Where are the women in the Mansion?

Understanding the decline in the number of female Governors.

The Washington State Governor's Mansion in Olympia, WA.  Photo by Harvey Barrison is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

As of today, only 37 women have ever served as U.S. Governors, compared to more than 2,000 men.   

Tuesday night I had a chance to see two of them in Seattle: Former Governor of Washington Christine Gregoire (2005-2013) and former Governor of Oregon Barbara Roberts (1991-1995), in an event hosted by the Women's Funding Alliance. 

As I walked into the room and found a chair, I was excited to hear about the progress women have been making as governors.  But also being a realist, I knew not to get my hopes too high—given that the number of women in other political offices, such as congress, has been increasing at a pace so slow it hardly seems to be moving at all. 

The percentage of female governors must be at least increasing at that snail’s pace, right? RIGHT?

My naïve hopes were dashed right off the bat.  It turns out that female representation in governorships hasn’t just flatlined—it’s actually fallen in recent years.  The record stands at 9 women simultaneously serving as governor (in both 2004 and 2009), which has dropped to the 6 women currently serving.  Put another way, only about 11% of our current governors are female, which is 33% less than 12 years ago.   Those stats aren’t great. At all. 

What is going on? Why aren’t there more women in the mansion? 
The Governors shed some light on the situation:

Women in or running for public office increasingly face harassment, outright sexist language, and threats.  

As Gov. Roberts put it, “things that people used to think but not say, they’re saying now.” What had been a tough but relatively respectful environment for women is becoming an openly hostile one.  And the strain of operating in that kind of environment is likely a main reason why fewer women are willing to throw their hat in the ring.  Both women stated their dismay at recent escalation of this hostility, made glaringly obvious in the current Presidential election.  Instead, argued Gov. Gregoire, “let’s talk about the issues…and how we solve them… and get over this disrespect and demeaning nature that we’re seeing in politics today.” 

A local example of this was seen recently with the misogynistic backlash that the female Seattle City Council members received (as Samantha Bee hilariously explains below). 

Women are more reluctant than men to put their family through the stress of campaigning.

Running for office can be extremely tough not only on the candidate, but also on their family.  As Gov. Gregoire stated: “It is easier to be the candidate and have these lies told about you than it is to be the loved one of the candidate.  And women I think really struggle with ‘I don’t want to put my family through the ugliness of a campaign, the expected lies and comments and remarks that will be made.’”  It’s one thing to take abuse yourself, it’s another thing to make your family face that, and women seem to be less willing to ask their family to go through it.

Internalized gender bias persists—even in women

A third piece of the puzzle is understanding the mental barriers a woman has to overcome to believe that she is capable of leadership.  Our culture conditions us all—men and women alike—to believe that men are more capable leaders.  This is reflected in the fact that a woman must be asked many times to run for public office before she actually will. 

It takes a lot of work to recognize that internalized bias, and then to overcome it.  Gov. Gregoire shared the story of how her daughter thought she wasn’t qualified to run for Port Commissioner—until she looked at the resumes of the current commissioner and realized she was possibly the most qualified.  Multiple times throughout the evening, both Governors emphasized the need for women to believe in themselves.  As part of the solution, Gov. Roberts called for more documentation of women in leadership roles, because “if you can’t see it, you can’t be it.” She then proceeded to whip out a copy of her autobiography from behind her chair, with a grin. 

Male allies need to step up

Though this was only a minor point in the discussion, I’d like to emphasize its importance here.  We cannot ask women to do all of this work.  We also need to work on leveling the playing field—and that means those who hold power in the playing field need to step up. As Gov. Gregoire put it, the situation “isn’t going to advance…until men join.” It is both the right thing to do, and it will also result in better policy.  In fact, this applies to all types of diversity, both Governors argued: “diversity has got to be key…it (leadership) should look like the nation that we serve.” 

And last time I checked, our nation wasn’t 89% male. 

