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More at District 5 Diary: “Thea Selby, in an op-ed in the San Francisco Examiner, laments that "San Francisco has come up embarrassingly short in gender parity in local elections." She quotes Supervisor Peskin: "We need more women [on the Board of Supervisors]." Why? What exactly do women bring to the table that men don't? And whose fault is it that more women don't run for office? What exactly are the alleged barriers to their doing so? Selby says that having 50% female candidates in the next election "is the new world I want to be part of." The real world she is part of now no longer observes this kind of distinction.

There are in fact no barriers now to women running for office. Why, for example, were there no women running against Ross Mirkarimi in District 5? The answer: Like progressive men in the district, progressive women, like Susan King and Lisa Feldstein, no doubt understood that they would surely lose to uber-prog Mirkarimi who was also the incumbent. And, more importantly, neither King nor Feldstein have significant political differences with Mirkarimi and other progressives on the Board of Supervisors. That is, they would bring nothing special to the table politically.”

-- Well stated. I would add that Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi brings a sensitivity to women's issues that's beyond gender.