From where she stands, Mimi Keane sees a lot of apathy among women when it comes to politics.
Keane, the founder and executive chair of The State of Women in Politics, is trying to change that. Speaking at the third annual SOWIP dinner and networking event last week, she urged the overwhelmingly female audience to get involved.
“You have no choice,” she said. “Our lives are political . . . women’s rights–it’s politics. It’s there. You’re living in it.”
As Illinois prepares for the March 16 primary, Keane urged women to work on getting more women to vote and to give more money to political campaigns, especially those of female candidates. Starting this campaign season, she called on women to strive for equal representation in state and local government.
Women constitute about 51 percent of the population of Illinois. But they do not hold their fair share of such political positions as state executives or U.S. and state senators and representatives, Keane said. Of the state’s 1,298 municipal executives, she added, only five are women.
Since the passage of the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote in 1920, Illinois has had only five women elected to the state’s highest offices, Keane told the audience during a slide presentation that used Census figures to illustrate women’s low political presence in state and municipal government.
SOWIP, formed in 2001, seeks to evaluate the status of Illinois women in politics and advance them in a non-partisan fashion.
“Go back to your cities and take a look at what’s happening,” Keane said. “It’s not until you look at what the numbers tell you that you really have the sense here that something’s not right.”
On a bitterly cold Wednesday night, about 160 women turned out for the event at the Mid-America Club on the 80th floor of the downtown Aon Center. Mixing and mingling at a predinner reception, the crowd of mostly entrepreneurs, lawyers and office-seekers discussed the fundamentals of political maneuvering with representatives of the three sponsoring organizations: The Professional Women’s Club of Chicago, the National Association of Women Business Owners-Chicago Chapter and the Women’s Bar Association of Illinois.
During dinner, the candidates in attendance had a chance to stand up and give a quick pitch.
Jeanne Reynolds, a judicial candidate, asked for the support of other attendees, emphasizing her ballot number, not her name. “We need more women on the bench,” she said.
Television journalist Carol Marin moderated a panel that spanned the political spectrum.
Don’t forget girlfriends
To show solidarity with the cause, Marin began by recalling some advice from her mother, “Never forget your girlfriends,” which garnered a warm response from the audience.
Then she started posing questions–her own and those from the audience–to the five women on the panel. Collectively, they spoke of the need to overcome fears about getting the blessing of their party’s chieftains, raising money–and losing. They also bemoaned the low level of voter education, adding that women 18-35 make up the largest non-voting group.
“Speaking from my experience, I think that young people are being ignored,” said Cook County Commissioner Bobbie Steele, a Democrat. “I think the Democratic Party ignores them. I think the Republican Party ignores them. They’re comfortable with working with the people who are already in the party. They don’t reach out and include young people.”
In discussing her own challenges in politics, Steele drew laughs when she spoke of hiding out in the ladies’ room for nine hours to keep a political foe from subpoenaing her.
But on a more serious note, she said in a response to an audience question, “I fought many battles that I shouldn’t have had to fight because I am a woman of color. . . . You don’t wait until you are included. You make room for yourself. And you do that by comporting yourself in such a way that you gain respect. You don’t try to act like the boys. Just be yourself and be professional in whatever you do.”
Kristine Cohn, CEO of Winnebago County, also talked about fighting battles. She said she lost only one of the nine elections in which she has run.
“Losing isn’t as much fun as winning, let me tell you that,” she said. “But every single time, I said to myself, `Am I OK with losing this race?’ And the moment I said yes, I knew darn well I was going to win it.”
Consultant Christine Dudley supervises a Republican-led program to increase women’s involvement in public office called the Illinois Lincoln Excellence in Public Service Series. She cautioned audience members to do their due diligence in preparing for a race.
Money is hard to raise
In responding to an audience question, Dudley said she thought that the country could see its first female president within the next 10 years.
But fellow Republican Sunny Penedo Chico, a school administrator turned political activist, said she was convinced that such a woman would be a Democrat because “Democrats are a little bit more forward thinking as far as electing women.”
But none of the candidates will get anywhere without money, and fundraiser Nancy Kohn urged dinner guests to donate to female candidates whose views match their own.
“The hardest money to raise is from women,” she said, adding, “Your checkbook should reflect your values.”
After the panelists had their say, the audience had its turn. The evening ended with a brainstorming session led by Gerald “Solutionman” Haman, a Northwestern University adjunct professor of innovation. The effort generated about 300 ideas for increasing women’s political clout.
“What came out of the evening was the fact that [it] is not just an event,” Keane said. “It is a movement to break down the barriers to women being elected to political office throughout the State of Illinois.”
———-
E-mail ctc-woman@tribune.com
