Nation: The Women on the Hustings

THEY started off well enough. Led by Jeannette Rankin, a give-'em-hell Montana suffragette, women cracked the congressional sex barrier in 1916, four years before they won the right to vote. Since then, things have slowed down a bit. In the last half-century, only 75 women have been elect ed or appointed to seats on Capitol Hill.

In the current Congress, there are only eleven female members, as opposed to 19 nearly a decade ago. The problem, of course, was and is discrimination. All too often, the electorate still view women politicians as sideshow curiosities....

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