Washington has been criticized for being under constant gridlock for the majority of the last five years. This gridlock leads many people to think cynically about our government. The issue of women holding political office is treated cynically as well. Currently, only 1/5 of United States Senators are women. On the second night of the Women in the World Summit, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) spoke of the gridlock in Washington and what women bring to the table in United States politics.

Colorado Republicans, concerned about their string of statewide losses in recent years, have been making some efforts to reach out to demographic groups that have not historically backed their party.

Big brows may be trendy, but the American public’s sense of propriety gets inflamed if they’re on a female elected official’s face. According to a recent study from Dartmouth University, and published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, female candidates are less likely to win elections in conservative states if their faces have mannish, or gender atypical, features. That includes thick eyebrows, ladies.

There's a long-held assumption that women are more likely than men to collaborate. As the number of women in Congress has increased, however, so has the partisanship and gridlock. So does a woman's touch actually help on Capitol Hill?

There's a lot of academic research that supports the idea that women are better at building bipartisan coalitions. Studies have found that women in Congress not only sponsor more bills but also collect more co-sponsors for those bills.

And that's a major reason why , Craig Volden of the University of Virginia found.

Given the chance to vote for the first time in the March primary, 17 year olds turned out at a higher rate in Cook County than voters old enough to be their parents, according to a new study released today.