Women Earn More Where Women Elect Women

Guest Blog from Close the Gap California     An organization committed to recruiting women to run for State office in California.  Check them out!

The State of Your State

June 26, 2013

As we ramp up to recruit talented progressive women to run for office, we wondered if there was a correlation between the wage gap and women’s representation in state legislatures.

There is.

Look at AAUW’s new data on wage gaps by state and also examine statistics tracked by Rutgers’ Center for American Women and Politics on the number of women serving in state legislatures. As you can see from the chart, the gap tends to be smaller in states where the most women serve in the state capitol.

Women make a difference in policy and priorities, as research shows, yet no state in U.S. history has ever had 50 percent women serving in its legislature.

The average: 24 percent, up from about 5 percent 50 years ago when the Equal Pay Act was passed.
The most representative state today: Colorado with 41 percent women.
Here in California, we have 36 percent women in our congressional delegation, including, of course, two US Senators. Yet Sacramento has only 26 percent women, down from 30 percent 10 years ago.
Time to be like NASA, which just announced that its new class of astronauts has four men — and four women.

Let’s break some barriers in the Golden State!

Stonewall and the Supreme Court on Marriage Equality

Forty-four years ago almost to the day, the first Stonewall riots happened. Stonewall was a NYC bar frequented by the most disenfranchised of the gay (although that word was not in common use yet) community - drag queens, transgendered, homeless youth. The bar was raided, the patrons rousted, then rioted.  They may not have shouted "We're not going to take it anymore," but that was the effect and things started to change. Slowly.

A few months later, in Cambridge Massachusetts where I worked for the decidedly left-wing Old Mole newspaper, I met a young man named Stan. Stan was promoting a new organization, Gay Liberation. Since this was the time of women's liberation, with its consciousness raising groups, marches and protests (our group had recently taken a stand with Gloria Steinem against the dress code in the stuff Ritz Carlton Hotel, among other more substantive measures including a march to "seize" a building from Harvard and turn it into a women's building), I was all over that.  "Gay Liberation!" I enthused to my fellow journalists. "We have to write about it."

I was surprised that my idea was pooh-poohed by all the men.  I insisted, and not wanting to be considered "chauvinistic," the men deferred and and I wrote my article on Stan and the coming gay revolution.

Today, nearly 40 years to the day after that historic Stonewall raid, our Supreme Court has given the green light to same sex marriage in California.  A narrow victory to be sure, on issues of standing, related to the Proposition 8 issue (Proposition 8 was a measure overturning gay marriage in California, that was declared unconstitutional by a Federal judge, then appealed by proponents of the measure, but not the State. The Supremes ruled the proponents lacked standing, and only the State could appeal decisions relating to State propositions), but a victory nonetheless for thousands in this state and hopefully a push in the right direction for other states to follow suit.

And oh yeah, they overturned the Defense of Marriage Act too.  After Tuesday's ruling on the Voting Rights Act, today's decisions are a welcome relief.

Where's Jerry? Inquiring Minds Want to Know

Where's Jerry? is the question on many lips around the capital and the state these days. You remember Jerry, the Jesuit educated, zen practicing, feisty, progressive, anti-death penalty, crusading young Governor of 1970's California? Governor Moonbeam - THAT guy!

According to an article in the June 22, 2013 edition of the Atlantic, he's "morphed into a 21st century version of a 1950s Southern governor." That mellow dude has been reincarnated as George Wallace!

Could that really be? His latest power move is to defy the Federal courts who have ordered, ordered, mind you, that Jerry Brown comply with an earlier order to reduce prison overcrowding to just 137.5% (!) of capacity, by taking several steps outlined by the court. Jerry dumped a bunch of prisoners back into County jails, ridding himself of part of the problem while overburdening already cash strapped counties, but that seems to be the extent of his efforts.

Now the court is really pissed off and has added additional steps to reduce that overcrowding in an order of 6/20/13 or they will haul his sorry ass into court for contempt. Yet the new Jerry Brown, the one who has stolen old Jerry's soul and replaced it with a lump of anthracite, continues his tough stance ignoring the prison crisis and the court's order. Why? Could it be that new Jerry is a politician where old Jerry was a mensch. New Jerry started to rise from the ashes of the old back when he was Mayor of Oakland, started a military academy, and later, as Attorney General, restarted capital punishment, despite supposedly still being opposed to it personally.  Politics? He was actively pursuing a bid to become governor once more at the time.

I first noticed the new Jerry when Prop. 66 was on the ballot, the first attempt to undo some of the draconian and unintended consequences of the Three Strikes law, and I got a robo call from then Mayor Jerry, warming me that killers and rapists would be set loose to murder me in my bed if I voted for this law.

I was outraged, not by the prospect of murderers and rapists but by the transformation of Jerry Brown into new Jerry, tough on crime Jerry, the political animal Jerry.  So I ask, where is Jesuit Jerry, zen Jerry? Or maybe the question should be "what is sound of one Governor calculating?"