Women in Politics: How does the US stack up?

[CornField]

Taken from a July 2005 issue of Parade:
http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2005/edition_07-03-2005/featured_0

As democracy takes root around the world—often with America’s encouragement—more women are joining the political process. So it’s striking how low their participation rates are here at home.

When nations were ranked for women’s involvement in national legislatures and governments, the U.S. was 61st. Rwanda was first, followed by Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark. Iraq, with its new national assembly, ranked 15th. Afghanistan is still unranked, but its new constitution guarantees women 25% of the seats in the lower house and 17% of the seats in the upper house of parliament. (Of course, in a few countries—including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia—women still can’t even vote or hold office.)

In Iraq, women are pushing for 40% of the assembly seats, while they’re still at just 14% in the U.S. House and Senate.

IMHO, this is one of the biggest problems with our nation. Historically women have been the driving force of every significant social change for the better. When women's voices are ignored or silenced, governments do not provide well for their people; the space between the haves and the have nots expand; and society suffers.

Although this is an older article, today was the first time I'd heard this statistic. Leave it to Americans to want to go out and fix problems all over the globe while ignoring their own sermon here at home.