Where are all the high-ranking GOP women?

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Where are all the high-ranking GOP women?

by confuzzled dude Tue Aug 02, 2016 7:47 pm

In Congress, Republicans can boast only two additional female lawmakers and virtually no other women in high-ranking leadership roles compared with 2004, when Collins confronted Rumsfeld. Just one woman serves among the House’s top four leadership positions, and no Republican woman holds a top-ranking leadership role in the Senate. And the presidential stage is not much better: Carly Fiorina was the lone GOP female White House hopeful this cycle in a group of 16 men. Among the 31 Republican governors, only three are women.

The picture is even bleaker given the rapid rise of women at nearly all levels of Democratic politics.

Today, the political left is embodied by women, with more than a dozen ranking Democrats on Capitol Hill, as well as figures such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), the party’s progressive heroine, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), the former House speaker, and Hillary Clinton, the party’s presidential nominee, serving as potent symbols for females in the party. If Democrats take both the White House and Congress in November, women would fill a larger number of positions in their top ranks.

Shauna Shames, an assistant professor of political science at Rutgers University at Camden, has identified multiple hurdles for Republican women in politics that don’t exist for their Democratic peers. The two most troublesome, she said, are the purging of moderate Republicans through primaries and a less egalitarian party culture.

“The values are about individual rather than group-based concerns,” Shames said of Republicans. “There’s the idea that, if women are not in some place where they should be, they’re not working hard enough. … This doesn’t necessarily impede women from running for office, but it means fewer efforts to recruit, train and cultivate them.”

“There is a story that women are gaining ground in Congress, but it’s not entirely true,” she said. “If we are making progress, it’s only because of Democratic women.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/08/02/where-are-all-the-high-ranking-gop-women/?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_gopwomen-420pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory#comments

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