Many, especially women, increasingly feel the weight of importance that elections carry with them.
Since 2011, She Should Run—a non-partisan American nonprofit—has invested in the mission of translating this excitement into actually running woman candidates for elected office. The organization’s mission is to “expand the talent pool of women running for office in the United States” by providing programs and resources for female candidates to network and grow their opportunities to lead. In noticing that among the over 500,000 elected offices that exist across the country women are disproportionately underrepresented, they are committed to supporting at least 250,000 women to run for office by 2030.
She Should Run aims to build an effective system whereby women looking to organize campaign efforts are able to take advantage of leadership resources. The She Should Run Incubator provides a set of online courses to help women develop practical public service skills, such as connecting with those who share the same vision and defining a clear communication style. The Ask a Woman to Run tool additionally allows friends of or future candidates themselves to nominate a woman who would be ideal in considering a run for office. No matter if it’s at the local, state, or federal level, these resources can work to the advantage of any candidate at any stage of her efforts.
Founder and CEO of She Should Run, Erin Loos Cutraro, explains that having more women in leadership roles is essential to fostering a more equitable society. “We believe that women of all political leanings, ethnicities and backgrounds should have an equal opportunity to lead in elected office, and that our democracy will benefit from the varied perspectives and experiences that women bring to leadership.”
Often times, Cutraro says, just encouraging women to put their names on the ballot is overcoming a major hurdle. “We know that when women run for office, they win at the same rates as men. Yet women are not encouraged or recruited at the same rate as men. We intend to change that.”
Having helped encourage over 40,000 women to run for office, She Should Run is changing the face of political representation in the U.S. With record levels of women running for office in 2018, the momentum only continues to build. If the desire to establish leadership that is more reflective of changing demographics, the work of She Should Run and similarly oriented organizations is a critical step forward.