Host Cites Low Female Representation In Congress To Prove US Doesn't Have Problem With Powerful Women

Fox's Neil Cavuto Lauds Statistics Showing Women Representing Only Four Percent Of Fortune 500 CEOs And 20 Percent Of Congress 

Written by Cat Duffy

Published

Fox host Neil Cavuto argued that America doesn’t have a problem with strong women, evidencing his claim by noting 104 women currently serve in Congress and 21 are Fortune 500 CEOs, both figures well below the 50 percent population of women in America.

On the September 20 edition of his Fox News show, Cavuto pushed back against a statement made by President Obama that America hasn’t had a woman president because we still grapple with the idea of “strong women,” arguing that Americans “have a problem with this woman.” Cavuto noted that because women are currently represented in government and business, “America doesn’t seem to have a problem electing women”:

NEIL CAVUTO (HOST): Now I know how the president will handle a possible Hillary Clinton loss. She wouldn’t have anything to do with it and god knows he wouldn’t have anything to do with it. Turns out chauvinist unenlightened Neanderthal voters will have everything to do with it. Quoting the president from a new York fundraiser in Manhattan this past weekend: “There's a reason we haven't had a woman president. We as a society still grapple with what it means to see powerful women. And it still troubles us in a lot of ways unfairly, and that expresses itself in all sorts of ways.”

Are you kidding me? Hillary Clinton loses and it's because we have a problem with powerful women? Could it be if she loses we have a problem with this woman? Because looking around we Americans don’t seem to have a problem electing women. Last time I checked, there were 104 women in Congress, 84 in the House, 20 in the Senate, six women governors. And don't forget the 21 women who are Fortune 500 CEO's. Could we have more? Absolutely. But if we have a problem with powerful women our country sure has a funny way of showing it.

While there have been gains in female representation in the U.S. government, women hold only 104 seats out of the 535 seats in Congress --  barely 20% of the government even though women make up half of the US population. The Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University noted that three states have never had a female congressional representative: Delaware, Vermont, and Mississippi. Additionally, as of this year, 23 states have never had a female governor or elected a female senator.

And while there are 21 female CEOs, that’s only 4 percent of all Fortune 500 CEOs. That number is a drop from the previous year, where there were 24 female CEOs, according to a report by Forbes. Cavuto’s exaggeration of the presence of female CEOs in the business world mirrors the results of a survey of executives which found “Executives vastly overestimated the number of women who are chief executive officers.”