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U.S. lags in role of women in politics

NEW YORK: For all the talk about Hillary Rodham Clinton and Condoleezza Rice battling for the presidency in 2008, the closest a woman has come to the Oval Office is actress Geena Davis, star of the recently canceled TV series ``Commander in Chief.''

Yet, in other nations, a woman leader isn't just the stuff of television drama.

Countries as diverse as Britain, Chile, Liberia and Israel have elected women to their highest political office. When it comes to women representation in national Parliaments, the U.S. ranks 68th in the world.

A primary reason for the success of women in politics elsewhere, according to one observer, is the effort on the part of women themselves.

``Women in other countries have made more strong-willed efforts than we have,'' said Marie Wilson, head of the New York-based White House Project, a nonpartisan group that works to increase women's participation in politics. ``They have gelled with each other to say: `We know women matter in these positions. We must have more women.'''

No woman has ever led the presidential ticket of a major political party in the United States. Only one — Democrat Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 — has been nominated for Vice-President by either the Republicans or the Democrats.

Ms. Clinton, a Senator from New York and a former First Lady, is considered by many a front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 2008. Ms. Rice, President George W. Bush's Secretary of State, is mentioned as a possible Republican candidate though she adamantly denies any interest in national office.

In Washington today, 85 per cent of Congress is male. As of mid-May, six months before the November elections, 175 women were considered candidates for the House and 18 for the Senate. In 1992, a record 222 women filed for House seats and 29 for the Senate.

While women representation in Congress has hovered between 13 per cent and 15 per cent for the past five years, the presence of women has increased significantly in Parliaments in many other countries.

Even the new democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan have a greater percentage of women representatives than does Congress, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, an international group based in Geneva, Switzerland. The organisation ranked 188 countries according to their women representatives.

In 2005, the global average for women representation at the parliamentary level was 16.3 per cent, an average that increased from the year before largely due to quotas put in place in several Latin American countries to promote the candidacies of women, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. — AP

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