We need women to run for office now more than ever
Source: MTV
By Erin Loos Cutraro,
When’s the last time you felt fired up by a female politician? It might have been from a news story you read online. Or a powerful debate answer. Or a tweet. Whether you lean right or left, there are so many women in office, inspiring and making headlines every day.
But the floodgates still aren’t wide open for women in politics. Women are half of the people in the country, yet they hold less than a third of the 500,000 elected offices nationwide. And though white men make up only 30 percent of the population, they occupy a whopping 62 percent of elected officials, from town council to Congress, according to stats from the Reflective Democracy Campaign (RDC).
When women run, they win at the same rate as men. No, the problem isn’t getting women to win. It’s that they don’t see themselves running for office to begin with.
As founder and CEO of She Should Run, a nonpartisan nonprofit working to increase the number of women considering a run for public office, I’m on a mission to change that. Our aim is to help women take the first step and imagine what a political run might look like for them. Of the thousands of women exploring a run for office, our data shows that only 13 percent move all the way from considering a political future to actually filing the requisite paperwork.
Click here to read the full article published by MTV on 3 April 2020.
By Erin Loos Cutraro,
When’s the last time you felt fired up by a female politician? It might have been from a news story you read online. Or a powerful debate answer. Or a tweet. Whether you lean right or left, there are so many women in office, inspiring and making headlines every day.
But the floodgates still aren’t wide open for women in politics. Women are half of the people in the country, yet they hold less than a third of the 500,000 elected offices nationwide. And though white men make up only 30 percent of the population, they occupy a whopping 62 percent of elected officials, from town council to Congress, according to stats from the Reflective Democracy Campaign (RDC).
When women run, they win at the same rate as men. No, the problem isn’t getting women to win. It’s that they don’t see themselves running for office to begin with.
As founder and CEO of She Should Run, a nonpartisan nonprofit working to increase the number of women considering a run for public office, I’m on a mission to change that. Our aim is to help women take the first step and imagine what a political run might look like for them. Of the thousands of women exploring a run for office, our data shows that only 13 percent move all the way from considering a political future to actually filing the requisite paperwork.
Click here to read the full article published by MTV on 3 April 2020.