Hawaii has key women in politics, better than U.S. average, but more robust pool is needed

ABC News item from last week: “Women candidates dominate Democratic primaries amid ‘pink wave’ movement.”

“In an election year rocked by political sexual harassment scandals and the subsequent #MeToo movement, female candidates appear to be resonating with voters, winning almost every Democratic primary in contested races on Tuesday,” the network reported.

Besides winning early races, more women this year are running. The Associated Press reported last week that 309 women from the two major parties are running for Congress, topping the 2012 high of 298. There are 83 women in the U.S. House, out of 435 seats.

What about Hawaii? Three-quarters of our congressional delegation is female: Sen. Mazie Hirono, Rep. Colleen Hanabusa and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.

On an anecdotal basis, it seems in recent political history that whenever I reached out for comment on legislative actions, I would be chatting with Hanabusa when she was Senate president, state Sen. Donna Mercado Kim when she was also either Senate president or Ways and Means chairwoman, Linda Lingle as the governor, or state Sen. Jill Tokuda or state Rep. Sylvia Luke when they led the Senate or House money committees. Hawaii women in politics were being heard.

Still the numbers show that Hawaii bests the national average by just a little: Women make up 25 percent of the national average and in Hawaii, women hold 30 percent of legislative seats.

”We’re better than average, but not great,” says University of Hawaii political scientist Colin Moore.

The problem is in the base number, he says: Fewer women run for office, so fewer are elected.

Research shows three reasons.

>> Women are less likely to be recruited to run for office. Public interest groups are more likely to first ask a man to run for office, according to political studies that Moore cites.

>> Second, “Women are less likely to see themselves as qualified for office,” Moore says, adding, “When men and women with similar professional qualifications were asked if they would make a good public official, men were far more likely to say yes, even when there is no concrete evidence that this is true.”

>> And finally, women are usually the family caregiver, tending to either the young or the elderly, and just don’t have the time to run in an election.

Kim, running for the urban Honolulu 1st Congressional District, agrees, saying that in her long city and state political career, she has found that men just don’t see women as political leaders.

“I’ve had men say, ‘you are so tiny and demure, they are going to chew you up.’ I tell them I grew up in Kalihi and graduated from Farrington and I can take care of myself,” Kim says.

Also running for Congress from the same district, state Rep. Beth Fukumoto says as someone with a millennial political view, she is part of the group running because of the new threats to rights women had assumed were assured.

“I think it is partially the #MeToo movement, it is partially Donald Trump,” Fukumoto says, noting that “Trump helped wake us up to the fact that many of our rights would be gone if we don’t put up a fight.

“It is time to step up,” she says.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.