
Kirsten Gillibrand is a US senator hailing from New York.
As well as holding a high position in American politics she is also a prominent advocate of women in the profession.
She runs a project calls Off the Sidelines which helps women find their voice in politics; be it either as a candidate, an advocate or as a voter.
The Democrat has been running the project for five years now and is still aiming to get more American women involved in the political process.
Despite half of the American population being female, only 20 other women on both sides of the aisle currently join Gillibrand in the Senate.
In fact, that's actually a record number of women senators, but still isn't even a quarter of the total of senators, of which there are 100.
Meanwhile, only 83 women make up the 435 members of the House of Representatives.
Altogether, that is just 104 women in Congress in total which is encouraging but hardly revolutionary.
Gillibrand, who has held her seat since 2009, took to Twitter last month to ask what it would be like if at least half of the Congress were female.
Imagine if half of Congress was women. If half of all mayors and governors were women. Imagine what could get done.— Kirsten Gillibrand (@Kirsten Gillibrand) 1501440308
Her post soon went viral and quickly started a debate about gender roles in politics and their importance.
Most people agreed with her.
Unfortunately, as it tends to be with these kind of things, there were some passionate critics of Gillibrand's comment.
One user felt that the Republican women would be just as bad as the men, which started another argument.
@letat_lechat @SenGillibrand Two. another 20-30 million of them voted for trump. Don't get lulled into a false sense of security bc of two.— JaneSays (@JaneSays) 1501471329
Another gave an example of a famous female Republican, who certainly has a controversial history.
While members of both sexes engaged in heated discussions in her comments, one man came up with the most philosophical assessment of the subject.
@SenGillibrand Imagine if we just elected the most qualified people and didn't base that on gender, race, creed, or sexual preference.— Tyson Davis (@Tyson Davis) 1501535844
One man even managed to provide an example of governments around the world where women are the dominant gender.
@SenGillibrand @TrueFactsStated No need to imagine. Half of Canada's cabinet members & half of Iceland's legislator… https://t.co/1KtCeJ5PvZ— Michael MacKay (@Michael MacKay) 1501468863