The New Faces of Leadership
Women make up 50.8% of the U.S. population, yet for every woman that’s in political office, there are three men.
The numbers don’t lie. Image from Pew Research Center.
According to Pew Research Center, the 116th Congress represents the biggest jump in female members since the 1990s, after having women in Congress for more than a century.
This gender divide is seen, however, not only in the U.S. government, but also in various organizations on college campuses.
“I don’t know if there’s ever been an executive board with more than three women before,” says Julia Field, former Treasurer of the Student Government Association at Elon University. “I know that there’s never been a fully female SGA executive board, and at my time at Elon, there has never been more females than males on the SGA executive board.”
Field, along with other female leaders, is aware of the lack of equal representation in student leadership organizations but is hopeful that change will come as more women enter political races.
“Even in the past year, more women have been running for positions just due to lack of representation in our current presidency,” says senior Rebecca Betterton. “I think it’s less to do with the fact that Hillary did it last time and more that it needs to be done.”
According to the Washington Post, an unprecedented number of women, primarily democrats, ran for office in 2018, which Admissions Counselor Tim Boles believes is hopefully a new, refreshing trend for our government.
“I think it’s just because typically a lot of democrats are liberal and fighting for more rights, and in the history of women’s rights movement, women have been more liberal,” Boles says. “The way I view it is conservatives are sticking to the way things are while democrats are fighting for change.”
According to a Pew Research Center survey, 59% of adults say there are too few women in high political offices. While these students are hopeful that there will be change for the U.S. moving forward, there is certainly hope for Elon University in that regard.
“There are a lot of strong females who are really passionate about student government in the class below me, and particularly the freshman class has a lot of strong females,” Field says. “That’ll be a really exciting day for Elon when there’s an all-female executive board. I think that’ll be a really cool moment in our history.”