A long way to go #equalityforwomen

A long way to go

by digby

There are a lot of interesting tid-bits of polling data in this Pew poll inquiring about the public's attitudes about women in leadership positions. This one stuck out for me:



That's a big difference between what men think and what women think. Women see women in leadership as something that will improve their lives and far fewer men see the same thing. I don't know if that's because more men just think that nobody can improve anyone's lives or that women just suck at doing it but the difference is real.

One thing we know is that many more men think women don't really face a lot of problems getting to the top:



This is also revealing:



This seems like something that far more men would say "I don't know". But apparently, most assume this is not the case. Interesting.

And yeah, there's been progress but damn it's slow:



Whoopee. A glacial pace of progress:



And waddaya know --- everybody's saying we're going to have a nation security election in 2016 and lookee here:



If nothing else, this is designed to push any woman candidates to the right on these issues. Funny how that works out.

The report shows that the partisan divide is strong but I'd guess that has more to do with the fact that the Democrats are likely to nominate the first woman while the Republicans' last best hope was Sarah Palin.

And the generational divide is fairly strong too. Older folks like me are more pessimistic about the prospects for full equality but I'd guess that just stems from our life experience. (See: glacially slow, above.)

Overall, it's a pretty depressing result. Most figure women are as good as men at most things but they're less decisive and aren't as good at keeping the country safe, two characteristics that are considered important for business and political leadership. (Women are good at caring and being honest, apparently.) There's hope among the young who are far less likely to fall for gender stereotypes. We've come a long way, baby, but we've still got a long way to go. But then, this is hugely substantial and fundamental shift in how humans organize themselves, so it's a heavy lift. But it would be nice if we could speed up the process just a little here in the land of the free at least. Sheesh.