#cawp

http://runnelslaw.com/2018/08/26/exactly-98-years-ago-american-women-gained-the-right-to-vote/

On Sunday, the United States marks the 98th anniversary of the approval of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, which granted women in the country the right to vote.

Since then, the number of women voters often exceeds the number of men in polling stations. According to the Center for American Women in Politics (CAWP), in 2016, 73.7 million women and 63.8 million men voted in the elections.

Nevertheless, today not all problems have been resolved.

Despite the fact that the presence of women in polling stations has increased over the past few decades, research indicates that women are underrepresented in various fields, including government, high technology, and the corporate sector.

According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), an international organization that unites the parliaments of the countries of the world, only one out of four parliamentarians in the world is a woman.

In both houses of Congress, women make up 25.4 percent of legislators. In the House of Representatives, they are only 20 percent, according to the organization of the Emily’s List, the national community of women democrats.

So--surprise, surprise--Maria Chappelle-Nadal retained her seat! She was originally running unopposed but at the last minute, supporters of Darren Wilson organized to support Christine Laporta as a write in candidate within the last month.  Her platform is basically anti-Maria Chappelle-Nadal as they agree on many issues, including womyn's reproductive health, legalization of marijuana, and religious freedom. However on her campaign website, she believes that Chappelle-Nadal "is not going to act on the interests of her district." She goes on to say  that the incumbent has been using "hateful, racist, divisive rhetoric" in the wake of the Ferguson protests. 

What does CAWP Inventory say about Chappelle Nadal's victory? Well, it is no surprise that her incumbency afforded her an enormous advantage. Incumbency demystifies the candidate, as their previous term is a record of their substantive representation. Secondly, if voters are uninformed or do not exercise their right to vote when the incumbent runs unopposed, the incumbent  is then that much safer because it is unlikely that these voters will disapprove. She confirms CAWP Inventory's statement that "African American women state legislators have been found to be distinctive from other legislators in their focus on women’s interests and African American interests. " Chappelle-Nadal has been extremely outspoken on the behalf of the pre-dominantly black community of Ferguson that has been protesting for the suspension and arrest of Officer Darren Wilson who shot and killed an unarmed Michael Brown in August. Her solidarity with the mourning town, I think, reaffirmed that she would be taking on another term this election.

In regards to representation of womyn candidates in the media, it doesn't seem to be much of a factor in this race. Probably because there was only one candidate for the race up until about last month. However, there are some interesting aspects to the way womyn portray themselves in their campaign media. Chappelle-Nadal didn't really need to create a campaign website, but her gender presentation is very feminine but without compromising her professionalism or mentioning her family. She also wears her natural hair which is pretty racially charged in that she is deliberately expressing her identity as a black womyn by not conforming to the white beauty standard of straight hair. Christine Laporta is interesting because while her gender expression is feminine as well, she's mainly seen wearing jeans and suit jackets on her campaign media. She also goes by Chris as well as Christina on the write-in ballot. She makes no mention of a husband or children either. This could be an indication that District 14 may be relatively progressive in its views of womyn. 

It was interesting to see what the CAWP study had to say about why there are so few women candidates. It is not there are a lack of interested and qualified women, it is that women do not consider themselves to be qualified with the same credentials as men who were very confident in their ability to run. If this is not evidence of patriarchy, than I don’t know what is. Because of the socially constructed ideas of gender, women face subtle and explicit messages that leadership is inherently male. As a result, women are nearly written out of politics. On the other hand, those women that do run like Chappelle-Nadal, usually have a background in law, business, political activism or education.  I wish CAWP gave a comparative view on what men do in their road to candidacy because I am curious to see if women are holding themselves to a comparable, if not higher professional standard than their male counterparts before considering themselves ready to run.

