect and question why women are not politically involved to the same extent that men are, and for all I know I could be wrong.

But I am just one person. I can shout this from the rooftops and I can write a million articles but I can’t do it alone.

So, ladies, what are we going to do?

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