Women In Politics

To be honest, I hadn’t read Women In Politics, Breaking Down the Barriers to Achieve True Representation by Mary Hayashi before I selected it for The Female Body Politic Book Club. Based on the title and books of a similar ilk I’d read before, I expected to slog through an important but dry thesis on facts and figures about female elected officials.

Decidedly, that is not the book that Mary Hayashi wrote.

Instead, Women In Politics reads like a love letter to women’s leadership, embracing its struggles and achievements, hindrances and possibilities.

From the first, Mary dives into the power of women in politics with a strikingly relevant anecdote from her own tenure in office. In the spring of 2007, she met Jacqueline Coats, whose husband had drowned while rescuing two brothers from the dangerous riptides of San Francisco’s Ocean Beach. On top of this unimaginable tragedy, Jacqueline was faced with the reality that as a widowed legal immigrant in the middle of permanent residency proceedings, she might be deported to Kenya.

By partnering with then-Senator Diane Feinstein, Mary intervened on Coats’ behalf, allowing her to continue her petition for permanent residency.

“I learned a lot from Jaqueline Coats,” Mary writes, “like the injustice often inherent in our laws, the extraordinary heroism and perseverance that exist in ordinary people, and about making the system work for us and instead of against us.”

Essentially, this is the core of Mary’s book. It is a collection of stories about everyday women who became heroes by advocating for all people. It is an homage to women’s unique capacity for perseverance against all odds and their extraordinary creativity in reshaping the laws that govern cities, states, and nations to better reflect the needs and hopes of the citizenry.

This idea is embodied by individuals like Joyese Mojonnier who became only the thirtieth woman ever elected to the California Assembly in 1983 and pioneered politics for women in her home state. At the time, women were barred - BARRED - from entering the Sutter Club, Sacramento’s historic meeting place for politicians. Locked out of the backrooms of power, Mojonnier established a female base of power that continues to reverberate through the power structure of state politics to this day.

So, too, are these principles reflected in City Ryu, who ran for city council of Shoreline, Washington, on the urging of her teenage daughter in 2003 and lost to the Republican incumbent. Undeterred, she ran again in 2006 and won, subsequently becoming the mayor of Shoreline and the first Korean American woman mayor in America. Not done yet, she ran for the state legislature in 2010 and won.

Then, there is the story of Rosemary Dyer, who took the life of her profoundly physically and emotionally abusive husband after eight years of legal wedlock. While on trial, she was barred from bringing evidence of his abuse to her defense. But while incarcerated, Rosemary worked tirelessly to bring about change for those like her, culminating with “Battered Woman Syndrome” becoming a valid defense in California state courts.

While profiling the extraordinary accomplishments of these women, Women In Politics is far from a rose-colored-glasses, lean-in-style portrait of the women in elected office. Instead, it’s an honest look at the challenges and obstacles women face on the campaign trail and serving in representative bodies from city councils to the United States Senate. From unfair media coverage to systemic fundraising disadvantages to double standards of every ilk, Mary catalogs myriad ways women are undermined in the quest for equal representation. By visualizing and explaining the consequences of these across-the-board unfair disadvantages dealt to women, Mary provides an invaluable resource of how to combat them while taking off our own blinders that otherwise conceal internalized prejudice.

Throughout her book runs a refrain, sometimes as a whisper, sometime as a shout, repeating that you should run for office if you want to. Compelling stories and well-researched statistics prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that no matter what people say and no matter what, even you may think in your most vulnerable moments, you are qualified to run for and be elected to office. Your life experience, desire to roll up your sleeves, and commitment to the good of all Americans makes you more than qualified by any estimation. Should people tell you otherwise, Mary offers the advice offered to her when faced with the the same quandary: Do it anyway.

Women In Politics is an essential guide for any woman considering a run for election as well as an invaluable resource for those seeking to understand what women confront in public office and its pursuit.

This week on the Female Body Politic, I go beyond the page with Mary, who shares insights on the trailblazing women who inspired this book and the groundbreaking strategies they employed to move the cause of gender parity in politics that much farther forward.

You can purchase a copy through your local bookstore on Bookshop.org or Barnes & Noble. If you’re interested in diving deeper into Women In Politics, consider joining The Female Body Politic Book Club, where we’ll be digging into the implications and actionable lessons in Mary’s book in May.