Page Title

By Public Policy Chair

Marilyn Treiman

halamari1@juno.com

Text Box: Women Make More Effective Lawmakers According to a study from Stanford University and the University of Chicago researchers, women are more effective lawmakers than men. According to Politico, the study, which focused on the performance of House members from 1984 to 2004, found that on average, women representatives introduced more bills, attracted more cosponsors, and brought more money to their districts than their male peers did. The researchers accounted for things like representatives' seniority, party affiliation, majority/minority status, and priorities when making their comparisons. Women

Text Box: currently hold just 17 percent of the seats in the House and the Senate. U.N. Votes to Create New Women's Agency Three years after the 2006 original plan emerged from then-Secretary-General Kofi Anan, the United Nations General Assembly voted Monday to create a new and more powerful women's agency. The resolution will merge four existing offices, the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues, the U.N. Division for the Advancement of Women, and the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) into a single body devoted to

Text Box: women's equality and rights. Supporters heralded this as a major breakthrough, as the new agency will have a larger budget and more clout than the existing offices. The resolution also gives the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon a year to draw up a proposal that would specify the mission, organizational arrangements, funding, and executive board of the new women's agency. Accordingly, the new agency has the potential to make monumental strides for women and girls around the world, but its success will depend heavily on whether the Secretary-General's proposal receives the needed support from the many member states.