Another "Year of the Man"
The media labeled 1992 the "Year of
the Woman." But a closer look at the elections shows that 1992 was little more than
another "Year of the Man" -- no surprise to those who believe we need fairer
voting systems to elect our leaders.
Take the U.S. Senate. Five women were
elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992, by far the most in U.S. history -- but so were 29 men.
Only seven women serve in the Senate, leaving it 93% male (and only 1% are
African-American or Latino). And although the percentage of women in the House of
Representatives nearly doubled in 1992, it still is barely 10%. Yet already some political
analysts were quick to call 1993 the "Year of the Un-Woman."
The Example of Europe
The women's movement in the U.S. is
arguably stronger than its counterpart in Europe, but you wouldn't know it by the number
of women elected to office. The legislatures of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark are
all more than a third women, and nearly every other democracy in Europe has a higher
percentage of women than the U.S. Congress.
The major reason for this difference is
that most of these European democracies do not use our winner-take-all, single-member
district voting system. They use forms of proportional representation (PR), which result
in legislatures that accurately reflect voters' preferences at the ballot box. By
providing more voters with a chance to elect someone, PR systems more fully realize the
democratic principles of majority rule and a truly representative legislature that
gives more people a voice in government.
The only European democracies not using PR
are Great Britain and France, both of which not so coincidentally have even lower
percentages of women in their legislatures than the United States. When Italy in 1993
changed its PR system to mostly "winner-take-all" seats, it required parties to
have gender-balance for the 25% of seats still elected by party list PR in order to offset
the negative impact the winner-take-all seats were expected to have on representation of
women.
Comparisons in Democracies Using Both Systems
Germany clearly demonstrates how PR helps
more women get elected. Half the parliament is elected from single-member districts (as we
do for Congress), while half is elected from regional, multi-member districts (in which
several people represent a district).
In the 1990 German elections, women won
nearly 29% of the PR seats, but only 12% of districts seats. Similarly, in Australia,
women comprise 23% of the Senate, which is elected by PR, but only 7% of its lower house
elected by winner-take-all.
Why PR Systems Elect More Women
PR systems increase representation of
women for two main reasons. First, with multi-member districts, political parties must
support slates of candidates. With greater attention paid to all candidates nominated for
office, parties in many democracies field gender-balanced slates. Second, parties must
respond to the will of the electorate. In Iceland, a women's party formed in 1983 because
existing parties were not nominating enough women. The party in 1987 won 10% of the vote
and, as a result 10% of seats in parliament. Other parties then began nominating more
women in order to maintain their share of the vote.
Comparative studies on representation of
women in the United States and around the world demonstrate that the method of voting is
the single most important factor in the number of women elected to office: the more people
are elected in a district, the more women win office. Furthermore, PR avoids pitting the
interests of race against gender unlike race-conscious districting, the conventional
remedy used to correct under-representation of racial and ethnic minorities. That is one
of the key reasons why some within the American voting rights community -- like University
of Pennsylvania law professor Lani Guinier -- have become supporters of proportional
systems.
Cynthia Terrell directed an Iowa
campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment in 1992 and is a political consultant. She is
Vice-President of the Center for Voting and Democracy.