“Women in Politics”

Having Faith Winter come speak about women in electoral politics was a really amazing experience for me because she really motivated me to possibly run for a political office one day. I know the point of the speech was to empower women but as a queer man of color I felt like I am underrepresented as well and that if I ran for office I could finally have representation. This presentation also really made me think about my mom and giving her the invitation to run for an elected office. But then I remember that she is a Canadian citizen and can’t run for office.
The presentation also made me realize how important having women in office really is because it will help make the change that we thought women would get when they were given the right to vote. I still have faith that women can be the moral compass that they used as a campaign strategy in the suffrage movement. From my experience women do have a stronger moral sense and have the ability to create legislation that will promote equality and change. Something I learned from Faith’s speech was that when there are more women in a legislative body there tends to be more socially just laws passed. If this is true then as a social justice advocate I need to advocate more to have a large majority of women in all legislative bodies so that more socially just legislation will pass.
Lastly Faith really taught me the power of an elected office; she said she gets to make change as an elected official rather than trying to lobby for others to make change for her. If I really want to see drastic changes happen around me I will need to take a more active part in causing that change and one great way I can do that is by running for a political office. I just hope one day that I might possibly get the chance to run for a political office, but if not I hope that I can invite and encourage women around me to run for political offices so they can make more positive change in our society.