(Editor’s Note: The following comes from a former resident of Peachtree Corners, Melita Easters, who was a member of the first class of Leadership Gwinnett. Parts of this first appeared in the Saporta Report.—eeb)
By Melita Easters, Georgia’s WIN List, Atlanta, Ga. | As citizens vote early in record numbers, women will be the deciding factor as polls and political pundits increasingly predict Georgians will vote blue for the first time since 1992.
Easters
This shift is not entirely unpredictable. Legislative seats and private sector leadership positions held by women are leading indicators for a strong Georgia progressive streak. This is obscured by the fact that all statewide offices, the majority of congressional seats and House and Senate majorities are held by Republicans, who in Georgia are predominantly pale and male.
By contrast, Georgia leads the Deep South with the highest percentage of women legislators. Georgia also has the highest number of African American women legislators nationwide, says Rutgers University. Further, House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams is the first woman to lead either party in Georgia legislative history.
Georgia’s legislature is comprised of 24.6 percent women. North Carolina has 23 percent women. But, in both North Carolina and Florida, women legislators are almost equally divided between parties while in Georgia, Democratic women outnumber Republicans four to one in the Senate and three to two in the House. Other Southern states lag far behind.
Nationally, the 100-member U.S. Senate has 20 women and the 435-member House has 84 women or 19.3 percent. There are currently six women governors and 12 women lieutenant governors. Women hold 24.6 percent of the nation’s 7,383 state legislative seats and as mayor in 18 percent of American cities.
Of course, Atlanta was ahead of this mayoral curve with Shirley Franklin as mayor from 2002 to 2010. Neighboring DeKalb County had Liane Levetan as CEO from 1993 to 2000. And Charlotte Nash currently heads the Gwinnett Commission. Leah Ward Sears served as Georgia’s Supreme Court Chief Justice from 2005 to 2009, the first ever African American woman to hold such a position in the nation.
Atlanta attorney Linda Klei, is president of the 400,000-member American Bar Association and many prominent Atlanta law firms have had or currently have women as managing partner. This summer, Dr. Claire Sterk became president of Emory University, shattering an academic glass ceiling for large Georgia universities.
More than 16 years ago, a group of women who wanted to increase the number of women holding statewide office and legislative seats convened at my home. At the time, Georgia had fewer than 20 percent women legislators and ranked 31st in the nation. Georgia’s WIN List was modeled after EMILY’s List, a monumental force behind Hillary Clinton’s campaign and efforts to flip with U.S. Senate back to Democratic control.
Georgia’s WIN List has helped elect and reelect more than 50 women to the Georgia General Assembly, 30 of whom currently serve. We recruit and train women leaders and believe as we increase the number of women in the General Assembly or local offices, we build a bench of women who will be effective and electable candidates for future Congressional and statewide races.
Four new WIN List-endorsed Democratic women legislators have already been elected earlier this year, including Gwinnett’s Brenda Lopez, the first Latina elected in Georgia. Further, WIN List has endorsed Donna McLeod who hopes to win in a Gwinnett house seat.
The WIN in our name certainly sums up our hope that the women whom we encourage to run will win on election day, but it also affirms our belief that Women In Numbers can elect Women in Numbers. After all, when women vote, women WIN!
Melita Easters is founding chair and executive director of Georgia’s WIN List.
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