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St. Paul makes history with all-female city council, a rarity among large US cities

https://apnews.com/article/all-female-city-council-st-paul-minnesota-63e1ae6fbe281d0965e3fcd15723b6cd

St. Paul, Minnesota, has an all-woman city council for the first time in its history — and experts say it may be the largest U.S. city to ever have an all-woman council.

St. Paul makes history with all-female city council, a rarity among large US cities

St. Paul, Minnesota, has an all-woman city council for the first time in its history — and experts say it may be the largest U.S. city to ever have an all-woman council.

62 comments

LordOfTheChia

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Sharpiemarker

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Epic use of a LOTR quote!

OctopusKurwa

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Ironic seeing as Paul the apostle didn't think much of women.

afraid_of_zombies

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Do you mean the actual Paul or the writings forged in his name which may or may not have been based on real things he said?

xX_fnord_Xx

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Can't we stahp all this wafflin ' dere, and maybe finish are waffles?

Brunch only comes once a week, don't 'cha know.

be_excellent_to_each_other

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Well, they are going to have to do everything perfectly. One screw up of any kind and for the next ten years every discussion of diversity or women in leadership positions is going to include a Republican saying, "Yeah, well just look at what they did to St. Paul."

snooggums

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They will say that while ignoring all the screw ups that councils made up entirely of men have made over the years.

TargaryenTKE

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I guarantee, even if they are completely perfect, they'll still get blamed for whatever fuck ups the Minneapolis city council does (for those who are unaware, Minneapolis and St. Paul are LITERALLY right next to each other)

CaptPretentious

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I'll be interested to see what they do. That place definitely needs a little help.

ExLisper

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My guess is that they will what any other city council would do. I don't think being all-female will suddenly change their politics. While it's an interesting fact I would say that expecting all-female council to govern differently than other councils is a little bit sexist.

Lemminary

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I don't think it's sexist to think that people from a different background and life experience may have a different take on policies. At least, I hope they do! It could be a nice change for the city.

ExLisper

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Sure, women can have different life experience regarding crime or healthcare but city council can focus on those issues when it's majority female or simply has female mayor, right? The sexist part is focusing on 'all-female' part and thinking that they will somehow behave differently now that there's no men around.

CaptPretentious

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You're the one that chose to interpret what I said as sexist, that's on you.

Are you familiar with the phrase, "strike while the iron is hot"? But have you ever read of any other news articles from AP regarding the election of city-council from any neighboring city to St. Paul? This would be the best time to capitalize on the extra attention. And given the quotes in the article, any Republican looking for election is going to be looking for any reason to use against them.

“Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick” -Kevin Malone

Lolo

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Why is that?

CaptPretentious

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They have added attention and something to prove. Now it's the best time to do whatever it is they plan to do.

FuglyDuck

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It'll be interesting to see what they change... and the city could use some change.

i feel like the only things they really have going for them are the Saints (More fun to watch than the Twins, at least. Just saying), Can Can Wonderland, and Cossetta's and some good botique/craft coffee shop. (Nina's off cathedral hill is the GF's favorite,)

medgremlin

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Day by Day Cafe in downtown St Paul is lovely. They have a nice library room to sit in during the winter and a patio with a koi pond out back for summer. They have some of the best breakfast food I've ever had and their early bird special is a really good deal (especially when I'm on nights).

MotoAsh

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Who cares? I've seen females with terrible politics, too. What are their leanings and beliefs? I don't fucking care what's between their legs if they're still brainless Republicans.

NegativeInf

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Learn to fucking read.

"The council is a nonpartisan office, but all seven members are Democrats, she said."

This article is literally about how this group of under 40, mostly persons of color, progressive women have all been voted in together.

MotoAsh

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You realize I'm commenting about how I don't care and this isn't news, right?

I don't care WHICH gender they all are. I don't fucking care. I don't fucking care. Just represent the people instead of corporations.

tb_

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"females"

MotoAsh

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Yes, females, women, girls, femboys, tomboys, I don't give a shit. Just have a fucking heart and care about people more than corporations.

tb_

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Calling people just "males" or "females" is a little derogatory. They're female politicians, or they're women. They're not "those females over there".

