BY MIKE CETERA
It's a sad comment on how far we have to go when female lawmakers feel they have to watch each other's backs. When are we going to begin picking our representatives based only on their qualifications, and not, for example, on whether they are a man or a woman, black or white?
The State-Journal Register ran a piece this week on the state of women in the General Assembly.
"'Women are taken much more seriously than they probably were at one time,'", Dawn Clark Netsch, a retired legislator and state comptroller, told the paper. "However, women in politics still are infrequent enough that their encouragement for each other is important, she said."
The piece quoted State Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia, D-Aurora: “'If you’re female, regardless if you’re Republican, Democrat, independent, it doesn’t matter ... we need to grow our numbers,' she said. 'One of the reasons (Sen. Linda Holmes) is here is because I said, ‘Do it. You have to run for it.'”
I noticed no men stood up to defend themselves in the article. Perhaps they weren't asked.
But the story raises the question, shouldn't female lawmakers worry about representing their consituents, not forming alliances with their gender? Is this sexist? After all, if a similar group of men came together to encourage men to run for office, they'd be (figuratively) stoned. Right?
Wrong.
Men have been doing the same thing in politics since the dawn of this country. How do you think the phrase "good ol' boy network" came about?
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