What the attempted assassination of Congresswomen Giffords means for women in politics
As we all know by now, sexism still exists in the US. While last Saturday’s tragic shooting was likely not connected to Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford’s gender, her attempted assassination underscores a problem in this country that we have been fighting for generations to cure: the limited role of women in the political process.
When I first heard about Congresswoman Gifford’s horrific event on Saturday, horrible thoughts ran through my head, as the shooting represented to me another woman silenced and a step backwards for women who seek to fill a political role. How can young women aspire to be leaders when a Congresswoman’s life is dangerously threatened? When their political role models are silenced? While there were many more issues at play last Saturday far greater than sexism in the American political process, I couldn’t help but think that Giffords represents all that we should hope for as political-minded women of any ideology: she is a young, driven, strong woman who sticks to her convictions despite coming from a state where her ideas aren’t popular.
Last semester, I began to take an interest in women in politics. I read The Battle for America 2008, which gave me great insight into the sexism that thwarted the 2008 Presidential primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. After learning these disappointing truths about American ideals, I began to research the role of women in the political process, and what I found was pretty shocking. The United States is eighty-fourth in the world in terms of women elected to public office. We fall behind China, Mexico, and Pakistan (Source: Emerge America). The midterm election in November resulted in fewer women elected to public office. While our society generally accepts women in the public sphere, statistics simply fail to mirror this positivity.
While Congresswoman Giffords has remained in critical condition for several days after the shooting, her fight to regain consciousness, open her eyes, and move her limbs just reinforce her enduring spirit and her unwillingness to back down in the face of violence. This is an attitude which hopefully can serve to educate the left and the right in this country, women and men, politicians and ordinary citizens. Giffords was quoted as saying in March of 2010 that “our democracy is a light… because we affect change at the ballot box and not because of these outbursts of violence” (Source: Emerge America). I hope that we can all learn a lesson from this tragedy, that we use our ballots and our words to make changes in this country, not our fists or our guns. But I also hope that America learns that something needs to be done about expanding the role of women in the political arena, in light of Saturday’s shooting and recent setbacks for women.
For more information about women in politics, you can visit Emerge America’s website at www.emergeamerica.org.