Ever since I've had that pointed out to me it's become a bit of a pet peeve of mine. If we were on Reddit I'd link to r/MenAndFemales, but I don't go to that place anymore.

Gargantu8

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Permanently Deleted

afraid_of_zombies

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Immediately bans abortion because nothing makes sense anymore

Guajojo

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Wait isnt this thw opposite of equuality

GiddyGap

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Not if they are the most qualified and represent their constituents the best.

snooggums

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Equality is having most city councils be mixed, and a roughly even number of all men or all women councils where most candidates are all omen or all men. Not every council needs to be split, but at least one of the underrepresented group is a positive as a counterbalance to all the ones that are all men.

inb4_FoundTheVegan

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No.

I just have to assume you are asking in bad faith, because we very much live in a patriarchy. The mere fact that this is noteworthy news for being a first is reason enough to understand how this is only progress.

mmcintyre

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You really think voting for a woman to be your representative is the opposite of equality? I can't imagine what you think equality actually is.

afraid_of_zombies

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I vote for who I think will do a less terrible job. If chatgpt ran I would probably vote for it.

Bakkoda

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wooooosh

girlfreddy

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waaaaash

Th3D3k0y

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yooouuurrrr buttttttttt

NigelFrobisher

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If somewhere else in the world there is one city that has an all male council then it evens out, statistically.

xX_fnord_Xx

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Phhft, a make only patriarchy, in the US? !

Deceptichum

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All men bad

All women good

Diverse mix of all peoples ignored

odium

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Number of US cities with all male city councils: hundreds? thousands?

Number of US cities with mixed city councils: hundreds? thousands?

Number of US cities with all female city councils: one

citation needed

A diverse mix would have a lot of mixed city councils and an equal number of all male and all female city councils. Yet, I'm confident, based on my understanding of US cities and towns, that there are far more all male city councils than all female city councils.

If you've got actual stats to show that there are more or similar amounts of all female city councils than all male city councils, then I would agree that this isn't diversity. But if, as my common sense suggests, there are way more all male councils than all female ones, then an all female city council is a win for diversity as it brings those two numbers closer to equality.

DoomBot5

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Why do you want to have equal numbers of bad things? How about instead, advocating that all the single gender/identity/view councils be fixed? Yes, there are hundreds of white men only city councils, that doesn't mean that other extremes, regardless of how few of them exist are good.

Is a full Nazi city council okay, even if there is only one of them? No.

ExLisper

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How about getting over the sex of the politicians and just voting based on their programs? Too strange?

sneezycat

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If you people did that, statistically they would be balanced as the comment above said. Yet they aren't. Think about it.

ExLisper

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Of course people are not doing that, I didn't say they do. I just hope one day we'll go beyond the 'we need 5 men and 5 women because equality' silliness. The gender should be irrelevant but sadly we're still at the 'OMG! First women PM! Such progress!' stage. Poland had a token female PM and banned abortion couple years later. Spain never had a female PM and recently instituted menstruation leave. Policy is what should matter.

Deceptichum

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Because a diverse group of people are able to provide new insights into those programs. As long as people are stuck with representative democracy, it's beneficial to get differing voices in. Historically those voices have been silenced, so there needs to be a bit of concerned effort to get them heard and catch up on the 'backlog'.

We really need direct democracy with people free to vote on issues themselves without having to try to find someone who's looking out for what they're going through as a representative.

ExLisper

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We really need direct democracy with people free to vote on issues themselves

Nah, it would be abused. Politicians, as much as we all hate them, work as a kind of filter ensuring that proper processes are followed. Passing laws is not easy, that's why professionals do it. A referendum from time to time is a good thing but if people were to directly vote on all the issues they would quickly get tired and some minority with agenda would start sneaking in their laws everywhere.

As to getting different voices in you can also have expert groups and public consultations. I definitely see the benefits of electing minority representatives but I think focusing on sex/race like that is still pretty silly thing to do and hope one day we'll grow out of identity politics.

maynarkh

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Yeah, direct democracy is awful, Switzerland is hell on Earth.

