I'd been blogging for nearly a year and a half when the November 2006 elections turned Ohio blue (Democrats took four of the five state offices and former Congressman/now U.S.

Senator from Ohio, Sherrod Brown, dethroned incumbent Republican Mike DeWine).  In the course of that time, I threw my first house party ever, for then-candidate and now award-winning Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, and I observed up close and personal how support from EMILY's List  - for both Brunner and then-candidate now Congresswoman Betty Sutton (who won the race to fill Brown's seat in the Ohio 13th) could make a difference.

But I didn't learn about efforts like the White House Project (WHP) - a non-partisan organization that seeks to get women "into the pipeline" of elected offices and positions of leadership - until just before the elections ended. Sometime before then, I'd signed up for SheSource.org, a service that seeks to place women where currently we see, overwhelmingly, men as so-called experts (think talking head shows on cable and broadcast and talk radio).  One of the e-mails I received just before election day listed Marie Wilson, founder of WHP, as someone who would be available for interviews the day after the mid-term elections, to talk about how female candidates had fared.

I'm a sucker for primary source blogging material and thought this would be a great and unique angle. What I didn't expect was for my three-post interview of Wilson (here, here and here) to lead to me being on the steering committee for Ohio's own Go Run! training program, which took place in June 2008 and a permanent fixation and fascination with the efforts, achievements and struggles of women who seek political office.

I hope this post not only satiates my curiosity about how female candidates for political office fared Tuesday, but also causes others  to think about a number of questions raised by examining the state of the race to fill elected offices.

Nationally: Congressional and Gubernatorial Races

If you'd like to see a good review of the results as they relate to women candidates, please check out this pdf from Rutgers' Center for American Woman and Politics (CAWP).

From Women's eNews on the House of Representatives:

The number of women in the U.S. House of Representatives will reach a high of 74 when the victors of Tuesday's elections take office in January.

While marking a gain of three legislators, the results failed to push women's stake into the 20 percent territory considered minimal for exerting significant voting-bloc pressure.

"I think it shows us that victories are incremental," said Claire Giesen, executive director of the Washington-based National Women's Political Caucus. "Most of the time it's two steps forward and one back. We just have to keep at it."

...

Two factors in particular--a high number of female political veterans and a strong Democratic headwind--helped women in the election. Of the 133 female major party nominees, 96, or 72 percent, were Democrats.

"Women in Congress are disproportionately Democrats, so big Democratic years tend to be good for women candidates," says Susan Carroll, senior scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey in New Brunswick.

...

Five women won open House races, where there were no incumbents. And five female challengers unseated incumbents.

Those 10 join 64 female incumbents who were re-elected.

Some of the challengers prevailed over other women--such as Markey v. Musgrave in Colorado--which combined with some women's losses and others' retirements to keep the female percentage of the House stagnant at 16 percent.

In the U.S. Senate, there was an increase of one, and so there will now be 17 female senators, for a total of 91 women out of 538 legislators in our U.S. Congress.  As noted in an e-mail sent out yesterday by the Women's Campaign Forum, well-known for it's She Should Run program, that is an increase of 1%, from 16% to 17%.

Hmm, you're thinking, right? Don't adult women make up more than 50% of the population?  Or, as Marie Wilson herself wrote today:

Despite the rise of women as political contenders and voters in the
2008 election season, the U.S. is woefully behind other nations in
terms of parity in representation. Over the last decade, the United
States has fallen from 47th in the world in women's political
representation to 71st -- behind such stalwarts of democracy as Iraq
(33rd), Sudan (65th) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
(57th). Only weeks ago, Rwanda made global history when it became the
first nation electing women to outnumber men in parliament.

Yet for all the advances that women are making on the global front,
women's political participation here in the U.S. is lagging far behind
the times.

Hmm, indeed.

