Last week I went to a birthday party. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was a glorious spring day at Boyd Plaza in downtown Columbia, where South Carolina Women in Leadership (SC WIL) was celebrating its second birthday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two years earlier, a diverse group of 12 women had come together and \u201cdefined a multi-partisan strategy for encouraging women to lead,\u201d Barbara Rackes, a local businesswoman and a founder of WIL, told the crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today the organization can boast of 100 Founders who each contributed $1,000 to build WIL\u2019s foundation. WIL has also won the support of corporate sponsors that include Aflac, Bank of America, BlueCross BlueShield of SC, Dominion Energy, Hunt Alternatives, Nephron Pharmaceuticals, and Verizon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WIL\u2019s mission is straightforward: to increase race and gender representation at all levels of business, government, and community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do we need more women in the SC legislature, where today only 17 percent of lawmakers are women, despite the fact that 51.6 percent of the state\u2019s population is female? Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do we need more women representing South Carolina in the U.S. Congress? Yes, we do. The SC Congressional delegation has been all-male since 1993. South Carolina has never sent a woman of color to the U.S. House of Representatives, nor a woman of any color to the U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do we need more women on corporate boards and school boards, city and county councils, and all types of community organizations? Absolutely. And, to move things along, WIL has created and manages the only comprehensive database of open seats on appointed boards and commissions at the city, county, and state levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It makes a tremendous difference when women\u2019s voices are heard. Consider the state of Nevada, where women currently make up 60 percent of the 63-member legislature, much more than any other state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The result, says The Los Angeles Times, \u201ccan be measured in dollars and sensibilities. Among the changes are new laws expanding access to healthcare and family planning, fortifying abortion rights, strengthening the penalties for domestic violence, and giving prosecutors more and better tools to fight sex crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is also a new law on the books in Nevada that toughens the requirement that women receive equal pay for equal work. \u201cPrevious attempts failed in part,\u201d deadpanned The LA Times, \u201cbecause male legislators questioned whether gender discrimination was, in fact, a problem requiring legislative action.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back in South Carolina, WIL has built an audience of more than 50,000 people statewide who receive its newsletters. WIL has also conducted training for women \u201con subjects as diverse as presenting yourself professionally in a Zoom meeting to finding your personal leadership style,\u201d says Rackes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WIL has ambitious plans for Year 3: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is more in the works:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At last week\u2019s birthday party, Barbara Rackes told a story of applying many years ago to become the second page in the SC Senate. The first question the clerk asked her was, \u201cCan you type?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ll add a story of my own. (I can choose from oh, so many.) While covering a meeting for one of the local newspapers in the early 1970s \u2013 my reporter\u2019s notebook in hand \u2013 I was seated next to a male lawmaker. We chatted a bit before I began scribbling busily in my notebook. After a few minutes, the legislator leaned over and asked, \u201cNow, whose secretary are you again, honey?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SC WIL is working to make questions like these relics of the past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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