From Making a Sandwich to Running for Office, Women Get Political

In the aftermath of a Trump win, many women spurred themselves into the political sphere, especially here in the Garden State. There was of course Ashley Bennett, a former 24-hour hotline crisis screener turned elected member of the Atlantic County Board of Freeholders now tasked with overseeing politics in South Jersey county. Her anger at the incumbent’s denouncement of the Women’s March on Washington ignited her political flame.

The representation in the legislator has increased from a mere 9 out of 120 in 1975 to 37 out of 120 now.

Many hoped that in 2016 election, New Jersey would break its own record of 37 female legislators out of 120 state legislators with a whopping increase of 1 whole female body bumping the ratio to 38 out of 120 legislators. Yet, the record was not broken, leaving a Republican male in his District 8 post.

Many use representation as a marker of gender equity. Leaving us to say something like, “we really have made little progress on the gender thing.”

But is this slow progress a result of female inability to break into politics due to their electorate or from the issues and government itself?

Regardless of representation, US political democracy will always be unequal unless females begin to reshape fundamental aspects of government. This is partly due to the very people who create the democracy and even defined the word “freedom” as it pertains to this country.

After stripping natives of their land and subjugating those who already created a form of democracy in what we now call the United States, our political system was written and executed by men.

The idea that those privileged enough to draft the constitution which requires that officials must be elected by their constituency implies who should be elected. Additionally, when only white-landowning men were able to vote, well guess who that constituency always deemed best suited for the job? Ding ding! White land-owning men.

The foundation of freedom, democracy and those “unalienable rights” are imbedded in the context of history and thus apply to those who in fact created them. It’s kind of like giving your dog the freedom to roam around your lawn without a leash, a freedom which only extends to the boundaries created by the master.

Afterall, it was a congress full of men who granted women the right to vote.

In another survey conducted by the Survey for American Women and Politics, the reasons for why men and women enter politics varies and highlights the disparity in the creation of our current political institution. More women enter the House and Senate due to their concern regarding concern over a specific policy issue while more men enter congress because of a longstanding desire to be involved in politics.

This is seen particularly as the number of female Democratic candidates increases while the number of female Republican candidates decreases. When females do not relate to or agree with policy issues, they are not going to participate in that type of conversation. Whereas males are a part of the structure of both parties as they are, again, the foundations to both parties in the first place.

It is necessary for females to bring issues which are important to them to redefine the institution of government itself. It was after all, mockery of the women’s march that prompted Ashley Bennett to run for office, not the proposal for a state park or a redistricting mandate.

This brings into question a primary difference between North American and Latin American feminism. Women in North America have attempted to break into the private sphere to achieve gender equity through entering traditionally males jobs in science, law, technology and nearly every institution. While in Latin America, women do not reject traditionally domestic female work but are redefining them to gain control in the public sphere.

Helen Safa references the communal kitchens which were created groups of Bolivian women who share the responsibility of serving nutritional food to their communities in lieu of the continued economic crisis gripping Latin America. While this still perpetuates a gendered labor binary which reflects women’s role in “making the sandwiches”, it sheds light the very importance of domestic work and thus the importance of females.

“By politicizing the private sphere, women have redefined rather than rejected their domestic role and extended the struggle against the state beyond the workplace into the home and community,” according to Safa.

When women bring issues which are important to them to the political sphere, rather than conforming to the parties which are inherently male since their conception, female participation will endure.