The Women’s and Gender Resource Center was very excited to have Jessica Grounds on campus on March 30 to talk with us about gender and the 2016 election. Grounds is an expert on women’s political leadership, the founder of Solid Grounds Strategy, which cultivates women’s leadership, and the co-founder of Running Start, which prepares young women to run for office.

Grounds shared some data about women’s representation around the world and in the US. It probably won’t surprise anyone that the numbers of women in politics are disappointingly low. She described some of the barriers for women candidates, which include the cultural norms of women’s roles and gendered media scrutiny, among others. As part of her presentation, Grounds screened a couple of short videos, including Jimmy Kimmel Mansplains to Hillary Clinton, which demonstrates the competing and conflicting expectations for women candidates.

Grounds also cited the research of Dr. Jennifer Lawless, whose work focuses — in part — on the barriers to women’s political candidacies. (And, just a heads up: the WGRC and the Clarke Forum will be bringing Lawless to campus in October).

This is an historic moment in US politics, with Carly Fiorina as a former candidate in the Republican primary and Hillary Clinton’s continuing candidacy in the Democratic primary. Grounds pointed out, though, that women have run for president before, including Victoria Woodhull, who ran in 1872 as part of the Equal Rights Party, before women even had the right to vote.

Grounds described the changing demographics of the electorate, including that in this election – for the first time – there will be more unmarried women voting than married woman. The American electorate is also younger and more diverse than in the past. When voters look at women in political office, they tend to see women as problem solvers; we’ve certainly seen women in the US Congress being more collaborative and more willing to work across the aisle in a bipartisan fashion.

In her presentation, Grounds articulated a strong and powerful argument about the need for more women to run for and win political office. It’s not only an issue of justice – although the current situation is certainly unjust. But if we don’t have a diversity of people and viewpoints in the halls of power, the decisions that are made there won’t reflect the needs and aspirations of our country.

Written by Donna M. Bickford, Ph.D., Director, Women’s and Gender Resource Center