In governor's races, women defeated men in two of the elections, but were unable to produce a net gain in governor's seats. (There are six incumbent women governors who were not up for re-election and they bring the total of women governors to eight - five Democrats, three Republicans.) This result likewise caused commentators to remark on the inability of women to make progress in the amount of representation we've got in political office. Feministing, for example, stated how it was not the landslide that they thought could have happened.

State Legislatures

I spent some time on the phone today with Katie Ziegler of the National Conference of State Legislature's Women's Legislative Network, and what she had to say demonstrates that ain't no one giving up on the belief that women belong in and need to be in and can be elected into political office.  For those readers unfamiliar with the Network, it provides great resources for researchers as well as information and opportunities for women to explore and start their own campaigns and win elected positions. (Maybe BlogHer wants to consider sending some delegates to the December 10-14 NCSL Fall Forum which will focus on women's health and financial stability? Hint hint nudge nudge?)

UPDATE: From Katie Ziegler on the December meeting:

We welcome members of the press and bloggers at our meetings, and don't charge a registration fee.  http://www.ncsl.org/forum/ is our site for the December meeting, and you can register online, selecting "media."

Start at NCSL's extensive state by state display of data about how women performed in state legislative election, called Women in State Legislatures: 2009 Legislative Session.  There are links at the bottom of that webpage to previous years' data. Rather than bore with a repetition of what you can browse there, here are some highlights:

1. There's literally almost no change between the number of women in our state legislatures between this year and last year.  In 2008, there were 1750 to 1751 women (give or take for absences, appointments and so on), out of a total of 7382 legislative seats across the country.  In the 2009 session, there will be 1746 women. This means that women hold just under 24% percent of legislative seats in the 50 states, a ratio that NCSL says "has increased only slightly over the past twelve years."

UPDATE: I received an e-mail from Katie on 11/7/08 with the following information:

...the additional tallying we did shows there are at least 1,764 women [rather than the 1746 stated above] - still under the 24% ratio, but an increase from last year. 

2. Rhode Island now has no female Republican women in either chamber of its state legislature.  All 24 women are Democrats and that 24 is just over 21% of the total number of legislative seats.

3. South Carolina now has no women whatsoever in its state senate. 

Rep. Joan Brady, a Richland County Republican and incoming chairwoman of the Women Legislative Caucus, said Tuesday’s results were disappointing.

“Women do have a different perspective that is needed in the Legislature,” Brady said. “They look at the bigger picture. They look at issues from a family perspective.”

It’s also an equity issue. Women represent more than half of the state’s population.

Prior to Tuesday’s vote, South Carolina already ranked last among states in terms of women in elected office.

The 46-member chamber has not been all male since 1980, when Elizabeth Patterson, wholater served in the U.S. House of Representatives, took a seat in the state Senate. There are no women in federal or constitutional office in the Palmetto State. 

4. In Ohio, only one female Republican remains in a total of 33 state senators, with the remaining five women in the state Senate being Democrats. (Ohio's congressional delegation of 21 had five women but now may lose one depending on the outcome of a still-disputed race.)

5. Overall partisan composition of women in the 50 state legislatures, 2009 session:

Democratic Party: 1225

Republican Party: 511

Third Party:          5

Nonpartisan:         7

6.  Saving the best news for last, perhaps: New Hampshire's state senate becomes the first to have a majority female chamber: 

New Hampshire’s State Senate is now unlike any in the country and unlike any before it. After Tuesday’s election, women now make up the majority of the New Hampshire State Senate. In an election year that saw Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and Nancy Pelosi grab headlines and airtime across the country, New Hampshire didn’t just vote blue, it voted for women.

...

Previously ten women held senate seats out of twenty-four in Concord, but now they hold thirteen.

Other thoughts from Ziegler:

In a year when women in politics seems to be so visible and grabbing headlines all year long, you might think that we would see an increase in the success rate.  Likewise, Ziegler says, with the efforts known to be made by the White House Project, EMILY's List and many state and local efforts to train and educate women about running for office, one would think that we would see more of an impact from that. However, she says that since 1992, the number of major party female candidates has fluctuated between 2200 and 2400 and that number hasn't changed much since then.

