Women’s Independent Press

My Opinion
by Anna Marie Gire

The “super committee” has been charged with devising ways to cut the US debt.
This committee consists of only one woman and eleven men, including two men of color –
they are the 12-member panel charged with finding an additional $1.5 trillion in debt
savings over a ten-year period. The committee will have until Nov. 23 to propose ways to
reduce deficits and those proposals must be voted on by Dec. 23.

Republicans leaders picked six members who have pledged never to support tax
increases of any kind, and this unwillingness to compromise will surely complicate
the path to a sustainable plan.

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington (Democrat and committee co-chair) is the only woman
on this unbalanced committee. Murray is not just a senator; she also chairs the Democratic
Senatorial Campaign Committee and is a member of the Budget and Appropriations committees.

Because women are over 50 % of the US population, half of the “super committee” should be women:
Critical programs — like Medicaid, Medicare, child care, education, food assistance,
and Social Security – disproportionally affect women and families and those are the programs
in danger of being cut.
It’s also a problem that there’s only one woman on the Super Committee because numerous
studies have found that when women don’t have equal representation at negotiating tables, the outcomes
are worse for everyone.

For example, NPR recently reported, “Psychologists have found that when groups are predominantly
male, individuals tend to act in increasingly aggressive ways… They show off.”
The Harvard Business Review recently reported, “If a group includes more women, its collective
intelligence rises.” According to NPR: “Who sits around the negotiating table can make a big
difference to how negotiations turn out. Psychologists have found that when groups are predominantly male,
individuals tend to act in increasingly aggressive ways. They take bigger risks. They show off.

“Any place in which there are more men than women, the men are becoming more aggressive
with each other and are competing with each other to attract women,” says Vladas Griskevicius,
a psychologist at the University of Minnesota.Griskevicius has found that cities in which men
outnumber women have the highest amount of consumer debt — the result, he believes, of men
buying expensive stuff to show off. Most of us don’t think the same dynamics affect professional
settings, but Griskevicius finds in experiments that when men are surrounded by other men, their
behavior changes without their awareness.

So, who will convince who? Will Republicans convince one Democrat to join them in support of a
plan that keeps taxes at their current rates and reforms entitlements or will Democrats successfully
court one Republican toward raising tax revenues? The country doesn’t need more drama from
this group of mostly men, instead we need solid ideas and positive action.

Not enough women will be included in this very serious and important discussion that
will affect your life or someone you know.