In the first episode of ‘Looking Back, Moving Forward’—a new podcast from Ms. Studios hosted by Carmen Rios—experts in gender and politics, including Fordham Law Professor Julie C. Suk, examine the promise of a truly representative democracy—and what it will take for feminists to build one. Suk is the author of We the Women: The Unstoppable Mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment (Skyhorse Publishing, 2020).
Julie Suk: The point that we’ve reached is a crisis, but it’s a crisis for, perhaps, different reasons than is often assumed. The problem is that we have a constitutional system that sets up representative institutions that actually don’t represent all the people very well. One of the chambers, the Senate, is very malapportioned. It represents every state equally, two senators per state, and so, that’s, itself, undemocratic… We have an electoral system where we elect the president. No modern democracy uses an electoral college to elect the president. It’s very normal, in most modern democracies, to let the people pick the president.
And these problems are related to the moment that we’re now in. I mean, I understand that Donald Trump did win the national popular vote and the Electoral college to get into power in 2024, but I don’t think the Second Trump Presidency would have been possible without the first Trump Presidency.
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Julie Suk: I think it’s so important for people who are interested in feminism and ending patriarchy and ending misogyny, women, gender nonconforming people, just everyone who’s interested in the gender justice issues, really needs to focus our energies on structures, the political structures by which we try to pursue our feminists ends. Part of the reason our rights are under siege is that the structures of power have not been changed… Unless and until we focus on structure and infrastructure, by which power is exercised, I think we’re not going to make a lot of progress.