JoAnna Smith

Not Interested in Political Leadership? Not My Generation
By JoAnna Smith, senior majoring in Law and Society, American University

When I first encountered the suggestion that young women are not interested in political leadership, I was confounded. That is not how I perceive women at my school and definitely not how I perceive myself. As a student at American University (AU), I have participated in AU’s Women's Initiative (WI) for the past four years, both as a member and as executive director. Part of the Student Government's executive cabinet, WI engages and empowers women through policy and programming initiatives surrounding fifteen issue areas, ranging from rape and safety to body image to men's outreach. Our six hundred members (men as well as women) sit on major campus administrative committees on health, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and safety, and have been known to lead dynamic protests.        

The women of WI know who Geraldine Ferraro, Cherie Blair, Madeleine Albright, and Elizabeth Edwards are--in fact, we helped bring them to campus. We are grassroots activists who organize over sixty events each semester. We are global and sophisticated enough in our thinking to engage AU's international studies and political science students. Most importantly, we empower women to become leaders on campus. WI’s current director of Minority Outreach is the vice president of the College Democrats and the president of AU Students for Hillary. Another woman who got her start as director of Body Image became secretary of the Student Government, won the Udall Scholarship, and founded a club supporting Native American rights (and she’s only a junior).

A silly girls’ group this is not. And to say that these women are opposed to or afraid of political leadership would be laughable.

Barriers to Young Women's Political Leadership

Despite the evidence at AU, the statistics on our generation’s political participation are against us. A 2005 study by Lawless and Fox found that women under forty are less likely to consider running for office than women over forty. In general, youth ages 15-25 are less likely than any other age group to participate in government, largely because they don't feel that they can affect national politics (Marcelo et al. 2007). College women are less likely than their male counterparts to discuss politics or follow political campaigns (Bernstein 2005) and less likely to follow current events (Jenkins 2005). The little research available suggests that women are just as underrepresented in their undergraduate student governments (USGs) as they are at all other levels of government. One study suggests that women are only 29 percent of USG presidents and only 26 percent of USG vice presidents (Miller and Krause 2004).

This lack of participation among young women is not surprising, considering the cultural context. Most college campuses provide few opportunities that specifically foster women's leadership, especially in the political arena. Moreover, women lack mentors and role models. There are only seventy-one women in the House of Representatives and sixteen in the Senate. It has taken over two hundred years for a woman candidate to become a viable contender for the presidency. My government textbooks are full of examples of male political leadership, but lack female faces. Add to that the low representation of women in student governments, and it is no wonder young women identify more with Sarah Jessica Parker than with Nancy Pelosi.

In some cases, campuses can be downright hostile towards women's political involvement. Women candidates are still called vicious names when they express forceful opinions or have strong personalities (as we see on a national scale in the current presidential election). A few years ago at AU, a male candidate for the student government ran with a slogan based on a particularly gendered and raunchy (but to college students, witty and appealing) pun on his last name. This caused much apprehension among the young women competing against him (whom he eventually defeated) and those contemplating future political participation.

Challenging the Definition of Political Leadership

Yet despite these clear barriers, identifying whether young women are politically engaged is tricky. Women may think politics are “dirty” and refuse to identify themselves as political participants, but they are participating in student organizations, activism, and political volunteerism at all-time highs (Taft 2006). In fact, according to Lopez and Elrod (2006), current female college students surpass all other groups of young people on measures of volunteering and voting.

At AU, women run EcoSense (an environmental activist group), intern in the Senate, found volunteer organizations, mentor Girl Scout troops, chair their sororities' charity committees, and debate the death penalty in their constitutional law classes. I doubt that AU's women differ much from women around the country. These forms of political activism may not represent traditional political leadership (i.e., running for and obtaining elective office), but they are equally important. Women are getting involved in the issues they care about and changing their campuses and communities for the better, while skirting the “boys’ club” sexism that has traditionally kept them out of politics.

In other words, we're active in politics. We’re just finding alternative ways to play the political game.

Preparing Women to Run

Nevertheless, traditional political leadership is still important, and organizations like WI are stepping up to change the game. While only a small percentage of women claim to be “very interested” in running for political office, almost half say they would consider doing so if they had enough information and the opportunity (Lake Snell Perry & Associates 2000). Thus in 2006, WI partnered with AU’s Women & Politics Institute (W&PI) to start the first ever Campaign College: AU Women to Win. This program teaches women how to run a successful student government campaign. Many people believe that in order for more women to succeed in higher levels of elective politics, more women must enter the political pipeline as lawyers, city council members, and state representatives. WI and W&PI believe that more women would enter that pipeline if they learned the skills to run a campaign before they left college.

Through surveys and discussions with Campaign College participants, we learned that college women want to participate in the process. But much like their adult counterparts, they feel unsure of themselves and of the political environment on campus. After starting the Campaign College program, AU saw a marked increase in the number of women running for office, becoming campaign operatives, and getting involved in student government. I cannot stress enough that I encourage other schools to start similar programs on their campuses.

I think women have gotten a bad rap on the political leadership front. We've been excluded for so long that we have found venues for involvement outside of traditional electoral politics. But it’s important to recognize that college women are participating at higher rates than any other group, through voting, volunteering, and activism. And it’s even more important to recognize that colleges and universities can, by taking a conscious look at the political climate on campus, find ways to encourage diversity and women's involvement in the political process.

References

Bernstein, A. G.  2005. Gendered characteristics of political engagement in college students. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research 52 (5/6).

Jenkins, K. 2005. Gender and civic engagement: Secondary analysis of survey data. CIRCLE working paper 41. College Park, MD: Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.

Lake Snell Perry & Associates. 2000. Pipeline to the Future: Young Women and Political Leadership. 20.

Lopez, M. H. and B. A. Elrod. 2006. College attendance and civic engagement among 18 to 25 year olds. College Park, MD: Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/FactSheets/FS06_coll_att.pdf  (accessed October 7, 2007).

Lawless, J. L. and R. L. Fox. 2005. It Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don’t Run for Office. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Marcelo, K. B., M. H. Lopez, and E. H. Kirby. 2007. Civic engagement among young men and women. College Park, MD: Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement.  www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/FactSheets/FS07_Gender_CE.pdf  (accessed October 7, 2007).

Miller, C. D. and M. Kraus. 2004. Participating but not leading: Women’s under-representation in student government leadership positions. College Student Journal 38 (4).

Taft, J. K. 2006. “I’m not a politics person”: Teenage girls, oppositional consciousness, and the meaning of politics. Politics & Gender 2: 329-352.