Women’s lib hasn’t made it through Washington yet. Micah Zenko at Foreign Policy magazine looked at the percentages of females holding leadership roles related to foreign policy and national security and found that women remain vastly underrepresented among our nation’s policymakers. Women held no more than 29 percent of the total directorial positions in the organizations discussed below. —ARK
Micah Zenko at Foreign Policy:
... I looked at the gender breakdown at 10 prominent think tanks with a substantial foreign-policy focus. After crunching the numbers, which were culled from their publicly available rosters, I found that women constituted only 21 percent of the policy-related positions (154 of 723) and only 29 percent of the total leadership staff (250 of 874). The Center for Strategic and International Studies and Center for American Progress boasted the highest percentages of women in policy-related roles (28 percent), and the Stimson Center had the highest total percentage of women in all positions (50 percent).
A note on methodology: “Policy-related” positions are classified as leadership roles (directors, presidents, and fellows) within departments such as foreign policy and economic policy—the latter is included because many fellows contribute equally to domestic as well as international economic policy. “Total leadership staff” includes people in senior positions in non-policy roles such as human resources, development, and communications, which play an essential role in developing and implementing think tanks’ programs.
But the numbers aren’t just skewed against women in think tanks. This gender imbalance is consistent with percentages of women working in other foreign policy and national security-related professions. In the academy, data collected in 2006 found that, of the 13,000 political science professors in the United States, 26 percent were women—up from 19 percent in 1991. Only 23 percent of international relations professors are women, while among comparative politics specialists the figure was 29 percent.
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By SarcastiCanuck, July 19, 2011 at 11:18 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Lets get a bunch of Hooters waitresses to run congress.Could it be worse than what they have now?You could also sell congress calendars and t-shirts to help whittle down the debt.And the boys will be happy too.Win-win,problem solved.No more boys club and no more debt.
Report thisBy Napolean DoneHisPart, July 19, 2011 at 8:21 am Link to this comment
Ha!
“Is Washington Still a Boy’s Town?”
It sure is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weSzkIB8184
Report thisBy TDoff, July 18, 2011 at 1:56 pm Link to this comment
The best hope for women breaking the doofuss ceiling in D.C. is for more and more male doofi such as Ryan, Cantor, The Boner and The Mitch to remain in leadership positions, demonstrating their incompetence, BUT…the constant appearances/coverage of doofettes such as Bachmann, Palin, and O’Donnell babbling their ignorance sets the ladies back several years per front page story.
Looks like a stand-off, that the status quo will maintain, and women will have to be satisfied with a Hillary as their standard bearer, and aspiring to become a Clinton intern as their career goal, which could lead to…who knows?
Report thisBy margaret currey, July 18, 2011 at 1:43 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
“We the people” the constitution did not include woman and slaves in constitution.
Congress needs more woman because woman know how to listen how to make decisions. And woman are just as smart as men if not smarter.
Report thisBy EmileZ, July 18, 2011 at 1:17 pm Link to this comment
Hmmmm….
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