It also struck me that voters perceive women as more qualified to handle education issues and I wonder if it’s because women take on education issues more often than men or because they advocate for the issue very well. In any case, this bodes well for Chappelle-Nadal because that is a topic of utmost importance to her campaign. I would like to see statistics regarding women advocating for VA policies because that is another issue important to my candidate. However, I have a hunch that she is a little atypical  amongst other women candidates on this issue because women are often distanced from anything having to do with war and it is only in recent years that  the military is allowing women to serve in combat. Given that war is gendered as masculine it would follow that more men would be veterans and therefore represent veterans. Chapelle-Nadal is from a military family so she still has credibility and a strong connection to the issue, but I do wonder how voters across the country would respond to a woman running on these issues.

Although media coverage for women candidates can easily get away with sexism, women can have a little bit more autonomy in representing themselves through social media. However, this grants more opportunities for error and misrepresentation. In Chappelle-Nadal’s case, we see this through her twitter account which has been in the news lately for the few choice words she had for Governor Jay Nixon. In more liberal news sources, she might be applauded for her indignance at the injustices Nixon has allowed to go on in Ferguson. On the other hand, more conservative news sources may capitalize on her tweets as unprofessional, angry, and hysterical. Furthermore, tweets and facebook statuses can be taken out of context and even photoshopped to create temporary buzz that may harm a candidate.

  Before we examine how Maria Chappelle-Nadal challenges or re-enforces our CAWP Inventory reading, I want to establish a basic profile of who she is as a politician. Maria Chappelle-Nadal is a mixed descent (Puerto Rican/African American) Democrat Senator for District 14 in the state of Missouri. She is the incumbent for her position this election year, and interestingly enough, she was preceded by Rita Heard Days, another African American woman elected representative. She also served as representative of the Missouri House of Representatives for the 72nd district. Her political committees include: Education, Government Accountability, Seniors, Families, and Pensions, Veterans Affairs and Health, and Ways and means. Caucuses and non-legislative committees include: Missouri Legislative Black Caucus, Sue Shear Institute for Women in Public Life, and the Neighborhood Leadership Academy. Following the shooting of Mike Brown and the resulting looting, protests, and militarization of the Ferguson Police Department, she has been a strong ally for her constituents, getting tear-gassed alongside them in peaceful protests, and calling out Governor Nixon for his inaction against police brutality.

A little bit about District 14 would be helpful as well. Census.gov outlined her constituency as follows. The ethnic breakdown of St. Louis County is 68% White, 23.7% Black, 2.7% Latin@,  3.8% Asian American, 0.2% Native American and 1.9% Multicultural. It is 52.7% female, with 61.5% of citizens between the ages of 18 and 65. Most of the Black population is concentrated in the north-eastern part of St. Louis county and tends to consist of “blue collar” households, while in the west, the population is overwhelmingly white, well-educated, and work in “management or professional” fields.

Given this information, we can see that Maria Chapelle-Nadal supports some of the trends outlined in the CAWP  Inventory Readings. First, Chapelle-Nadal is an example of a woman senator that advocates for issues pertaining to women, children, and the family. “Sue Thomas, using a mail survey of legislators in twelve states in 1988, found that women were more likely to make bills dealing with women’s issues and children and family issues a priority.” Chapelle-Nadal’s membership to the Education, Seniors, Families, and Pensions, and Sue Shear Institute for Women in Public Life committees supports Thomas’s findings. She is, however, an interesting case study in regards to her constituency because Black women are usually elected in communities that are primarily African American which is clearly not the case. On the other hand,  there is a slightly larger female population in District 14, a majority of which are highly educated. CAWP Inventory found that “districts ‘friendly’ to electing white Democratic women to Congress are more liberal, urban, diverse, and wealthier than the districts that elect white Democratic men.” Although, Chappelle-Nadal is not white and District 14 isn’t what I would call diverse, its white population is relatively liberal, urban, and wealthy. In other words, more likely to vote for a Democratic candidate, so we see how party affiliation plays an important role in election. Furthermore, intersectionality may be on her side in her race for re-election with the Black community rallying behind her for her support of the citizens of Ferguson and women voters backing her because women organizations need that representation in the otherwise male-dominated political arena.