Yemeni women demand quotas for parliament and council seats - Gulf News

"Unfortunately, most of the political parties consider women as a vote bank and do nothing for them. This time we are calling for a boycott if women are not given their rights," Amal Al Dubai, president of the Women's Development Centre, told Gulf News. "All we want, for the time being at least, is to practice what most of the political parties say about our rights through the quotas."

There are not many women in the U.S. Congress. More women vote Democrat than Republican, but in both parties women are their party's nominee in about equal numbers. Do the party's consider women to be a voting bank? What would happen if one of the parties adopted the stand that there should be a quota for women holding elected office? I note that in the recent election in US-occupied Iraq, there was such a quota.