My favorite childhood book, He Bear, She Bear by Stan and Jan Berenstain has a simple message: “We can do all these things, you see, whether we are he or she.”
Yet, 3-year-old me reading this book knew one thing “she” cannot do: Be president. Twenty years later, watching the first female presumptive Democratic nominee for president speak, I finally feel this naive (but historically accurate) assumption I held as a child is disproven.
As someone who studies the gender inequality in political representation, I know 2016 is already a paramount year. Of course, this year builds on many others in which women struck the glass ceiling in politics. For instance, 1992 (known as the “Year of the Woman”) marked the first time six women served together in the U.S. Senate.
According to the Center for American Women and Politics, today women hold 20 percent of seats in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, and at the state level make up one-quarter of state legislatures nationwide. Parity has not yet been reached in the gender makeup of our elected representatives, but we must celebrate these victories along the way.
New Hampshire has a notable history of representing women in politics: For instance, we had the first all-female national delegation in 2013. Yet our rank in the nation at the state level of politics has dropped in recent years from No. 1 to No. 15. Let’s make 2016 a new year for the books in terms of representing women in our democracy.
MORGAN MATTHEWS
Boscawen