In the News

Should it be a surprise that just last year, when voters were so concerned about political rancor and bitterness, a record 90 women were elected to Congress?

Consider last fall’s elections for circuit judgeships in Southwest Florida: Women won in four out of the five races that had female candidates.

In Lee County, the only woman who ran for a county commission seat, Tammy Hall, won, also making her the first woman ever re-elected to that board.

And in Tallahassee, a female Democrat, Alex Sink, defeated a Republican male to take the chief financial officer’s post and become the only woman, and only Democrat, on the Cabinet. The state Legislature now has 11 women in the 40-member Senate, and there are 27 women in the 120-member House.

Nobody called it "the year of the woman" in politics, but that’s how it turned out. Still, if you consider that women make up approximately one-half of the U.S. adult population, women remain underrepresented in political positions.

So what? Aren’t we past that now? Those who can remember the actual "Year of the Woman" almost 20 years ago, do so almost quaintly, kind of like bra burning and summers of love. But the fact is that no issues galvanize elected officials like those that are experienced personally. When it comes to matters of children’s welfare, elder care, healthcare and education, women more often deal with those matters on a daily, intimate basis.

Breast cancer funding and research, for example, didn’t come to the national forefront until the 1990s, when there were enough women in Congress to make it happen. The same is true for family-leave laws.

But today’s political arena is still often paralyzed by efforts to keep the other side from scoring points, regardless of the stakes. Having more women directly involved in the political process could, conceivably, help government get over that "gotcha" game, experts say.

There are exceptions to every rule, but political insiders say women bring to the table (note the change from the competition-charged "arena," to the more congenial "table") more teamwork, more inclusion and more willingness to get things done.

State Rep. Trudi Williams, a Republican who represents south Lee County and northern Collier County, says she sees the behavioral difference regularly in the Florida Legislature.

"So many guys won’t just say ‘no,’ they have to say ‘hell, no,’"  Williams says. "Women are just nicer. They want people to work together, to get things done. Men get all hung up on whose name will be on a bill, women just work to get the bill passed, without worrying so much about who gets the credit."

Of course, at election time, those same politicians focus on what they’ve accomplished, and women often find it harder to step up and take credit when it’s due. This characteristic, plus the time obligations of raising a family, and, often, a lack of financial resources for campaigning, create additional hurdles for women interested in running for office.

Hall says she hears all of those problems cited when she tries to get other women to run. For answers, she can point to her own successful fundraising—she’s raised more than any other commission candidate—and to the need for more women’s voices.

"It surprises me that we don’t have more female candidates than we do," Hall says. "Women own so many businesses and have such a large voice in the business world, we need to get those points of view in government. Women in general have less ego, and a greater desire to work out solutions."

The family conflict, however, can be more difficult to resolve. Williams says she could never have met the scheduling demands of the Legislature—a full two months in session, one week of sessions in all other months, and special sessions as needed—until her children were out of high school.

Some women legislators move their families to Tallahassee, while others, in county or local government, say there’s sufficient flexibility in those jobs.

Several national advocacy groups, meanwhile, offer fundraising help for women candidates under 40, for example, or for those in specific political offices.

But one thing is for sure: With a viable female candidate running for president, a woman speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and many other women in office, women in politics are becoming less of an anomaly. Studies show that the more women there are in office, the more teenage women will see themselves in elected positions and involved in politics and government in the future.

Might things be very different with more women involved? Probably so, and that couldn’t be a bad thing.