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May 16, 2013 11:31 AM UTC

In Colorado, Women Got (Expletive) Done

  • 10 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

This fascinating infographic from Emerge Colorado we were forwarded today makes the case:

Women Get it Done

When you look at the important bills from this session a large majority of them were sponsored by women.  These include:  the Colorado Asset Bill led by Sen. Angela Giron and Rep. Crisanta Duran, gun safety bills led by Rep. Rhonda Fields Rep. Beth McCann, and Senator Evie Hudak, comprehensive sex education led by Sen. Nancy Todd and Rep. Crisanta Duran, a bill to connect wrap around support services to early childhood education led by Rep. Millie Hamner and Sen. Mary Hodge, and a bill extending the job growth incentive tax credit championed by Rep. Dianne Primavera.

The charge to pass legislation was led by women legislators. Some of the bills they championed and succeeded in passing garnered the most fanfare and some passed with little attention, but all will make the lives of Coloradans better.  The Colorado legislature was hugely productive and passed 440 bills in 120 days compared to Congress only passing 148 bills during the entirety of 2012. Specifically, Colorado women helped make our communities safer, a contrast to the gridlock we see in Washington.

Colorado far exceeds Congress in the percentage of women who serve; Congress is composed of only 18% women compared to Colorado’s 41%.  According to the Center for American Women in Politics, women tend to run for different reasons than men and have different policy outcomes as a result. Women focus more on policy goals than on power and prestige.  Women favor a leadership style of collaboration and consensus building.  As a result, on average, women sponsor and co-sponsor more bills than men and are able to enlist more co-sponsors.   Regardless of party women are, on average, 31% more effective at advancing legislation and see continued success farther into the legislative process than men…

The high proportion of women in the Colorado General Assembly has been a point of pride for a number of years, although recent attrition among Republican women (see: Jean White, B.J. Nikkel) have made the trend more of a Democratic talking point. Likewise with this year's historically productive legislative session, full of policy goals sought by Democratic women that were generally opposed by Republicans irrespective of gender.

Our legislature did make Congress look pretty dysfunctional though, and your mother would agree as to why.

Comments

10 thoughts on “In Colorado, Women Got (Expletive) Done

  1. A little bipartisan angle, Sen. Roberts also worked with Sen. Hodge to strengthen Colorado's Medicaid False Claims Act in SB205 to fight against fraud.

  2. Maybe it's because, while women can be just as tough and just as stupid as the toughest and/or stupidest men, they aren't plagued so much by the whole my dick is bigger than yours thing.  I say "so much" instead of not at all because the dick thing isn't strictly physical and literal but figurative as well and, yes, can affect those without actual dicks. As a small and once very scrawny female little kid who took great pride in being able to beat all of my female friends arm wrestling, no matter how much bigger and heavier they were than me, I can attest to the universality of the dick thing, with or without.

  3. To compound our 'Washington' problem, most of the 18% of the women in Congress are held hostage by a white-male majority in the House, effectively precluding them from having any influence at all on national policy.

    Women are 51 percent of the nation, but among the ruling members of the House, they make up just 8 percent. Only 63 percent of the United States population is white. But in the House Republican majority, it’s 96 percent white.

    As a whole, Congress has never been more diverse, except the House majority. There are 41 black members of the House, but all of them are Democrats. There are 10 Asian-Americans, but all of them are Democrats. There are 34 Latinos, a record — and all but 7 are Democrats. There are 7 openly gay, lesbian or bisexual members, all of them Democrats.

    1. You are at the very least entertaining. I'm not surprised you missed the point.  The Republican House operates like a parallel government, sitting in for some fantasy nation created in talk-radio land.  I happen to admire the likes of Ellen Roberts, Jean White and B.J. Nikkel.  Great ladies.

    2. ummm…. the Dem party dominated by winning fair elections and the Dem party has long run many more women than yours because our party attracts more women and minorities and supports more of them as candidates in primaries. Then the general public elects them in legitimate elections because, as polling shows,  majorities agree with Dem policies more than with R policies. Which is how we got to dominate, not by rolling in with tanks or anything.

  4. I believe it was Mark Twain who said:

        "No generalization is worth a damn, including this one." 

       Still, after watching the legislature for about four decades, I do think women, as a rule, are more interested in getting results than getting credit.   And that, of course, is the key to doing anything worthwhile in a collective body.   

        I'll go along with Blue Cat on the dick-sizing thing, but maybe the key difference is just being a mom.   Moms learn to get things done with precious little credit, the once-a-year Hallmark card notwithstanding.   Ironically, the only time Moms do get credit is in the NFL   Of course, it was Dad who spent thousands of hours throwing footballs to Jr., only to have him go "Hi Mom" when the camera zeros in on his touchdown dance.

    Seriously, stay-at-home dads are learning to get things done without any credit.   But parenting, and the culture of responsibity it brings, is still primarily a female thing, if less so than in the past.  Yes, we are talking generalities here.   Michelle Bachman is a world-class Dickhead who couldn't pour piss from a boot without reading the instructions on the heel.   Andrew Romanoff, as Speaker of the House, was more worried about accomplishment than getting credit, to the point that he retained GOP staff members who had treated Democrats fairly — he didn't want to suffer a learning curve as deserving democrats learned the ropes of their patronage jobs.  

        So, not all men are dicks and not all women are collaborative.   But as someone, I believe it may have been Damon Runyan, once said, "The race goeth not always to the strong.   But that's the way to bet."   In politics, and indeed, most professions where judgment and collaborattionh count, such as law and medicine, performance has improved as women have won full acceptance, 

          Men, however, still excell at pissing up a rope.  Even though they may be occasionally told to go and do it, I strongly advice women not to even try!smiley

  5. The quote was indeed Runyan.  It says in Ecclesiastes: "The Race goes not always to the swift but to those who keep on running."   Runyan, an avid gambler,  paraphrased it this way:

     "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's how the smart money bets."

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