Read more about Girl's State here. That's Michael Bridell and Carrie Kurlander, the usual co-media panelists, though Michael is out of town this year.
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Jun 10, 2009
Women in Alabama Politics
While a lot of eyes are watching the candidacy of Democratic Rep. Artur Davis to see if he'll become the first black Alabama Governor, there's another area where the state is lacking.
Only 12.9 per cent of the Alabama Legislature is female...putting Alabama third from the bottom nationally, ahead of only South Carolina and Oklahoma. For comparison, the top state, Colorado, has 29%...still fairly low when you consider the fact that the U.S. population is more than 50% female. But back to Alabama. We've had a female governor and Lt. Governor--once each--both the Treasurer and the Auditor's office seem to be held by women more than the other constitutional offices. Seven of the last eight State Auditors were women, as were six of the last seven State Treasurers.
We have a female Secretary of State right now, Beth Chapman, but Sibyl Pool was the first woman to hold that and any other statewide elected office. She was elected in 1944. We've never had a female Attorney General. There have been 24 Agriculture Commissioners in the state. All of them men. A healthy percentage of the relative few women who have won statewide elected office in Alabama attended Girl's State when they were in High School. It's underway right now:
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I've had a question and a theory about female leadership for quite some time now. It's one I've wanted to study for quite some time.
ReplyDeleteWomen are quite capable leaders, and as time has shown, can and do rise to the task quite well.
There's no doubt that women's voices in our national, state and local governance have affected us in an enduringly positive manner.
The same holds true in other nations. Benazir Bhutto and Margaret Thatcher are but two of the perhaps better-known examples.
Men are by nature, leaders. That does NOT mean that women cannot lead, but that women are by nature nurturing, and have within them the innate desires for nurturance, whereas that trait is not so prevalent in men.
There are numerous examples of female leadership throughout the world, including in Alabama, with our state's FIRST and our nation's THIRD female governor, Lurleen B. Wallace.
I relate the issue of female leadership to a sociocultural phenomenon as an innate part of our human being.
So, I can't help but wonder if in some way, that when men tend to make a grandiose mess of things in governance - as they have from time-to-time - if women rise to the task of "fixing" the things men have messed up.
What is it in our nature that seems to naturally turn to women to fix things up when men have abdicated their responsibility and screwed things up?