Monday, November 10, 2014

Represent Women

Photo via Flickr Creative Commons


What Would Life Look Like if Women Were Represented


Lately so much of what I hear in the news here in the states is about how women's rights are being stripped. The pictures show a panel of primarily white, older men who are making decisions about women's capacity to make decisions. With their every indictment they are saying that women in fact are not rational creatures and that they need someone to 'take care of them'. 

I often get overwhelmed and caught up in wringing my hands as opposed to doing something about it. I believe that protesting and having your voice heard is important and effective. I believe that supporting organizations that fight on behalf of women's rights is also important. Yet, that is not going to solve the root problem because we can protest and we can support organizations doing good work, but at the end of the day it is still the panel of men that are going to make the decisions. 

Here is a look at the United State's House and Senate. It's pretty clear that women and minorities are not a part of the makeup of our government and they need to be. 

Image via Good
So, what do we do? One small step would be to give $5. In 2010 women gave only "26 percent of the total funds to candidates, political action committees, and party committees" according to an article in Good.

They also stated that the group She Should Run calculated that if the majority of U.S. women gave $5 to a "woman running for office in 2012, the total would be enough to run a female candidate in every single House race and give them each a budget of more then $1 million". Sadly, that didn't happen.

Until I heard my friend Alexandra Eidenberg mention how challenging it has been to raise funds for a congressional seat, especially from women, I never gave this issue any thought. 

We need to support women who are running for office with our pocketbooks. Quite honestly, we have not been taught to vote with our pocketbooks.

Currently only four out of the sixteen Congressional seats in Illinois are held by women. I think we can do better then that. We need to get more women representatives and the first step is to donate.

KMC


Originally published 7/16/13

No comments:

Post a Comment