Let me guess: they're too "liberal" for Salon, right? Gotta keep those "leftist extremists" in check lest they undo the good work Bush with the collaboration of Hillary and the rest of the Dems have accomplished over the last 8 years.

Interesting perspective. The point that women do well when the political machine is weak may be something of a rule overall, but in that case there are notable exceptions. Alaska's Sara Palin won running against her own party's installed governor amid an environment that is extremely well entrenched and machine-like.

She, as those who are familiar with her remarkable rise know, has been pretty widely held in high regard by her constituency from both parties and has remained reasonable while standing in the withering focus of big oil (highly critical of Exxon for its case agains paying the full amount to the fishermen) and has resisted a number of social conservative's drives to legislate conservative morality laws.

Those on the left could learn a thing or two from Gov. Palin's consensus building approach.

Funny that you couldn't find a single Republican woman worthy of your mention. Chris Rock had it exactly right:

http://www.laist.com/2007/03/18/chris_rocks_opening_monologue_on_snl_last_night.php

"In other words, if we want to see more women in public office, we need to pressure our political leaders to encourage promising women to run."

I don't agree with this statement. I don't see a problem with women running for political office--we have a number already in D.C., and as governors in various states--but I do see a problem in their behavior. Hellary may have been the more-qualified candidate, but her behavior so turned me (and others) off that we could not, in good conscience, entrust the governing of the United States to her.

Why these female candidates feel they must behave like men is beyond me. It IS possible to be feminine and also intelligent. Why imitate men? Why act like men? Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D.KS) is a perfect example of a woman comfortable with her femininity who has done an outstanding job of working with Republicans in a Republican State and still taken care of business in a professional and intelligent manner.

Let's not set the Feminist Movement back fifty years!

Hmmm that information tells me that when women are not competing for jobs they do quite nicely. When there is competition....not so well.

In the states where the state legislature is a poorly paid, part-time job, women are always well represented. So what does this tell us?

That male politicians consider well-paying political offices to be plums that are the property of the boys club, and rarely solicit women to run for those posts.

This isn't new. It's just another version of the glass ceiling.

The value of mentoring in all professions should never be underestimated. Emily's List long ago recognized this phenomena of women not being recruited to run for office.

Emily's List has a video they play at all of their candidate seminars and many of their other gatherings. It is called, "You've been asked."

You can watch it on Youtube here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzHULYo8eto

In Texas, Annie's List has helped elect scores of women statewide and has nine endorsed candidates this cycle.

Changing the face of power is the name of the game.

Also on this topic, check out this article about Emily's List's influence:

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/06/27/1172456.aspx

Not sure if I agree but interesting nonetheless

I'll check those documentaries out.

I agree with you Celia. This is a positive proactive approach to something that should not have taken so long ... well, something that should happen some time soon.

Along these lines, on another thread, I mentioned try to catch two recent programs from BBC4 if you can. "The Long Walk to Finchley" and "The Making of the Iron Lady". The first was a drama covering Thatcher's Pre-Parliament years ('49-'59) and the latter was a documentary about her rise through the ranks to become Prime Minister ('59-'79).

Regrdless of your opinions of her years as Britain's leader, these shows certainly bring the sexism she faced into focus, first to be slated as a candidate and secondly trying to climb the ladder when she was clearly regarded as someone with the drive to be a leader.

bump this article up or post it to the front page again?

There has been so much division and so many negative articles- this is a powerful example of the kind of discussion that we need to have to have productive solutions to our problems.

Not always ... but usually.

As women have moved into business, medicine, law, the sciences, the military, etc., we've seen over and over that they perform on average the same as men do. And yet it was claimed in every one of these fields that there was something inherent about women that made them unsuited for such work. (In the latter two cases, we're still hearing such claims, of course, though fortunately they're starting to diminish.) Over and over, the idea that women don't do X because they're less suited for doing X has been proven dead wrong. In retrospect, we can see that of course the reason there were (for example) so few female physicians a century ago was because of prejudice, not any inherent lack of capability.

So if women are underrepresented in a particular field today, yes, it might be that there's some inherent reason for that ... but historically, that's not the way to bet.

and wonder if we (as women) will be able to shift our perceptions around enough for it to occur?

I only say that because yesterday I was writing a letter to another broadsheet article and used the pronoun 'his' twice in referring to the doctor. Now I'm married to a female clinical psychologist, & am in a female dominated profession- and my automatic choice for a pronoun for a doctor was 'him'?! I could not have been more angry at myself. We are 1/2 the population, which is not the majority, but it's one of the majorities. If we don't stand up for ourselves, really, who can we blame?