Proud Coakley supporter Rep. Niki Tsongas is around the one minute mark:

This post originally appeared on the blog of the Women’s Campaign Forum, which has endorsed Coakley.  Cross-posted with permission.  The author is WCF Fellow Trish.

Detained in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, 19 year-old Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. Not only was Ms. Jones deterred from seeking medical treatment under the threat of being fired, she was prevented from justice and due process by a binding contract. That’s right: her employment contract stipulated that sexual assault allegations could only be heard by “private arbitration,” and not in a U.S. court of law.

Ms. Jones is a single example of countless, similar cases.

Let me remind you, lest you forget, that Halliburton and KBR aren’t just privately funded companies. They operate in Iraq on government defense contracts-on YOUR dollar.

This is why Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) yesterday proposed an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that would withhold defense contracts from companies like KBR “if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.” Speaking on the Senate floor Franken said:

“The constitution gives everybody the right to due process of law … And today, defense contractors are using fine print in their contracts do deny women like Jamie Leigh Jones their day in court. … The victims of rape and discrimination deserve their day in court [and] Congress plainly has the constitutional power to make that happen.”

By a 68-30 vote, the U.S. Senate passed Senator Al Franken’s amendment. All 17 female Senators, regardless of party, voted in favor of the amendment. But the 30 men who voted against it, obviously, outnumber those women. Isn’t that a sign that we need more women in the Senate? If we had 30 more women in the Senate (for a total of 47 women, still under half), imagine how different that’d 68-30 vote would look.

Appearing with Franken after the vote, an elated Jones expressed her appreciation:

“It means the world to me,” she said of the amendments passage. “It means that every tear shed to go public and repeat my story over and over again to make a difference for other women was worth it.”

For the likes of Ms. Jones, for likes of all women in the U.S., we need to achieve equality in our legislative body. The thirty votes denying due process to sexual assault victims is yet another indication that we need women to protect “women’s issues” like sexual assault. Because those thirty votes were cast only by men, it shows us that many men, one-third of the Senate, will not.

Women senators are not a caucus; we’re a force.

and Diane Feinstein:

The biggest change is that we have gained seniority. We’ve shown that we can be effective; therefore, you now have women that are in leadership positions or chairmen of committees — and particularly some big committees.

They’re using that power to get results on women’s issues. As Lerer reports:

Since 1992, Senate women have increased funding for breast cancer research by 700 percent, child care by 68 percent and small-business lending by 86 percent, and they have tripled federal funding for domestic violence shelters…

Lerer reports:

When Mikulski first came into the Senate [in 1986], she sought out mentors to help her navigate its complicated and often arcane rules. She turned to former Democratic Sens. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Paul Sarbanes of Maryland, calling them her “Sir Galahads.” …Kennedy and Sarbanes “showed me now to get on the best committees.”

Now, it’s Mikulski and other women who are helping newer women to succeed. Lerer reports:

As unofficial “dean” of the women’s caucus, [Mikulski] established a round table for new female colleagues, … wrote a guidebook for the Democratic women, … [and] still hosts “power workshops” for new female members of both parties. Her staff organizes regular bi-partisan dinners where the female senators get together… To a large degree, the women of the Senate have hung together. While they often don’t agree on issues… they’ve maintained a strong bond.

Women working with women can accomplish amazing things!

During our interview yesterday, Coakley pointed to Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s rejoinder to Sen Jon Kyl this week (see video) as an example of the value that women’s perspective can bring to the Senate.   She said

I’m going to be a Senator for everybody, but we’re talking about a representative democracy here and some of those [women's] issues haven’t gotten a voice for funding, for legislation, that they should have.  I’m looking forward to [doing] that.

Emily’s List founder Ellen Malcolm related:

I’ve been talking today about Barbara Mikulski, who ran in 1986 and was the first Democratic woman elected to the Senate in her own right. You know, it’s kind of unbelievable. There have been 1,931 people who have served in the senate and only fourteen have been democratic women who have been elected in their own right.

