The GOP isn’t just hostile to American women generally; it’s hostile to women entering the ranks of its own party, and has a disturbingly low number of women holding elected office. Of course, Dems don’t do the best job either, but they’re significantly ahead of the GOP. The GOP also lags when compared to other conservative parties around the world.
In order to compare apples to apples in this analysis, the real question is how a party fares within its own political system, as compared to other parties within their systems. So, for example, comparing U.S. Republicans to the Swedish Liberal Party or the Moderates would tell us more about the difference between Sweden and the U.S. rather than how close each party is to the center of their electorate.
Comparing U.S. Republicans to U.S. Democrats, it turns out that Republicans (the right of the U.S. in this model) are by far the lowest in terms of proportional representation of women legislators within their political system, as compared to other conservative parties and coalitions.
In other words, as a proportion of the Democrat’s percentage, the Republican Party has the lowest percentage of women legislators, as compared to the shares of the conservatives in the other three countries.
Really interesting stuff — go read the whole post.
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That’s why I found their loving embrace of Palin so very odd.
But the much of the US Democratic party is about as right-wing as most countries’ right-wing parties on many issues. Still, even comparing the Republicans to something like One Nation in Australia (anti-immigration, anti-Aboriginal party), the Republicans have a lower proportion of women.
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