There's More To Do

Two days after the nomination of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate for president, the Traverse City Record-Eagle printed an editorial published in The Detroit News lauding that accomplishment and the advances of women generally in politics and business.  Clinton’s victory “shattered the glass ceiling” of male domination of candidates for president, said the editorial, and constituted “an accomplishment American women in the 20th century could only dream of.”  So far, so good.

But then the editors turned to the subject of women in lower levels of politics, specifically women elected to seats in state legislatures.  That number “has skyrocketed since the 1980s,” they said, “growing from just a couple of hundred nationwide to 1,812 in 2016.”  That in itself is true, but before we suffer a shoulder separation patting ourselves on the back, we should note the fact that this year there are 7,383 seats in state legislatures around the country and that the 1,812 filled by women amount to only 24.6% of the total.  Moreover, women occupy only 20.9% of the seats in the Michigan legislature (31 of 148), the state thus ranking a puny 34th among the 50 states.

As far as I know, women comprise somewhere around 50% of the total population of both the United States and the State of Michigan.  There’s more to do.