Unequal Representation

Kathleen Cunningham’s appointment to the East Hampton Town Planning Board last week was notable in one respect that has drawn little notice. By replacing a male board member who moved away, she became the third woman on the seven-member panel. This makes the planning board the exception to the rule in East Hampton Town, where among the boards whose composition is determined by town board vote, men occupy more than three-quarters of the seats. And among all the boards, the vast majority are white and non-Latino.

According to rosters posted on the town’s website, there are 47 men on the various appointed boards and 15 women. Women do not hold the majority of any of them, and they are sharply outnumbered nearly everywhere except on the ethics committee. On both the architectural review board and the zoning board of appeals there is one woman and four men. And on the combined airport committees men exceed women 18 to 3.

Elected boards are different. The five-member town board, chosen by voters in staggered elections, includes two women. The board of assessors is made up of two women and one man. And while a woman, Diane McNally, is the presiding officer of the East Hampton Town Trustees, it drifts back toward the general trend with six men and three women.

It is hard to do more than speculate about why the unequal distribution of the sexes in government is the norm; perhaps it has more to do with the general culture than anything else. The United States Congress, which is about 80-percent male, is worse than East Hampton Town in this regard. With women making up slightly more than half the population, they should be better represented among all the country’s elected and appointed bodies, as should people of color and of a broader range of ethnicities.