I asked Ziegler what she thought the impact of term-limits has been on getting women elected, since many proponents of term-limits believed that they would help non-incumbents get a foot in the door.  Ziegler says that NCSL research indicates that this really has not been the case.

What's Next?

If you're wondering why we need women in elected office in greater proportions than we currently have, consider what Julie Graber of the Ohio State University Women, Gender and Public Policy Institute told me last year:

1-       Women have a right to be at the table.  We are 50+% of the
populations, we are 50+% of the voting public and we have a right to be
at the table and to have our voices heard.

2-       Women have a reason to be at the table.  Research from
organizations as diverse as the Institute for Women's Policy Research
and the Conference Board has demonstrated that having women at the
table does make a difference. In the public policy arena, the as the
number of women in a legislative body increases, so to does the time
spent issues like child care, education and health care.  And calling
those women's issues doesn't make them any less important.

3-       Women have a responsibility to be at the table.  After
thousands of years of socialization, it's pretty clear that women
approach problems differently and we seek different solutions.  We know
the world would be a better place if there were more of us in
leadership roles.  That's why all of us have to step up to the table.

When women aren't at the table, it means we aren't using all of the
resources we have available to solve the complexity of issues we face
today.  A good friend of mine uses a light bulb analogy - she says it's
like putting a 50-watt bulb into a lamp that can handle 100-watts -
when women aren't at the table, we aren't using all of the brain power
we have available.

Marie Wilson would like to see a commission formed:

Historically, women have been the "government in exile" -- leading
at the foot of the table as a marginalized constituency. Yet to address
the myriad of issues which confront women -- from poverty and domestic
violence to healthcare and work-life balance -- women must be
represented in the upper echelons of government where such issues are
tackled and policy is enacted. Instead of addressing these issues in an
inefficient and piecemeal fashion, a Presidential Commission on Women
and Democracy would present the new administration with a vehicle to
enact permanent and systemic change: by finding ways to have a more
women at the tables of power at all levels, and fostering a truly
representative democracy.

A diverse and critical mass of women in leadership -- not to replace
men, but to lead alongside them -- would allow both genders to
contribute new ways of dealing with the most difficult challenges our
country has faced in this century.

The Presidential Commission on Women and Democracy would utilize
leading academic and experiential methodologies to reverse our nation's
dismal lag in gender parity. Members of the commission would be
carefully appointed from a variety of sectors to bring a full range of
nonpartisan domestic and international approaches, setting achievable
goals by way of practical methods. Possible strategies might include:
priority voting and other democracy reforms which result in wins by
outsider candidates; guaranteed campaign loan funds; civil society
curriculum in schools; increased training for women candidates;
increased support from central party leadership for women candidates;
and popular culture initiatives.

I would support such an effort but I also believe in the training efforts like those of the White House Project, EMILY's List, She Should Run and National Women's Political Caucus, among many across the country that are partisan and nonpartisan, which seek to train, encourage and support women in their aspirations to hold elected office.

Personally, I'd love to see a whole BlogHer contingent get right in there at any and all levels of politics.  I hope those of you who have run will share your thoughts on where you think we are with this, where we need to go and how we can get there.  But for now, incremental definitely does seem to be the watchword. 

**This post deals only with the overall rubric of women in politics and how they fared as a gender.  I did not look for or research the role of the woman's race, religion, marital status, sexual orientation or any other classification in the success or lack of success in running for office. However, I do think that that would be an excellent additional way in which to review what is going on with women as political candidates and would be grateful for anyone with such information to be feel free to add it in the comments.

Related links:

Omaha News Pre-election Blog: Gender Still An Issue in Historic Race by Melissa Anderson

Skirting the Issues: Yes We Did Too, Girls by Kristen Card

Insight Analytical Watching Our World: Post Election Thoughts...The Last Salvo or REALITY BITES by Grail Guardian