Women can help change the landscape, by getting women into the political pipeline. Although many women may not think this directly affects their careers or business success, it’s important to get women in office because that’s where the power is, including the power to bring about change. Women bring a different viewpoint, different attitudes, and different skills to the legislative debate. Women often focus on different issues than men, who may support those issues but have no ‘top-of-mind awareness’ on foster care, for example, or adoption or domestic violence.

We have had some successes in the legislative realm:

• Senator Dianne Feinstein has led the way in the fight for gun control, safe children, and secure schools.
• Senator Barbara Boxer authored the Family Planning and Choice Protection Act and helped lead the floor fight for passage of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.  She exposed contractor greed and lax military procurement policies when she focused on the infamous $7,600 coffee pot and went on to lead the passage of numerous procurement reforms.  And she led the Senate effort to end the suffering of Afghan women under the Taliban.
• Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison championed an IRA for homemakers and anti-stalking legislation. Both Republican and Democratic women senators supported increasing funding for breast cancer research and for improving mammography standards.

Obviously, women have come a long way since the “bad old days' in 1973 when F. Edward Hebert (the chair of the House Armed Services Committee) suggested that his Democratic colleagues Pat Schroeder and Ron Dellums share a chair—because in his view, "a girl and a black" were (as Schroeder remembers him saying) "worth only half of one 'regular' member." Still, the political barriers are daunting—consider the following problems:

• There are only 8 women governors—and that’s an all-time high!
• 5 states have never sent a woman to Congress.
• No women of color have ever been governor of a U.S. state.
• Of the 12,000 members of Congress, only 215 of them have been women.
• Women hold only 13.6% of the 535 seats in the 107th U.S. Congress.
• The White House Project notes that the U.S. ranks 59th in the world—behind Burundi, Angola, and Slovakia—in women’s representation in national legislatures. (And the ranking continues to fall because America’s numbers remain stagnant, while other countries seek to increase the number of women in politics.)

Women who wish to enter and rise up in politics must address the same critical elements as those who’ve chosen a career path in business. They must struggle both to achieve visibility and to overcome stereotyping.  Women need to get the right credentials, gain confidence, get into the political pipeline, and start moving on up. They need to negotiate hard to represent their parties, and to be given the same support and funding as their male counterparts. Political activist and expert Barbara Lee notes: “Role-modeling is critical because the people who are most likely to vote for women candidates are people who have voted for women before.”