In Congress, Republicans can boast only two additional female lawmakers and virtually no other women in high-ranking leadership roles compared with 2004, when Collins confronted Rumsfeld. Just one woman serves among the House’s top four leadership positions, and no Republican woman holds a top-ranking leadership role in the Senate. And the presidential stage is not much better: Carly Fiorina was the lone GOP female White House hopeful this cycle in a group of 16 men. Among the 31 Republican governors, only three are women.
The picture is even bleaker given the rapid rise of women at nearly all levels of Democratic politics.
Today, the political left is embodied by women, with more than a dozen ranking Democrats on Capitol Hill, as well as figures such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), the party’s progressive heroine, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), the former House speaker, and Hillary Clinton, the party’s presidential nominee, serving as potent symbols for females in the party. If Democrats take both the White House and Congress in November, women would fill a larger number of positions in their top ranks.
Shauna Shames, an assistant professor of political science at Rutgers University at Camden, has identified multiple hurdles for Republican women in politics that don’t exist for their Democratic peers. The two most troublesome, she said, are the purging of moderate Republicans through primaries and a less egalitarian party culture.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member