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Guest host Diane Chang opens with a striking disparity: in 1995, only two of nine Honolulu city council members, ten of 51 state representatives, and five of 25 senators are women. Mazie Hirono, acting governor on the day of the broadcast, argues that too few women even run for office and that the ones who do rarely gain the critical mass needed to chair committees and move legislation; she credits the Women's Caucus with clearing domestic violence bills through the legislature over the prior five years, but acknowledges that budget cuts fell hardest on programs serving women. Nanci Kreidman contends that community organizations hold women officials to a higher standard and are more keenly disappointed when they fall short; she encourages women to build relationships with legislators and to support the Hawaii Women's Political Caucus financially. Both guests discuss how Hirono faced clothing-based criticism during the 1994 campaign that male candidates did not. Chang asks why Hawaii voters organize more by ethnicity than gender. Callers raise corporate campaign finance, the link between financial hardship and political engagement, and the costs of feminist labeling for women who might otherwise act on their shared interests.
Transcript
Read or download the full transcript (.txt). Speaker labels were assigned automatically and may contain errors.
Companion newspaper commentaries
Commentaries by the guests, published in The Honolulu Advertiser around the broadcast.
