St. Paul, Minnesota, has an all-woman city council for the first time in its history — and experts say it may be the largest U.S. city to ever have an all-woman council.
Calling people just “males” or “females” is a little derogatory. They’re female politicians, or they’re women. They’re not “those females over there”.
Ever since I’ve had that pointed out to me it’s become a bit of a pet peeve of mine. If we were on Reddit I’d link to r/MenAndFemales, but I don’t go to that place anymore.
Equality is having most city councils be mixed, and a roughly even number of all men or all women councils where most candidates are all omen or all men. Not every council needs to be split, but at least one of the underrepresented group is a positive as a counterbalance to all the ones that are all men.
I just have to assume you are asking in bad faith, because we very much live in a patriarchy. The mere fact that this is noteworthy news for being a first is reason enough to understand how this is only progress.
Well, they are going to have to do everything perfectly. One screw up of any kind and for the next ten years every discussion of diversity or women in leadership positions is going to include a Republican saying, "Yeah, well just look at what they did to St. Paul."
I guarantee, even if they are completely perfect, they’ll still get blamed for whatever fuck ups the Minneapolis city council does (for those who are unaware, Minneapolis and St. Paul are LITERALLY right next to each other)
It’ll be interesting to see what they change… and the city could use some change.
i feel like the only things they really have going for them are the Saints (More fun to watch than the Twins, at least. Just saying), Can Can Wonderland, and Cossetta’s and some good botique/craft coffee shop. (Nina’s off cathedral hill is the GF’s favorite,)
Day by Day Cafe in downtown St Paul is lovely. They have a nice library room to sit in during the winter and a patio with a koi pond out back for summer. They have some of the best breakfast food I’ve ever had and their early bird special is a really good deal (especially when I’m on nights).
My guess is that they will what any other city council would do. I don’t think being all-female will suddenly change their politics. While it’s an interesting fact I would say that expecting all-female council to govern differently than other councils is a little bit sexist.
I don’t think it’s sexist to think that people from a different background and life experience may have a different take on policies. At least, I hope they do! It could be a nice change for the city.
Sure, women can have different life experience regarding crime or healthcare but city council can focus on those issues when it’s majority female or simply has female mayor, right? The sexist part is focusing on ‘all-female’ part and thinking that they will somehow behave differently now that there’s no men around.
You’re the one that chose to interpret what I said as sexist, that’s on you.
Are you familiar with the phrase, “strike while the iron is hot”? But have you ever read of any other news articles from AP regarding the election of city-council from any neighboring city to St. Paul? This would be the best time to capitalize on the extra attention. And given the quotes in the article, any Republican looking for election is going to be looking for any reason to use against them.
“Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick” -Kevin Malone
Number of US cities with all male city councils: hundreds? thousands?
Number of US cities with mixed city councils: hundreds? thousands?
Number of US cities with all female city councils: one
<a href="">citation needed</a>
A diverse mix would have a lot of mixed city councils and an equal number of all male and all female city councils. Yet, I’m confident, based on my understanding of US cities and towns, that there are far more all male city councils than all female city councils.
If you’ve got actual stats to show that there are more or similar amounts of all female city councils than all male city councils, then I would agree that this isn’t diversity. But if, as my common sense suggests, there are way more all male councils than all female ones, then an all female city council is a win for diversity as it brings those two numbers closer to equality.
The second is indeed best. But as long as the first or third is much larger than the other, having more of the lesser is the second best option and also the rarest.
Nation wide sure, but on the city level, it’s entirely all of one.
Like you’ve got a point, that evening out the two extremes is better than one dominating but I’m not going to be celebrating it as good news when it’s just swapping the problem.
There’s no way this council can reflect its community
I get the point you're making in you first comment but this part in this comment really ignores that a community has lots of factors. Like all of the people on this council are under age 40 and the median age of the city is 32.5. The group represents five different faiths and is comprised of four different ethnicities.
