Last Saturday, more than 60 female students — and one male student — at Syracuse attended the Elect Her training to learn about women running for office and how to close the significant gender gap in political leadership in the United States. The unique thing about this group of participants was that not all of them were interested in political leadership. We had journalists, film majors, STEM majors and aspiring business leaders to name a few. Interestingly enough, each one of these fields has been marked by male-dominance or patriarchal characteristics.

The advent of Elect Her and Women’s Empowerment Week marks an important conversation that we must continue to have at Syracuse University. Whether you are interested in political leadership or working your way to the top of your respective industry, the path for women in leadership is often marked with adversity rooted in gender biases.

One problem is that many of these fields lose the interest of women early on in their lives. Much of this begins in the classrooms of our elementary and middle schools. A recent ad by Running Start, an organization that aims to equip women with the skills to run for public office, ran in Times Square this past January. The ad said, “Less than 25 percent of women are political leaders. At 10, girls dream of being president, by the age of 25, they lack the confidence to run for office.” Much of this has to do with gender identity construction and traditional gender roles that are created early on. Such programs aim to alleviate and eliminate these perceptions.

Despite Elect Her training seminars being tailored to political leadership, the crux of the problem is consistent with other industries. The American Association of University women aims to not only get more women involved with politics, but in STEM fields and other arenas of leadership.

Because SU is a partner campus with American Association of University Women, undergraduates can attain membership in the AAUW for free. Graduate students can also join for a fee of $18.81 — commemorating the year AAUW was founded. For more information on getting involved, you can check out AAUW.org or email me at adcurtis@syr.edu.

For other resources for women’s leadership, also check out National Conference for College Women Student Leaders (nccwsl.org), She Should Run (sheshouldrun.org) and Running Start (runningstartonline.org).

Alexandra Curtis
Former Student Association President
Campus Liaison for Elect Her