Matrocracy: the book. First in a series.

Matrocracy is more than a blog; it is also a book in development. In this series of posts, I will preview some the key concepts of matrocracy that the book treats in depth. I welcome your comments and suggestions.

A recent exchange between Senator Barbara Boxer and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice highlights one difficulty in staking out a clear vision of women’s roles in the twenty-first century: women, like men, make different choices and do not share a single set of priorities. In a Senate hearing, Boxer tried to say that many of the Iraq War policymakers do not have as much as stake as the military families whose sons and daughters face death and injury in battle. Secretary Rice's supporters later complained that Boxer seemed to be criticizing Rice for not having children.

This conflict between two women policymakers illustrates a challenge for matrocracy: How can we devise social policies that improve the outcomes of the seemingly impossible choices currently facing many working parents, while at the same time acknowledging the right not to procreate? Should people of either gender who choose not to procreate have the priorities of their workplaces set my those who do, or vice versa? My answer is that we already work too hard in the U.S., with not enough time spent on the activities that constitute the rest of our lives. We’re stressed out and overweight. If creating a more manageable work/life balance for parents will help create a more sane life for the rest of society, that’s a step forward.

Another lesson from the Boxer-Rice exchange is how quickly policy conversations can turn into partisan political fights that distract from the real issues. One of Rice’s supporters, Rush Limbaugh, rolled out the Clarence Thomas lynching metaphor to describe Boxer’s treatment of Rice.

Matrocracy proposes a model that will accelerate the attainment of political power by women. Matrocracy may, on its face, appear partisan, because the political party that is furthest along with this effort – the Democratic party – seems most likely to benefit from matrocracy's model. The Republican Party, though, with further to go, stands to gain standing by being the most improved.

Numbers illustrate the parties' progress. The Republican Party dropped support for the Equal Rights Amendment in 1980. Of the sixteen women U.S. Senators, eleven are Democrats and five are Republicans. Of seventy-one women in the House of Representatives, fifty are Democrats and twenty-one are Republicans. Of nine women state governors, six are Democrats. Women are just over sixteen percent of Republican state legislators and nearly thirty percent of Democratic state legislators. (Two sets of data used.) In 2005, women held 12.5 percent of all leadership positions in state legislatures – 20 percent of Democratic positions, but only 4.5 percent of Republican positions.

Matrocracy proposes to significantly increase the percentage of women officeholders across the board. Because the parties are starting from different positions, that would create higher numbers of Democratic women officeholders than Republican. For example, increasing the number of Democratic women in the House of Representatives by fifty percent would add more than twenty-five more female Members of Congress. Doing the same for the Republicans would only add ten. By working harder to catch up, the Republican Party may benefit more in the long run.

However, creating mechanisms by which many women are more likely to attain power does not necessarily mean that Democrats will attain the positions of the greatest influence. Right now, for example, the most powerful woman in American politics may be Condi Rice, not Nancy Pelosi.

Finally, the Boxer-Rice exchange also demonstrates how procreation and children are still regarded as women's issues. If the exchange had been between two men, it would have generated much less attention and criticism. It shows how far we still have to go to achieve gender equality.
Link to second post in the series.