Women of Color Were Shut Out of Congress For Decades. Now They’re Transforming It.
More women of color are serving in the 117th Congress than ever before. Source: Women of Color Were Shut Out of Congress For Decades. Now They’re Transforming It.
Lesson plan
- Read the texts below and look at the charts. Write a short text where you explain the graphs.
The 2020 election might have been a battle between two white male septuagenarians, but it also contained two major political milestones for women of color. The first is that on Wednesday, Sen. Kamala Harris will be sworn in as the first Black and South Asian American vice president — the first woman and first woman of color to serve in that role.
Why do we still distrust women leaders?
only 41% of people in Germany said they felt very comfortable with a woman being the head of government, in spite of Angela Merkel’s long-time chancellorship. “It’s just a myth that one female leader changes society,” says Michelle Harrison, who leads the public division of Kantar, the market research company that runs the Reykjavík Index surveys. And it’s unrealistic to expect a single leader (woman or otherwise) to create sweeping change around gender roles.
Another striking finding was that around the world, young men were especially unlikely to endorse women leaders. This is surprising given that younger generations are often considered more progressive than older ones.
Only 41% of people in Germany said they felt very comfortable with a woman being the head of government, in spite of Angela Merkel’s long-time chancellorship
The Covid-19 effect
Unfortunately, the pandemic has not been a turning point for bias against women in power. In the pandemic-linked recession, women are being disproportionately affected by job cuts and reduced working hours. Women are also under-represented in scientific and policy committees related to Covid-19 response.
Women heads of government have won plaudits for decisive leadership during the pandemic, including New Zealand’s Ardern and Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen. And in the US, states with women governors initially had fewer deaths from Covid-19 than states with male governors.
But it’s hard to judge patterns when these women leaders are still such a small sample (currently only 9 out of 50 US governors are women). More generally, the strong performance of women leaders doesn’t appear to have improved public beliefs about women’s leadership. This pattern already exists in other domains. While women’s leadership in the banking and finance sector is associated with more stability and higher financial returns, this sector remains imbalanced in terms of gender.
Source: Equality matters.