Mount Holyoke News, September 24th 1998 

By Celine McNicholas '01

"Leadership is all about dominance and deference. Men dominate, women defer." This quotation, from the book Gender Power, Leadership and Governance, attempts to explain why women have traditionally shied away from public office. To most Mount Holyoke students, however, this statement may not ring true. We see women in leadership roles everyday, from student government positions to full professors to the President of the College. This acceptance of women's leadership seems to stay with us beyond the Mount Holyoke gates. We carry it back to our home states, the Capitol, and beyond. While only five percent of female students graduate from womens colleges, these alumnae make up forty-four percent of women political leaders. In fact, we are four times more likely to run for public office.

On October 1st, four Mount Holyoke alumnae who have succeeded in electoral politics will discuss their experiences and insight into issues of women and political leadership. "Making a Difference: Women in Politics", sponsored by the Center for Leadership and Public Interest Advocacy, will be moderated by Ruth Mandel, director of the Eagleton Institute for Politics at Rutgers University.

The path from a women's college to elected office is long and difficult, to say the least. In the political arena, women must contend with a variety of factors. In struggling to be elected they have more difficulty raising money for their campaigns than their male counterparts, and they continuously do battle with gender expectations. Once elected,
many women leaders report having to constantly prove themselves. In Diane Feinstein's 1990 campaign, her staff reported that the most difficult aspect of managing her campaign was the need to establish Feinstein's credibility as a leader over and over again. Furthermore, some researchers contend that women are placed in traditional gender roles following their election. As opposed to a position on the finance or judiciary committees, women in elected office are included instead on committees on health, welfare or social services.

Despite these dilemmas women continue to be elected to office in record numbers. In 1998, 63 women serve in Congress - 9 in the Senate, 54 in the House of Representatives. This is an all time high. In addition, 21.8% of state legislators are women and 12 of the 100 largest cities have women mayors. Still, a grim contradiction to this progress is the prediction that at the current rate at which women are being elected, it will take over four centuries before the proportion of women in Congress equals their percentage in the overall population. It is obvious from these statistics that women who serve as elected officials today play a vital role, not only in shaping the political atmosphere of the day, but also as role models for younger women who are interested in public service. After all, there is more than one way to get a woman in the White House - but chances are good that she will have attended a women's college!

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