by Joe Black

Discrimination against women in politics has been prevalent for decades. In most countries, women weren't granted the right to vote initially and in most cases women have had a difficult time becoming presiding officers in either house of bicameral legislatures.

Ruder-Zeynek

According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Austria was the first country to elect a woman to the top position of a Parliament's Chambers before the World War II in 1927. Olga Ruder-Zeynek was a journalist, member of the National Assembly from 1920-27 and was a member of a Christian Social Party.

After World II until 1997, only 42 of the 1986 states with a legislative institution had at one selected a women to preside over a house of parliament. Eighteen of those were in Europe, 19 were in the Americas, three were African and one was Asian. Most often, the women lead the upper house as opposed to the lower house, according to the union.

In an October article in The (London) Independent about Margaret Thatcher, the former prime minister of Great Britain, her biographer said she felt the necessity to work more diligently than men to attain her position because of her sex.

Thatcher

The article stated: "It is often alleged by successful women, in business and in politics, that they have to do better than men to be accepted as equal. Margaret Thatcher never said that, but she believed it. From the beginning of her political career, she devoted her enormous, disciplined energy to advancing and entrenching her own passionate political convictions. She spent little effort on creating a 'hinterland', a world of friends and interests outside politics - there was no time for such frivolities."

Now women make up 8.9 percent of the total 249 posts of presiding officers of parliament or one of its Houses. Only 22 women president over one of the 182 parliaments, 67 of which are bicameral, according to the union.

Granholm

The United States had no women preside over either chamber of Congress, and only one women has made a bid for president or vice president with a major party. But, several states have elected women as governors including Michigan which elected Jennifer Granholm during the most recent election cycle.