As she raises her hand and solemnly swears, Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon will make history today before she steps inside her new office - breaking 200 years of male domination at City Hall and placing Baltimore as the second-largest city in the nation with a woman in charge.
Dixon, 53, is Baltimore's first female mayor, and her ascension not only bucks a national trend toward more males in local government but also ushers in a year in which black women will occupy the most powerful positions in Baltimore, including the mayor, City Council president, comptroller and state's attorney.
"It matters," said longtime City Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke, who became Baltimore's first female City Council president in 1987. "Every time a woman takes a job that's new, I think there's more pressure on that woman to perform than on a man who would take the same job."
In addition to Dixon, women will continue to lead the City Council, the comptroller's office and the city state's attorney's office. They will hold a three-seat majority on the city's powerful Board of Estimates and, depending on how a vacancy shakes out this year, will likely maintain a majority in the council.
"It's definitely a coincidence to some degree, but that doesn't mean you can't celebrate it as well," said Stephanie C. Rawlings Blake, a West Baltimore city councilwoman who is expected to become council president this month. "Women have made an important impact on Baltimore for years."
At a time in which one woman, Nancy Pelosi, has become speaker of the U.S. House and another, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, is considered a leading presidential candidate, major cities are still overwhelmingly run by men. Twelve of the nation's 100 largest cities have women as mayors.
While the overall number of female mayors has increased during the past several decades, the number of women leading the most influential city halls has declined since the 1980s.
Women moving up
"It has stagnated some, especially among the 100 largest cities," Gilda Morales, a project manager with the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said of the number of female mayors. "It could be because a lot of these women are running for state legislatures or Congress."
