Women Scarce in the Top Posts of Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES — There are 1.9 million women in Los Angeles. The two senators from California are women, as is the state's attorney general.

But this city, a bastion of progressive politics, has a curious distinction these days. Only one woman holds elective office in the entire government of Los Angeles, a member of the 15-person City Council from the San Fernando Valley who was sworn in only on Friday.

The mayor is a man, Eric M. Garcetti, who defeated a woman, Wendy Greuel, for the job in May. The city attorney is a man. The city controller? You guessed it.

Los Angeles County, with a population of 9.9 million that includes Los Angeles, has just one woman on its five-member Board of Supervisors. And the race to fill the City Council seat for Hollywood, which Mr. Garcetti vacated when he was elected mayor, gave voters a choice of 12 candidates — all men.

The overwhelmingly male lineup in local elected offices has caught many people here by surprise, overlooked in the general lack of interest in this year's campaigns. And it has become a subject of considerable chagrin, civic embarrassment and impassioned discussions about exactly what happened.

"When I was in elementary school, there were like five women on the City Council," said Nury Martinez, the city's lone woman in elected office, speaking in her empty Council office at City Hall. "It's a shame and embarrassing that in a city of four million people we are down to one woman."

The paucity of women in office in the nation's second-largest city is a reminder that even when the next president could be female, women are struggling across the country to attain parity with men in elected office. Women's political organizations have watched with concern this summer at the difficulties of Christine Quinn, the speaker of the New York City Council, as she seeks to become the city's first female mayor.

The case in Los Angeles might be particularly egregious, but the number of women holding office across the country has flat-lined in recent years.

"Can you believe it?" said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who works extensively with female candidates, including Ms. Greuel. "It's part of a national trend. We are seeing this in a lot of places — in offices in statewide office, in a number of city councils. But it's really shocking. That is a state that is very pro-women."

The situation here has caught the attention of national women's advocacy groups, including Emily's List, which is planning to begin a training and recruitment campaign here aimed at enlisting women to run for office.

"We do not want to see any city without equal representation of women — and in this case, we are really, really off, "said Stephanie Schriock, the president of the organization.

Katherine Spillar, the head of the Feminist Majority Foundation, called the situation "shocking."

"I'm very concerned," she said. "We have gone backwards instead of forwards. Shame on Los Angeles."

To some extent, the gender lineup at City Hall is an anomaly, the result of the natural ebb and flow of electoral politics. Ms. Greuel, the previous city controller, had to leave her position because of term limits — in this case, to run unsuccessfully for mayor. She would have been Los Angeles's first female chief executive.

Several analysts suggested that the sheer number of women in high elected office in California had inured voters to the issue, and blunted what might otherwise have been a historical urgency to Ms. Greuel's campaign.

There is no reason to expect the situation to change significantly any time soon; few obvious female candidates are on the horizon. Indeed, to a large extent, the issue here and across the country reflects a lack of interest on the part of many women in seeking office, political analysts said.

"The issue isn't that voters won't vote for women — it's that we don't have enough women running," Debbie Walsh, the director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said in an e-mail. "It's a recruitment issue."

In one measure of the representation of women in state and local government, 73 women hold elected statewide positions across the nation, or 23 percent of available positions, according to the center. That is almost identical to the percentage reported in 1993. The figure then increased through 2001, to 28 percent, but has been in a steady decline over the past 12 years, the center said.

Ms. Greuel's loss was also a reminder of at least lingering challenges for women running for an executive office, like governor or mayor, which can be more time-demanding and grinding than a legislative job. "There are still a lot of factors that make it difficult for women to get elected in executive positions, and we saw a lot of them play out in Los Angeles," said Ms. Lake, the pollster.

Ms. Greuel, who is the mother of a young son, said she often encountered evidence of the reluctance of voters to elect a woman, and particularly a mother. "There are still stereotypes of 'How can women be a good elected officeholder and a good parent?' " she said. "We found that in focus groups: 'How will you be able to do both?' Those same questions aren't asked of a male."

Bettina Duval, the head of California List, an organization seeking to elect women here, said men were more effective at encouraging other men to run for office. "There's an old boys' network out there that's alive and well," she said. "And I think there is an onus on women to mentor women. The bottom line is that women have to step up to the plate and run for office."

Whatever the cause, the situation is stirring a new concern among many women: that the near-absence of women in office here means hardly any examples are being set for young girls here who might be thinking about going into politics one day.

"The role model aspect of this is very troubling," said Donna Bojarsky, a longtime political consultant in Los Angeles. "It's not a good picture for an up-and-coming generation."

Ms. Martinez said women were familiar figures in Los Angeles government when she was growing up — and that was one of the reasons she ran for the City Council this year.

"Growing up, I always saw myself serving in public office, because that is what I wanted to do," she said. "But I had people to look up to. There were people I would watch on TV and read about. I was reading about these women. The Jackie Goldbergs. The Gloria Molinas."

"And for little girls for years to come?" she said with a sigh.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: August 5, 2013

An earlier Web summary with this article incorrectly suggested that Wendy Greuel was the sole woman to hold elective office in Los Angeles. She was defeated in her bid to become the city's mayor.

Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang

Women Scarce in the Top Posts of Los Angeles

Dengan url

https://dunialuasekali.blogspot.com/2013/08/women-scarce-in-top-posts-of-los-angeles.html

Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya

Women Scarce in the Top Posts of Los Angeles

namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link

Women Scarce in the Top Posts of Los Angeles

sebagai sumbernya