Yes one of the dimensions of the community heptahedron shaped spectrum came up short. BUT this single edge of the polyhedra that comprises political science, a sole determining factor does not make.
I get your original point, one face of this is skewed off from normalization. And perhaps when folks say "all male blah blah blah are bad" they're generalizing too much because a lot of the problem is old, white, male, non-progressive, traditionalist, etc etc etc that gets summed up into the term of "all male…".
That over generalization is kind of why on your first comment, it's kind of a head nod and move on. But this second comment you're really hurting your first point there. That council might or might not properly reflect their community in enough facets of the political polyhedron, simply looking at one edge of it (sex) is, technically, not enough information to really draw a conclusion on that front.
Which is why, if you leave with anything from my comment, we should be cautious about running with the headline of a news story. Because the city council themself found it interesting that the public elected an all women group but were absolutely quick to point out more their alignment with their age to the population of the city. It's the news story and Karen Kedrowski, director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University hyping the angle of their sex.
Also, at least that's my conclusion from the linked story. For all I know, the City Council's first order of business at their first closed door meeting might be to burn men in effigy, or it could be to restore the puppy no-kill shelter. All I know is life moves fast and that there's a lot more to a community than just the sex of the leaders of it.
Of course people are not doing that, I didn’t say they do. I just hope one day we’ll go beyond the ‘we need 5 men and 5 women because equality’ silliness. The gender should be irrelevant but sadly we’re still at the ‘OMG! First women PM! Such progress!’ stage. Poland had a token female PM and banned abortion couple years later. Spain never had a female PM and recently instituted menstruation leave. Policy is what should matter.
Because a diverse group of people are able to provide new insights into those programs. As long as people are stuck with representative democracy, it's beneficial to get differing voices in. Historically those voices have been silenced, so there needs to be a bit of concerned effort to get them heard and catch up on the 'backlog'.
We really need direct democracy with people free to vote on issues themselves without having to try to find someone who's looking out for what they're going through as a representative.
We really need direct democracy with people free to vote on issues themselves
Nah, it would be abused. Politicians, as much as we all hate them, work as a kind of filter ensuring that proper processes are followed. Passing laws is not easy, that’s why professionals do it. A referendum from time to time is a good thing but if people were to directly vote on all the issues they would quickly get tired and some minority with agenda would start sneaking in their laws everywhere.
As to getting different voices in you can also have expert groups and public consultations. I definitely see the benefits of electing minority representatives but I think focusing on sex/race like that is still pretty silly thing to do and hope one day we’ll grow out of identity politics.
First of all, it’s not as nice as you would think. Second, they represent exactly what I described a ‘nice to have’: a referendum from time to time. They still have politicians and normal government. Since you present it as a counter argument looks like you completely misunderstood what I said. Third, even there shit can happen: theguardian.com/…/switzerland-court-overturns-ref… (you decide for yourself if it’s an example of government protecting citizens from a bad decision they made or courts overriding will of the people).
Why do you want to have equal numbers of bad things? How about instead, advocating that all the single gender/identity/view councils be fixed? Yes, there are hundreds of white men only city councils, that doesn’t mean that other extremes, regardless of how few of them exist are good.
Is a full Nazi city council okay, even if there is only one of them? No.
Am I going to find you railing about DEI in other comments if I trawl your history? I haven't, but this is worded like the kind of complaint that comes from someone who normally thinks diversity is awful, except when it's old white guys being excluded.
Maybe judge the city based on council members over time if you need to bend over backwards to feel good about this progress. The over all ratio is still not 50/50.
We’d need exclusively female presidents for about 2 1/2 centuries for us to meet any kind of “equality” there, and that would seem uneven too. This is not all women just because it’s all women today.
Oh god, the crying has begun. Can’t we be happy for this kind of change? It’s literally one city. How about we save the criticism for cities where it’s still all men.
It's my position, I don't want the axis to swing to either all of one or the other. That requires calling out when it goes to the one side, not being "happy" about it.
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