I missed the television airing of "Women, Power and Politics," a program produced by PBS and reported by Maria Hinojosa, but I was able to watch the video online. So can you.
The program features not only thoughts on Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, but offers a glimpse of the U.S. Senate campaign being waged by Jeanne Shaheen. (The woman who took the stage in Unity when Clinton tossed her support behind Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee.)
"When I first ran for governor," said Shaheen, "I was referred to in the paper as Betty Crocker -- and that was meant as a compliment."
In the report, which I really can't say enough good things about, Hinojosa makes the point that at the current rate of progress it will take 100 years before men and women are equally represented in Congress. Think about that. One hundred years.
I guess I never honestly believed to see that goal met in my lifetime, but I had hoped that my daughters would see it. If our nation continues to chug along like this, my daughters will never know a Congress equally represented by men and women. Am I working this hard for my future granddaughters? More importantly, can the issues our nation faces really be solved by primarily men?
And, yes, I'm being honest with that last question. Can the crisis that we face be solved by the men who created the crisis? Do men bring an inherent understanding of health care to the offices they seek? Bottom line, don't all women, regardless of party affiliation, bring a different attitude about life, policy and government to public service?
In any event, these are some of the questions I'm left to ponder after watching the PBS report. I was always told that good journalism could be summed up by answering all of the reader's questions. I still think this is true in most cases, but there are exceptions. Subjects such as women in politics, I think, are even better when they leave the reader/watcher with more questions.
Go watch the report and let me know your thoughts. Is the United States as far as it should be? What do American women need to do in order to move past stereotypes and the thought process that leaves us believing that a woman running for office is an oddity?