Mentoring gives women more opportunities in the male-dominated world of politics, according to panelists at Tuesday’s Hinckley Forum.
The lecture, “Mentoring Matters: Paving the Path for Young Women in Utah Politics,” was part of Women’s Week, which the Office of Equity and Diversity sponsored.
“Everyone knows … men are controlling the state,” said political consultant Marla Kennedy, one of the panelists.
Others on the panel included Anne Burkholder, chief executive officer of YWCA Salt Lake; Lisa Arbon-Tagge, director of UCard; and Sen. Patricia Jones, D-Salt Lake. They addressed topics of discrimination against women in politics and the need for equal representation.
In 2011, Burkholder helped found Real Women Run, an organization that supports and encourages women who want to run for public office, in hopes that it could help more women make their way into the political system. She said women are “amazingly, woefully underrepresented” in Utah politics. When she started the organization, women had only 17.3 percent representation in the Utah Legislature.
“This is simply intolerable, so we decided to do something about it,” she said.
Jones first decided to run for office after a friend encouraged her and suspects that many women need the same kind of support.
“A lot of women just need to be prodded,” Jones said. “They need to be told that they are needed in government.”
Kennedy said mentoring is the single most important thing women need to get involved in politics. All the panelists agreed mentoring is a crucial part of the path for women entering the political realm.
Arbon-Tagge said according to research she conducted for her dissertation at Harvard, mentors are crucial.
“Mentors were the key influence, and most of them were male,” she said.
She also said this might not be only because men are generally more prominent in political positions, but because many successful women have what’s called “queen bee syndrome.” Women with queen bee syndrome are far less likely to mentor others because they do not like to see anyone moving in on their territory.
Jones sees it as her duty to encourage women to run for office.
“I tend to be drawn to female interns,” she said.
Though some of the interns are as young as 18 years old, she tells them she would love to help them run for office when they turn 25.
Jones said it is also crucial women are supported by their spouses and partners. She said her husband, Dan Jones, recently retired professor of political science and director of Dan Jones and Associates, has always supported her and talks about when Utah will elect its first female governor and when the United States will elect its first female president.
She added that while balancing a home life with a political life is tricky, it can be done. She added serving in a public office is the perfect way to “find yourself,” because you can no longer “sit on the fence.”