Posted by Eugene Volokh:
Coincidence? You Be the Judge:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_07_12-2009_07_18.shtml#1247594036
An interesting [1]post from a law professor blog, written by a
professor who teaches in South Carolina:
South Carolina�s state govt is only the fifth most dysfunctional
state govt in the nation
At least [2]according to this article, which claims the six states
with the worst leadership are:
6. California
5. South Carolina
4. Alaska
3. Illinois
2. Nevada
1. New York
I�m sure the fact that [3]we have the fewest women in state
government in the nation is only a coincidence.
It's often difficult to tell whether a post is serious or sarcastic,
but here the last sentence seems pretty clearly sarcastic -- and it
doesn't hurt that the "Posted in" links below include "Yep, sarcasm"
(as well as "Feminism and Politics" and "The Underrepresentation of
Women"). So I take it that the assertion is that it's not a
coincidence that South Carolina has both dysfunctional state
government and a low number of women in state government.
As it happens, though, the very item that the post links to helps
check that assertion; we can see the rankings along the
women-in-state-government metric for each of the six states, and not
just South Carolina. Here they are: New York is #22; Nevada is #12;
Illinois is #17; Alaska is #27; South Carolina is #50; California is
#15. The average is just a titch below #25. Likewise, if one averages
together the percentages of women in the state legislature in those
six states, one gets 23.83%, almost indistinguishable from the
nationwide 23.5% average.
Naturally, it's possible that other data that's out there does show
that some correlation between dysfunctional government and a low
number of women in government. Perhaps it might even show causation;
who knows? But the data that the post links to -- if one looks at all
six states, and not just the fifth state of those six -- shows no
correlation at all.
References
1. http://feministlawprofessors.com/?p=12008
2. http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/no_20090713_9497.php
3.
http://www.csg.org/pubs/Documents/WomeninStateGovernmentHistoricalOverviewandCurrentTrends-Carroll.pdf
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