Who Picked the Grapes for that Chardonnay? Labor Trafficking in Washington State

The first thing that happens is you get blisters on your thumbs.  Then the sunburn, the aching legs, and the bruises from tossing your ladder into the apple tree. 

Here’s something you probably didn’t know about me: I’ve been employed as a migrant laborer.  When I was living in New Zealand a few years ago, I worked in an apple orchard, ‘thinning’ the trees, for one spring.  This means manually removing extra apples when they are small, so the ‘keeper’ apples can grow to full size without being crowded.

Working in the orchard, you are often not subject to minimum wage laws.  You get paid per tree—how fast you work.  This quickly becomes dangerous, as you’re using a 10 foot tall, 3-legged ladder, and literally running up and down it from tree to tree.  It’s completely exhausting.  And you never really make more than minimum wage, no matter how fast you go, and you can easily dip below minimum wage if you allow yourself to slow to a safer, more human pace. 

But in New Zealand, the wages are slightly better than in the US.  I was not coerced into the job, and knew I was protected by their stronger labor laws, and free national accident health insurance. 

In the US, and many other countries, it's a different story.

Our lives, and the products we consume, are much more deeply impacted by labor trafficking that I ever knew.  I always had a twinge of guilt when I bought a shirt from Forever 21, because it’s so cheap it must have been produced in sweatshops.  I’d heard that many of our agricultural workers receive pennies to the dollar for their work.  But I didn’t realize how prevalent trafficking is in our lives, because it’s so well hidden from view. 

I had the chance to interview labor trafficking expert Bratati Ghosh last month to learn more.  Bratati is the Chief Marketing Officer for a global software firm, and has been deeply involved in the causes of global development and women’s issues for more than 10 years.  I met her this summer, and she told me about a course on labor trafficking she co-lead recently at the University of Washington.

What inspired you to work on eliminating labor trafficking?

“I grew up in India, and that made me deeply aware that (….) one zipcode away there were all these women and children who did not have access to the proper means of livelihood, healthcare, and education.  And this was not happening in another part of the world, it was happening right next door,” she explained. “I came here (to the U.S.) in 1994 and worked for 10 years before turning my mind back to how I could get engaged in the global movement to end these forms of social and economic injustice.  And being a business-minded person, I really felt that the route out of this disparity had to be through some economic means.”

What drew you to teach the course on labor trafficking at UW?

Thousands of garment workers and their unions rally on the one-year anniversary of the Rana Plaza collapse that killed more than 1,100 garment workers by Solidarity Center is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Having met UW Women’s Center Executive Director Dr. Sutapa Basu through a mutual friend, the two decided to join forces and co-lead the course through the Jackson School of International Studies.  This was driven by Bratati's renewed interest in the topic, in part inspired by the Bangladesh factory collapse that killed over 1,100 people in 2013, where clothing for stores such as WalMart and JcPenney was being made.  The UW class focused on Washington State, and the course students created a task force that put together a 300 page report that went to the our state legislature as policy recommendation, titled From International Supply Chains to Local Consumption: Eliminating Labor Trafficking from all Companies in Washington State.

What were some of the main findings?

In short, “we are the unwitting consumers of products that have been made in the developing world, by people working in abysmal conditions.  We are in some senses the victims of that as well, in that we are not informed, we are contributing to the cycle of poverty.”

But this is also happening in our own home state. “We think that we are not that affected by labor trafficking, when in actuality, there are so many farm workers in Washington that may be said to be in various forms of trafficked labor.  You have to define trafficking in a broader way to explain that any form of coercion means the person is trafficked. One example is the burgeoning Washington wine industry, where “a lot of the grape harvesting is actually done under really poor conditions, leveraging immigrant labor.”

What role does gender play in labor trafficking?

Overall, “there are roughly as many men as women in the world of trafficking. (…) but some of the types of coercion are a little bit different.  In general labor trafficking involves working in terrible, grueling, and unhygienic conditions, potentially exposed to dangers and toxins” for all laborers. 