ExLisper

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First of all, it's not as nice as you would think. Second, they represent exactly what I described a 'nice to have': a referendum from time to time. They still have politicians and normal government. Since you present it as a counter argument looks like you completely misunderstood what I said. Third, even there shit can happen: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/11/switzerland-court-overturns-referendum-as-voters-were-poorly-informed (you decide for yourself if it's an example of government protecting citizens from a bad decision they made or courts overriding will of the people).

Deceptichum

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The solution isn’t more of the first or third.

There’s no way this council can reflect its community just like an all male council doesn’t.

IHeartBadCode

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There’s no way this council can reflect its community

I get the point you're making in you first comment but this part in this comment really ignores that a community has lots of factors. Like all of the people on this council are under age 40 and the median age of the city is 32.5. The group represents five different faiths and is comprised of four different ethnicities.

Yes one of the dimensions of the community heptahedron shaped spectrum came up short. BUT this single edge of the polyhedra that comprises political science, a sole determining factor does not make.

I get your original point, one face of this is skewed off from normalization. And perhaps when folks say "all male blah blah blah are bad" they're generalizing too much because a lot of the problem is old, white, male, non-progressive, traditionalist, etc etc etc that gets summed up into the term of "all male…".

That over generalization is kind of why on your first comment, it's kind of a head nod and move on. But this second comment you're really hurting your first point there. That council might or might not properly reflect their community in enough facets of the political polyhedron, simply looking at one edge of it (sex) is, technically, not enough information to really draw a conclusion on that front.

Which is why, if you leave with anything from my comment, we should be cautious about running with the headline of a news story. Because the city council themself found it interesting that the public elected an all women group but were absolutely quick to point out more their alignment with their age to the population of the city. It's the news story and Karen Kedrowski, director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University hyping the angle of their sex.

Also, at least that's my conclusion from the linked story. For all I know, the City Council's first order of business at their first closed door meeting might be to burn men in effigy, or it could be to restore the puppy no-kill shelter. All I know is life moves fast and that there's a lot more to a community than just the sex of the leaders of it.

muertinez

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seems like they’re representing the community pretty well since a majority of said community voted them in…

maybe this is what accurate representation looks like with biases and barriers to voting removed

odium

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The second is indeed best. But as long as the first or third is much larger than the other, having more of the lesser is the second best option and also the rarest.

Deceptichum

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I guess, kinda?

Nation wide sure, but on the city level, it’s entirely all of one.

Like you’ve got a point, that evening out the two extremes is better than one dominating but I’m not going to be celebrating it as good news when it’s just swapping the problem.

snooggums

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Do you also complain abiut equality when you see all men councils, or only when it is all women?

Deceptichum

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Of course. Don’t you?

wellee

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They're a multicultural group lol, huge diversity. Nobody ever said all men bad, it just happened to be the way the voters swayed.

Lemminary

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Oh god, the crying has begun. Can't we be happy for this kind of change? It's literally one city. How about we save the criticism for cities where it's still all men.

Custoslibera

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No but see in those cities it was a complete meritocracy and the women candidates just weren’t as good as the men!!!

In this case it’s impossible all the women candidates were better than the men so it’s sexism!!!

This message brought to you by big brain conservatives

Deceptichum

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Why would you be happy for a change to another extreme?

Lemminary

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That's quite the loaded question. Try again.

Deceptichum

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It's my position, I don't want the axis to swing to either all of one or the other. That requires calling out when it goes to the one side, not being "happy" about it.

Lemminary

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I don't think it's a bad thing to have the occasional outlier. 🤷‍♂️

be_excellent_to_each_other

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Am I going to find you railing about DEI in other comments if I trawl your history? I haven't, but this is worded like the kind of complaint that comes from someone who normally thinks diversity is awful, except when it's old white guys being excluded.

Deceptichum

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Dunno what that means but I'm all for diversity.

be_excellent_to_each_other

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My apologies for allowing my general cynicism regarding online discussions to color my perception of your tone. 🙂

Deceptichum

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No, no it’s a valid concern. Lots of right wingers trying to twist shit around.

ChexMax

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Maybe judge the city based on council members over time if you need to bend over backwards to feel good about this progress. The over all ratio is still not 50/50.

We'd need exclusively female presidents for about 2 1/2 centuries for us to meet any kind of "equality" there, and that would seem uneven too. This is not all women just because it's all women today.