The U.S. lags behind the world when electing women to office. Is that about to change?

by: Danelle Morton | from: AARP The Magazine | September 24, 2010

AARP profiles women candidates over 50 from across the United States

…..As the fall elections approach, women like Rogers, mentored by more than 50 different partisan and nonpartisan groups, are fanning out across the country, turning the passion for public service they’ve picked up as business leaders, stay-at-home moms, and members of the military into full-blown political activism. Ninety years after women won the right to vote, they’re helping to correct a shocking inequity. High-profile female politicians such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin notwithstanding, the number of women in elected office in the United States is disproportionately low. When ranked among the world’s democracies, the U.S. is 73rd out of 186 countries in electing females to public office, worse than Turkmenistan but slightly better than the tiny republic of San Marino.

One key force in the movement to get women into office is the nonpartisan 2012 Project, which specifically targets women age 45 and up. “Midlife women make strong candidates, and they’re at a point in life when they can take on the task,” says 2012 Project head Mary Hughes. “They are about to have fewer family responsibilities, are more likely to be financially stable, and have deep roots in the community.”

For 25 years Hughes has worked on campaigns to elect women. Women currently hold about a quarter of all elected offices in this country and 17 percent of the seats in Congress, but that figure is less impressive, she says, when you consider that women make up about 51 percent of the American population. “We never say 83 percent of Congress is male. We say we’re up to 17 percent,” says Hughes. “We are penalized for our optimism.”

Rebecca Flaherty, 59, of Meade County, Kentucky, is one of them. The stay-at-home mother of three grown sons had been active for years as a youth minister in her church. A longtime Democrat, she began writing to Democratic representatives and to journalists including Dan Rather and Helen Thomas in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq. “I had always looked to the media to hold politicians’ feet to the fire,” she explains. “It wasn’t a protest letter as much as a call to action. I thought they weren’t listening to other voices.”

The few who responded to Flaherty’s letters urged her to run for office on the local level. Instead, in 2003, Flaherty volunteered at the Meade County Democratic Women’s Club and, in 2006, she became chair of the county’s Democratic Club. She resigned when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in May 2008. Two years later, after undergoing a mastectomy and successful chemotherapy, she felt less intimidated about running for elected office. She decided to challenge Judge Executive Harry Craycroft, a fellow Democrat whom Flaherty had helped elect in 2006. “If I hadn’t had cancer, I would still be sitting on the sidelines and saying, ‘Oh God, no one has stepped up,’ ” she says today.

In Meade County, north of Fort Knox, judge executive is the top supervisor position. Flaherty’s friends noted that no woman had ever held that high an office in the county, and asked what she knew about supervising the county government. “I raised three sons on [my husband’s] pipe fitter’s salary,” Flaherty says. “I know how to run a budget.”

In this year’s May 18 primary, Flaherty bested Craycroft by more than a thousand votes in a surprise upset. “I think I outworked him,” she says of her opponent.

SACRIFICES AND SATISFACTION

For the general election campaign, Flaherty has knocked on doors (some 2,500 to date), held fundraising bean-soup-and-cornbread suppers, and staffed an eight-by-eight-foot yellow-and-green booth strung with paper lanterns at the county fair. Her husband, Allen, is one of her biggest supporters and accompanies her at least half the time when she’s on the trail. “There are things we’ve given up this year,” he admits. “We would have liked to take a vacation, but we’re spending all our money on yard signs, bumper stickers, meals out. My wife is a great cook, and I miss that.” He pauses, then adds with a smile, “If Becky wins, we’ll just make some more sacrifices. You get paid back at another point when she makes Meade County a better place. And if she loses, well, we’ve worked hard and kept ourselves honest.

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