Though farm workers tend to be both women and men, men also “tend to be in industries like construction and mining (..) whereas women are in the garment factories such as in Bangladesh and Tailand and so on, that supply most of the clothes that we wear.”  Additionally, female laborers have higher risks from sexual assault and violence in the workplace. 

Migrant Farm Laborers (6) by Gerry Dincher is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

How do sex trafficking and labor trafficking overlap?

Though sex trafficking has been more publicized, labor trafficking is in fact much larger, with 14.2 million people globally, as compared to 4.5 million sex trafficking victims.  “And while it’s particularly degrading to be a victim of sex trafficking, it’s still important to look at the whole picture of all forms of human trafficking.”

The lines between the two aren’t always clear, however.  Female laborers are frequently subject to sexual harassment from their employers and others.  Sex trafficking “is a function of the same kind of economic disempowerment and psychological abuse that often accompanies economic power over someone else.  It’s part of the same continuum.  So you cannot really say clearly that this part is labor trafficking and this part is sex trafficking.”

This risk is amplified for undocumented immigrants, who often fear to report abuses.  For example, PBS reported in 2013 how one worker from Sunnyside, Washington, who did report sexual abuse by her employer faced incredible obstacles: “It was a rare public accusation for an immigrant, many of whom fear retaliation and deportation if they speak up.”

Fine Nails for the Ladies by Matthias Schaefgen is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

What about industries that are traditionally not regulated as thoroughly, like housekeeping and in-home childcare?

Though the report did include some information on employees such as nannies and nail salon workers, “it’s really, really difficult to track down data on that (..) Anecdotally there’s evidence that supports what you’re saying, and it’s of course true, but it’s difficult to analyze the data.” 

On the flip side, who is doing the trafficking? And why?  

“We didn’t really measure that, but the vast majority of traffickers tend to be men, I think it’s safe to say. (…) The reason why trafficking flourishes globally is that it’s highly, highly profitable. (…) There is an estimate that about $150 Billion US dollars are generated by traffickers globally, annually in profits from forced labor.  That’s a huge number.  And as it generally happens, who sits on top of that profit and influence of power and money are typically men.”

How would switching to fair labor practices affect businesses?

“One of the studies that we are working on right now will show (…) the impacts of eliminating labor trafficking from your supply chain.  I, for one, believe that it’s a positive impact on the business, as we have seen in shifting market share between the likes of WalMart, who have not taken an early stance against it, versus Costco, which took a very early stance in favor of having more progressive labor practices.”  She continued, “we have to look at all these aspects and be able to say here’s how it is a win for companies as well.”

For example, one study of Banana Republic quoted in the report showed a 14% increase in sales for an outfit on display when the signage included information about fair labor, rather than simply about fashion.  “I think there is a pent-up demand from the consumer side” to buy socially conscious items, that businesses can capitalize on. 

Recommendations to help solve this? 

• Implement “a code of conduct, and create a penalty and rewards system” for businesses in Washington State.  Use both the carrot and the stick.
• Expand the state-wide hotline for sex trafficking victims “to also enable labor trafficking victims to speak out without threat of retaliation.”
• Form “an academic, political, and activist-led advisory board to create good fair labor practices” state-wide.  
• Finally, “education on this must begin at the school level,” to engage young people in the issue so they are aware of it and can help to solve it.

What about everyday people?  What can we do?

“We need to inform and educate ourselves of the labor conditions in the supply chain of the companies that we consume products from.  In the absence of legislation that identifies something as being made by fair labor practices, the onus is on us to demand it. (…) Conscious employees, conscious consumers, activists, political influencers, can all come together to solve this problem.”

To learn more about the course and work done on labor trafficking in Washington, see the University of Washington Task Force Report: http://depts.washington.edu/womenctr/programs/human-trafficking/human-trafficking-task-force-report-2015/

PS.  About that Chardonnay: one recommended local winery is Mercer Canyons, which was suggested by local wine expert Madeline Puckette of Wine Folly.

This interview has been edited for brevity. 

You can also listen to the interview on SoundCloud here.