"Women In Power: From Tokenism to Critical Mass"

"The policy of making only a perfunctory effort or symbolic gesture toward the accomplishment of a goal." That is the definition I found when I looked up what tokenism meant. I feel that this definition describes exactly what is going on when looking at women in political power. The article, by Jane S. Jaquette, changed my mind completely on the way I look at the US government's attitudes towards women politically. I must admit though, that what I felt were assumptions and were not based on any facts. I have never taken a class or read any information on how women are involved in politics. Now, after reading this article, I feel different. However, this may be biased because I am only using one author's opinion as a backing for my feelings.

Before reading this, I thought that women had made tremendous achievements in the political fields. Even while reading this the first time I thought wow, great progress. The opening statement of the article says, "Never before have so many women held so much power" (Jaquette 102). Great, so we are finally moving up in the world. But something bothered me. I had to reread s

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Jaquette's article does not ignore the progress we are making in the world. She points out that in the developed West, women representation has doubled from 1975-1995 (Jaquette 103). The reasons behind this are women's increased awareness of their political clout and willingness to mobilize new issues, easing political constraints by political parties and states, including higher recruitment, quotas and modified electoral systems, new styles of leadership and reorganized political parties (Jaquette 104). There are many new women's groups fighting for our rights. These may not be direct rights that lead us into office, yet they have power over women in general. Women on both political sides are also trying to provide support for women candidates financially. Groups like EMILY and WISH are providing women with more funds to gain access into office. All of these efforts by men and women are tremendously helping the number of women in office grow. Yet the numbers are still !

ette wrote, "Like their male counterparts, female office holders come from all parts of the ideological spectrum and depend on the support of diverse and often divided constituencies" (108). That needs to be realized by all people before these stereotypes will disappear. Everyone has differen

Some common words found in the essay are:
Jane Jaquette, EMILY WISH, Critical Mass, women political, jaquette 103, , support women candidates, overall women, women political power, political power, political parties, leads women, jaquette's article, women office, support women, women candidates,
Approximate Word count = 910
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)