So, as you can see, there are a lot of people out there that say “there’s something wrong with a representative democracy if 17% of Congress is women and the rest of it is men. Like, who are the people there that know what it’s like to take the kids to school and meet with the teachers, and take care of their parents as they get older?”

We would have a better Congress, maybe a less partisan Congress, if we had more women in office. So there are a lot of people around the country that belong to Emily’s List that say, when they hear of a good candidate like Martha, “You Go Girl. We want to make a difference for that.”

… we still work with unconscious — totally unconscious — bias in the way people think and the way they speak about this race. 

Then she offered a feisty rejoinder to a question about Capuano’s labeling her as “timid”.  A transcription wouldn’t do it justice. Watch it at about 1:40 remaining in Alison King’s report for NECN:

During a subsequent interview, Emily’s List founder Ellen Malcolm talked about the irony of Coakley being labeled both “timid” and “ambitious.”

You have to kind of laugh at this campaign… The idea that she’s ambitious — all four people running for Senate are ambitious or they wouldn’t be in the race. So, I think there sometimes are attempts to make it seem like somehow a woman shouldn’t be ambitious, which of course isn’t true.. I don’t know who would ever call her timid; this woman has taken on the most powerful special interests in this state, fighting for the citizens, making a difference, winning…

In campaigns… people are going to say different things, they’re going to tap into [the fact that] people aren’t used to seeing women in positions [of power]… But the proof is in the candidate… Martha’s connected with and made a difference for the voters of Massachusetts… The biggest antidote to any kind of political or gender-based nonsense is Martha Coakley herself.

I understand that Mr. Stephen Smith, nephew of Senator Ted Kennedy, is not supporting Attorney General Martha Coakley for Senate. Coakley is running for a historic seat – the seat of Senator in the great liberal state of Massachusetts that has never been held by a woman. Smith is supporting one of her challengers, Michael Capuano and said

I’m supporting him because I think he’s the person in the race who’s most  like my Uncle Ted.

It is hard for me to understand supporting a candidate because they remind me of a family member – I don’t use that reasoning when I vote. But , if I think hard enough I can see what Mr. Smith is feeling and I don’t begrudge him his emotion. You see, I can see qualities in Martha Coakley that remind me of the women in my family; strength, compassion, ambition and fighting for the safety of children, to name a few.

This race is important to me because of the women and girls of our nation. I can feel the feelings of every girl and woman I know who spent her life looking at men in leadership positions. I know what it feels like to be underrepresented in our government and pay the same amount of taxes as the man living next door to me. Most importantly I know what it feels like to have the word “ambition“ used negatively towards me and positively towards a man.  Ambition is what every candidate needs to win a political race.

Stephen Smith wants Rep. Michael Capuano to be elected to his uncle’s seat.  Moreover, former congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II wants his son to be elected to Michael Capuano’s congressional seat. I understand these feelings. I want my cousin to be my congressman and my aunt to be my senator and my sister to be a Supreme Court Justice. However, my personal wishes don’t create reality for an elected office.

As a woman taxpayer and voter who is represented in my senate at a paltry 17% I am voting for the candidate who is most like the women in my life.

Interestingly, I remember feeling pride when I heard Senator Ted Kennedy give respect to our legacy as women at the 1980 Democratic convention.  He said that we are recognizing

… at long last that our nation was made up of founding mothers as well as founding fathers.

The founding mothers of the United States of America are my legacy and I will honor them. I am fighting for Martha Coakley to be the first woman senator of Massachusetts.

[Apparently, as of his board resignation, Pagliuca's no longer the "beneficial owner" of the 13.6 million shares reported for him on page 39 of last year's BK proxy statement. Who's the "beneficial owner" of those shares now? Some other Bain guy? And does Pagliuca make money off of those shares either now or when his leave of absence from Bain is over? Beats me. Maybe someone who's a finance whiz can 'splain that one to me -- and to the rest of the average voters.]

In any case, the implications of a large BK owner in the senate are worth considering. Some folks observe the irony of a burger-selling senator casting votes on healthcare issues. I’m more concerned with the irony of a senator who’s OK with using women’s butts to sell burgers casting votes on equal-pay or violence-against-women initiatives.