Where to Now? At the rate we're going, it could take 100 years for women to achieve equal representa

[Captain_Nemo]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/06/AR2009030601712.html

"The 2008 election season will be remembered partly for Hillary Clinton, who became the first woman to run a presidential campaign that was not just admirable, but credible, losing the Democratic nomination by a slim margin. And for Sarah Palin, the second woman in history to hold the vice presidential spot on a major party ticket and the first female Republican candidate to do so."

Yet the election also epitomized a broad and somewhat disheartening trend: Women are making great progress everywhere but at the very top. Women now make up 57 percent of college students but, a 2005 Chronicle of Higher Education survey found, less than one-fifth of college presidents . They account for more than 40 percent of MBA candidates, but only 2 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs, according to Catalyst, a nonprofit focused on expanding opportunities for women in business. Nearly half of law and medical school students are female. But women comprise only a quarter of federal judges and less than one-fifth of law firm partners and Fortune 500 general counsels, according to the American Bar Association.

~snip~

The election highlighted the difficulties women still face in the political arena. The classic double bind -- a woman who's feminine can't be competent; a woman who's competent can't be feminine -- emerged as a key element of press and Internet commentary on the campaign. Clinton, considered unfeminine by some but generally respected for her policy experience, inspired the marketing of a nutcracker with steel thighs and was likened to "everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court" by Mike Barnicle on MSNBC. Palin, meanwhile -- feminine and attractive, but relatively inexperienced and under-prepared to run a national race -- spawned a pornographic spoof on the Hustler Web site and a blow-up "love doll."

~snip~
What Walsh finds even more troubling is that the number of women running for and holding statewide office appears to have stagnated."

~snip~

"In one of the few surveys to emerge since the 2008 vote, four in 10 girls said the election had a "positive impact" on their desire to be a leader, according to a study released in January by Girl Scouts of the USA. Forty-six percent of girls and 38 percent of boys surveyed said they think more highly of women's ability to lead now than they did before the election. But 43 percent of girls said they strongly believe that "girls have to work harder than boys" to gain leadership positions, nearly double the number who thought so in 2007."

[terisan]

1. I want to see a lot more women in Congress and a First Woman President. I can't fathom

why Joseph biden is the vp and why the Democratic party passed up a change to get the first woman into the VP slot.

I know a lot of people like Biden but his enabling of the Credit Card industry's evil ways should have eliminated him as a vp nominee.

[DURHAM D]

2. I also want to see a lot more women on Wall Street and in our Executive Branch.

A recent article in Vanity Fair about Iceland points out how it was men, just men, who got us into the ditch economically in this country and elsewhere.

Men see green when they need to see red or yellow.

[sfbabe3]

3. Growing from the ground upwards

It's important to get awareness in your local community , get women elected to city and state offices. We have a "pool" of women now ready
for national spotlight because they've been percolating to the top. Then, we have to work together to support these women at the top, help them
run for office, because the "establishment" is predominantly male, and well, hell, ya know, who wants a babe in the locker room? The ball club consists
of us, Americans, and 52% of us are female.

[hfojvt]

4. Then you must be happy that Lynn Jenkins was elected in Kansas

and Michelle Bachman in Minnesota. Yay. More women in Congress :woohoo:

And now that Tom Daschle is not Secretary of HHS, that means Kathleen Sebelius will be. :woohoo: We got a woman instead of a man.

Of course, that also means Kansas will have a male Governor as well as a male Senator in 2010. Probably Jerry Moran instead of the aforementioned Kathleen Sebelius.

[Threedifferentones]

5. 100 years, yes

I think it is a GOOD change that more girls think they have to work harder...THEY DO! But, strong female leaders and role models can do a lot to change people's impressions, and I think that for 50 years or so now each generation has held women's capabilities in higher regard than the last.

People have been developing cultures with women as objects to be competed over and controlled for thousands of years, so it is not surprising that a few decades have not erased that. But, as bad as things still are I do not think they have been getting worse, though some women may have thought things were better than they really were.