by Joe Black

If you're a woman and want to get involved in politics, then the United States may not be the best place for you.

Numerous factors — such as only the person with top number of votes being able to take office — may keep women from making large inroads onto the American political scene.

Sarah Brewer, associate director of American University's Women & Politics Institute, said many counties with parliamentary systems are more prone to elect women because they allow proportional representation and therefore allow more voices to be heard in the political sphere.

However, the United States, in most cases, only allows the person in a district with the most votes to take office as opposed to England which divvies representation out to groups based on the percentage of votes.

Since women are socialized not to participate, the cut throat nature of American politics also may stifle their voices.

"Every U.S. citizen can vote, but not everyone will be a legislator," Brewer said. "After saying that the low numbers of women in politics is difficult to grasp, I've spent years analyzing that."

Other hurdles to women's political incorporation include the idea that women have access to less money, and therefore have problems raise money for credible bids for political office; and the idea that society still views women as nurturers not completely equal in some instances. For example in Israel, women are forced to do military service along with men. In America, women still are not able to take part in some aspects of service.

Where these inequalities can be problem for the electorate is that women's issues have a more difficult time making it to the forefront, according to the National Organization of Women. The interest group, along with several other political think tanks on women's issues, state the Bush administration and congress have been lax in promoting women's issues on the global level — especially in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They allow these countries to continue promoting hate and, in many cases, do not look favorably upon issues relating to women on the domestic level. NOW states that in America the type of debate that has been going about reproductive rights and a barrage of attacks against Title IX, which forced schools to equally fund women's and men's sports, as reasons why more women should become involved in politics.