Still A Long Way To Go

One of the most gratifying results of yesterday's election is that Nancy Pelosi will become the Speaker of the House. She will also become the first woman to hold that position. I find that rather amazing: here it is 2006 and this country has never had a female Speaker. While the the number of women serving in Congress has gone up, it has done so only slowly. Very, very slowly.

From an AP piece published in the November 8 Sacramento Bee:

The first female speaker of the House will lead a chamber filled with more women than ever before.

Congress as a whole, however, still will be dominated by white men.

The House will add at least three women and the Senate will add two, bringing the total number of female members of Congress to at least 86 - 70 in the House, 16 in the Senate.

Women were candidates in two House races that were too close to call Wednesday. [Emphasis added.]

I had hoped that by this time in my life there would have been better gender distribution in Congress, also that there would have been better ethnic representation (the article also has statistics on African Americans and Hispanics in Congress). I don't understand what is taking so long. Are Americans really that backward when it comes to electing people to represent them? Or is it that fewer women and minorities are willing to undertake the rigors of a campaign?

I suspect the answer lies more with the first reason than the second. Still, that's another problem that I hope Democrats are willing to address over the next two to ten years. We deserve better.