Hillary Clinton has finally revealed some hints about what her cabinet would look like on the Rachel Maddow show. The great part is that she wants half of her Cabinet to be women.
“I am going to have a Cabinet that looks like America, and 50 percent of America is women.”
Currently, there are only four women in Obama’s fifteen-person cabinet. The numbers are even worse in Congress. The Senate is 20 percent female, and the House is 19.3 percent female.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Government vowed to let women into combat, so women should have jobs in all areas of government.
As a feminist, I love it! I would love to see a Cabinet full of smart, badass ladies. I hope Hillary gets some very qualified women around her. However, I don’t want Clinton to choose someone JUST because she is a woman. I’m sure Clinton would find the best people for the jobs. Here is Clinton’s answer to why she is a feminist:
“I am a feminist because I believe that women deserve the same rights as men in every aspect of our economy and our society,”
Other countries around the world have increased the amount of women in their government. Justin Trudeau made his Parliament half female when he was elected as the Prime Minister of Canada.
The U.S. has an embarrassingly low percentage of women in government. The Swedish ministry is 52 percent women, and their Parliament is 43 percent women. Their government benefit programs automatically assume that both the men and the women work in a household. They have the highest female employment rate in the European Union (EU). Both parents are entitled to a combined 16-month paid family leave when they have a child. Thirteen of those months are paid at 80 percent of their full salary, and the rest are paid at a flat rate.
The U.N recently evaluated gender equality around the world, and the U.S. didn’t do very well. The gender pay gap is still sitting around 21 percent.
In the U.S., we don’t have paid family leave. Many new parents struggle to make ends meet with a child; it causes some women to drop out of the workforce altogether.
We need more women in our government to help us change policies like this.
Featured image by Brett Weinstein, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.
