“I’m going to tell you how women can suck just like men do in politics,” Melanie Sloan, the head of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said last night at a panel discussion on the role of women in American politics that was held to commemorate Women’s History Month.
Sloan spoke alongside Democratic strategist Donna Brazile and Wonkette founder and Time Magazine blogger Ana Marie Cox. All three women praised the progress that politically-inclined women have made in recent years, but lamented the inequality that remains. In the U.S. House of Representatives, 71 out of the 435 members are women, while only 16 women serve in the Senate. Twelve of those women were newly elected in the 2006 midterm elections.
“We have had 200-plus years of men running this country, and I think it’s time we gave them a break,” Brazile, the manager of Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign and an adjunct professor at Georgetown, said.
Brazile insisted that women should enter politics despite the obstacles, because the issues facing women cannot be ignored.
“Every day 57 black women are infected with the HIV virus. What am I supposed to do, wait?” she said.
Brazile also said she is tired of women and minority candidates being covered only in relation to their gender or race. Cox agreed, saying that one of the main problems for women in politics is their tendency to gossip about each other.
“The hardest thing to do as a woman in political journalism is not to hate other women,” Cox said.
“It’s easier to go after another woman’s story than it is to go after another man’s.”
Sloan, who runs an ethics watchdog group, talked about women in both parties who have failed to hold ethical standards.
“Katherine Harris is probably going to find herself indicted in the not-too-distant future,” she said, and added that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has failed to run her heralded “most ethical Congress in history.”
Meredith Ruggles (COL ’07), one of about 50 people who attended the discussion, said that she came to the panel to see Donna Brazile.
“I was excited to hear her speak because she’s just a phenomenal speaker,” Ruggles said.
Although Ruggles enjoyed the panel, she questioned the women about women’s increasing power in politics.
“‘Will they use it to put women in office?’ is the question,” she said.
