Women in Politics?

In an age of equality do women or any other group need promoting?

L-O-FUCKING-L. Anyone who thinks this is truly an age of equality is a joke. This really verifies what I saw in the other thread: you really don't know what you're talking about. Just because women are technically equal under the law does not mean that they are truly equal and anyone with any life experience should be able to notice that. But I guess we can throw that one out the window because technically, they are equal under the law and maybe you can disagree over if that translates to reality. But the fact that you add "any other group" makes your statement all the more laughable. Uhh....how about homosexuals, who actually don't get the same legal rights?

And Devin, I really can't answer that question since I know nothing about women in politics in Canada.

And Devin, I really can't answer that question since I know nothing about women in politics in Canada.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazel_McCallion

is the mayor of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, the sixth largest city in the country.
has been Mississauga's mayor for 31 years, holding office since 1978.
She is one of Canada's best known and longest-serving mayors.
At the age of 85, she was easily re-elected in November 2006 for her 11th consecutive term, holding a 91% majority of the votes, and has often been reelected without even needing to conduct an actual campaign.

It's so cute how asking a single question can set you off so much. You're adorable.

It's cute how you think I'm set off. It's also cute how anytime anyone challenges your view, you respond with something along the lines of "you're adorable" or "thanks for the insight" instead of, you know, responding.

Asking a question is not presenting a view. There was nothing to be challenged but you did feel a need to completely over react. You shouldn't let personalities and your personal feelings get the better of you.

Pretty sure it's not overreacting. You seem to be the one bringing personalities into it since you've responded to everything BUT my argument.

Posting more than 3 sentences on a message board = overreacting.

The individual is ultimately the responsible to promote her/his role in whatever he/she does. We can always bitch how are discriminated for being black, female, latino, short, left handed or whatever but nowdays more than ever before the society is very close to be meritocratic.

By the way. Has anyone noted how the average height of american presidents has been quite high? The next president needs to be less than 5'8" to balance such injustice.

It was more ranting than an arguement but never the less.

No, I do not fel like women need promoting to participate in politics. Women make up slightly more than 50% of the population and thus could control government if they decided to vote in a sexist way. The only thing that could be seen as any type of barrier to a woman participating in politics is the wage disparity as politics is an expensive career choice. But this barrier is more of a socio-economic barrier than one of sex. Looking at the immense lack of equality in universities this socio-economic barrier will most likely reverse in the near future.

I would have hoped that with the election of Obama that the "victimized" card would no longer be played. People are more than willing to listen to and vote for a politician with well presented ideas.

a big problem is the lack of proportional representation. i believe in norway, sweden and finland, all with some form of proportional representation, the number of women elected are around 40%. in canada it's around 20.

BC has gone through referendums surrounding adopting proportional representations and it just hasn't been able to make an effective case.

Does the elected government need to reflect it's demographic to be an effective government? What will having more of any group elected achieve?

it will pass next time i have little doubt. it should have passed the first time (you could argue it actually did) but the bar was set too high. hopefully when it passes in BC that will be catalyst for the rest of the country.

Truthfully I see no merit in it. I want every elected politician to represent his/her constituents. I've had male and female elected officials (couldn't tell you their ethnic backgrounds, completely no concern to me) and saw no difference in their effectiveness. The biggest hinderance I see to effective to representation is strict adherance to party line rather than representing to people. I do not see proportional representation helping this but rather entrenching it more deeply.

See, now we're getting places. I too feel that women don't necessarily need to participate in politics more, since it shouldn't matter who is leading the country as an elected official. That being said, a woman president would do wonders to help the social status of women. As someone living in the southeastern US, I can tell you less than half the country truly thinks women should be equal. I still disagree that this is an age of equality though, especially with the given example of homosexuals.

Well, homosexuals are allowed to marry people of the opposite sex.

I'd be more than happy if the government got out of the marriage game all together and only issued civil unions to who ever and in what ever quantity people desired. If you are legally allowed to live and love who ever you want then those relationships all deserve the same level of rights and responsibilities.