A Senator Looks for More Women in Office
NEW YORK — For some time now, female Republican leaders like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann have captured the media spotlight while more Democratic women seem to have faded into the woodwork. It’s not a state of affairs feminist groups want to acknowledge, of course, as I learned when I first wrote about it two months ago. But it is apparent that the progress of women in public life in the United States has in at least some spheres come to a screeching stall.
Over all, left and right, the picture is not encouraging. Last year, for the first time in three decades, the percentage of women in Congress dropped. This year, women hold 89 of 535 seats (16 percent) in the U.S. Congress; 17 of those seats are in the Senate and 72 in the House of Representatives. Perhaps more stunning, the United States has only six female governors, four Republicans and two Democrats.
None of those numbers sit well with Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand of New York, a Democrat who has now made it her mission to stand at the forefront of women’s issues in all aspects of life — from abortion to national security and economic concerns. “I have been very troubled” about the slowdown in women’s participation in public life, she told me, and that was why she introduced a national campaign, called Off the Sidelines, to fire them up.
“I call it a call to action,” she said. “It’s to build awareness. Many women don’t understand that their voices are not being heard in Washington. Right now the biggest challenge is the economy, and we need women to offer solutions. ”
Ms. Gillibrand, who at 44 is among the youngest members of Congress, has cultivated a serious but bold political persona in a relatively short time in the Senate. She is a lawyer, the mother of two young boys and the wife of a British venture capitalist, and she grew up in the no-holds-barred political atmosphere of Albany, New York’s state capital, where her grandmother was a political powerhouse and her mother an activist lawyer.
Since her appointment to the Senate in 2009 and her landslide victory in 2010 to serve out Hillary Rodham Clinton’s term, Ms. Gillibrand has fought successfully for the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and for same-sex marriage in the state of New York, which became law last month. Next up on her agenda are the fight for equal pay for women (she is working on a bill called the Paycheck Fairness Act) and the repeal of the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act.
“Getting off the sidelines is a state of mind,” the campaign declares on its “About Us” page. The Web site, www.offthesidelines.org, invites women to click on “How You Can Get Off the Sidelines,” “Tell Us Your Story,” and “Contribute to Gillibrand for Senate.”
Off the Sidelines is not an operation independent of Ms. Gillibrand’s campaign for re-election for a full six-year term in 2012. It is an integral part of her campaign, directed by her and financed by campaign donations.
“This is very much part of my election campaign,” she told me. “It’s very much part of who I am. But this is not about any one campaign or any one election cycle. It is far-reaching. It’s about changing the dynamics of decision-making in the United States.”
Read more at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/us/20iht-letter20.html
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