Buried in Susan Faludi's New York Times sprawling op-ed regarding the anger many women are expressing that Hillary Clinton did not win the Democratic nomination, how women are covered in the press, and the history of the white suffragette movement, there is a crucial paragraph with vital facts about our current political state. Faludi notes:

Today, the United States ranks 22nd among the 30 developed nations in its proportion of female federal lawmakers. The proportion of female state legislators has been stuck in the low 20 percent range for 15 years; women’s share of state elective executive offices has fallen consistently since 2000, and is now under 25 percent. The American political pipeline is 86 percent male.

Let me repeat: "The American political pipeline is 86 percent male." This is critical because presidential candidates generally do not fall from the sky. They are made over the course of legislative careers. If only 14% of the the American political pipeline is female, the best way to increase the chances of a female President in this century are to put more women in the pipeline. Period.

As I mentioned in Monday's post on electing more women, EMILY's List is an organization whose mission is to do just that - support female, Democrat, pro-choice candidates. (Unlike EMILY's List, BlogHer is a non-partisan organization, so please do not read this post as an official BlogHer endorsement of any particular candidate. I'm merely throwing out my opinion here.)

EMILY's List is not the only organization supporting female candidates. The Women's Campaign Forum Foundation is "is dedicated to helping women build the skills and infrastructure they need to become more effective leaders in public life." WCF just launched a new blog, Women & Politics. The White House Project "aims to advance women’s leadership in all communities and sectors—up to the U.S. presidency—by filling the leadership pipeline with a richly diverse, critical mass of women." Marie Wilson, President of the White House Project, told Rebecca Traister in an interview for Salon that:

... in the wake of Hillary's run, "we are in the middle of a revolution. Women are stepping up and taking power." She said her organization, which encourages women to seek elected office, has seen a 61 percent increase in participation in the past year.

The increase in women expressing interest in running for office despite the often horrific, sexist treatment that Hillary Clinton was subjected to during this campaign is encouraging. As I mentioned on Monday, there are already 149 women running for office in 2008. I highlighted some of the pro-choice Democrats running for the House of Representatives already, and now I want to mention four exciting races in three states for the governor's offices and for Senate seats.

In North Carolina, Kay Hagan is running for the Senate. She is running for a seat already held by a woman, making this a zero-sum game if all one cares about is the number of women in office, her opponent, Libby Dole, voted with George W. Bush 92% of the time. If Hagan wins, women who want to see more progressive women in office will be pleased. North Carolina is also looking at electing their first female governor with the candidacy of Bev Perdue. She has a long history of supporting education and health care, and a great track record as a state legislator. If she wins in November, Purdue will be the first woman governor of a southern state since the late, great Ann Richards of Texas.

Further up the eastern seaboard, Jeanne Shaheen, a three-time governor of New Hampshire, is again running against uber-conservative John Sununu. Shaheen narrowly lost to Sununu in 2002, but later GOP operatives plead guilty to jamming Democratic phone lines on operating day. Shaheen's victory would not only increase the female presence in the Senate, but also increase the number of progressive voices, as well as remind people that cheating is wrong. In America's heartland, Jill Long Thompson is running to be the first female governor of Indiana.

Building a pipeline is one critical piece of the female president puzzle. The other is combating the rampant sexist beliefs that are firmly ingrained in the minds of men and women in the United States. Many women at BlogHer have written about the vile misogyny that they faced this election season as supporters of Hillary Clinton or as individuals who may not have supported Clinton, but who spoke out against sexism. For example, Jill Miller Zimon of Writes Like She Talks was forced to withdraw from a Democratic listserv and nasty comments were left on her blog. In an overall toxic environment, it is easy for the media to fall back on gender stereotypes when covering the campaigns of female candidates. Hence the second critical piece of the puzzle is to continue the work to combat sexism and misogyny, which quite frankly, benefits not just female candidates, but women in all walks of life.

Personally, I would love to see more progressive women in elected offices across the nation. However, just because this is of some feminists does not mean it is a priority to others. I think it is fair to say that as long as a diverse range of women's voices are properly represented and implemented into policies that impact their lives for the better, it may not matter to some women what the gender of that elected official is. To some people, it makes more sense to focus on the end results (combating sexism), and I think there is as much validity in this line of thinking as there is in the interest in electing more women. What do you think?

Suzanne also blogs about life at Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Other Rants and politics at The Political Voices of Women. She is seeking submissions for a potential anthology of women's stories about menstruation at Congratulations, You're a Woman Now!. As a former Chicagoan, she encourages everyone to submit stories early, and submit stories often.