Allie Curtis almost gave up.

She went home in the summer of 2012 after serving as Student Association vice president and realized how much she enjoyed freedom from the day-to-day grind of SA and social media battles. Curtis received insults on Twitter — including being called a prostitute — and they became hard to ignore, she said.

Curtis, a senior public relations and political science major, remembers being 16 years old and telling herself that she’d shatter the glass ceiling. But after her experiences as vice president, she felt worn down and began to think that a position behind the scenes, such as campaign manager, would suit her better.

“I convinced myself I wouldn’t run for SA president, after having years of ambition to do so,” Curtis said.

Caroline Bright, one of Curtis’ mentors who ran for Vermont State Senate in 2012 when she was 22 years old, talked her out of it.

“She sat me down, told me not to digress, not to step behind the lines. So I thought, ‘OK, I’m doing this,’” Curtis said.

Unlike many women, Curtis didn’t deviate. She moved forward. She took steps to foster a support system for young women entering the political sphere when she held an Elect Her workshop to SU on Saturday.

The event was organized by Curtis and ended women’s leadership week, said Daniela Lopez, SA vice president and a junior studying political science, policy studies and Spanish language, literature and culture.

“Programs like Elect Her are important because, instead of pitting women against each other just because we may have opposing political views, we were able to come together, have a conversation and work together afterwards,” Lopez said.

Lopez said while she has reservations about pursuing a career in politics, it was encouraging to hear Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner speak at the event.

“It was good to be reminded that no matter how much you’re talked about or how much hate you receive, you can’t slow down and you can’t let it interfere with your agenda,” Lopez said.

Curtis said that though women’s leadership week came to a close, she won’t stop campaigning for the cause of equal representation.

Bright believes that obstacles faced by women like Curtis cause women to prefer less visible positions such as campaign manager, creating a gender gap and unequal representation both in student and national government leadership positions.

The tribulations women in leadership roles face explain why more women don’t run for office, because it’s not for lack of interest, she said.

The numbers at Syracuse University suggest many women are interested in politics: At SU, 49 percent of political science majors are women. Women also account for about 49 percent in the overall enrollment in SU political science courses, said Tess Slater, an academic adviser at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

While SU sees nearly equal representation in political science enrollment, and women outnumber men in college enrollment, men hold roughly 60 percent of executive leadership positions in student governments across the nation, Curtis said.

This trend mirrors the national trend of a male-dominated government in which women only make up 18.3 percent of Congress.

Women are missing from the political ring both on and off the screen. Because of this, many of them don’t have as many role models as men, Bright said.

“If young women can look at political leaders and say, ‘She looks like me, maybe I could do that too,’ it makes a huge difference,” Bright said.

Role models can also include women in leadership positions on television shows or movies. Bright said she realized how influential this could be when she saw Geena Davis acting as president in the television series “Commander in Chief.”

“It suddenly clicked, and I realized I had never thought about the possibility of running for president until I saw a woman on screen,” Bright said. “Portrayals of women in popular culture are huge. They have an impact that can’t be underestimated.”

When young women see few representations of strong female politicians in popular culture and rarely interact with elected women in visible positions, they begin to think of the field as an unrealistic option, Kristi Andersen, a political science professor, said in an email.

Andersen said research shows that women are also less likely to run because they aren’t encouraged to think about politics as a career.

 Women sometimes don’t pursue rigorous career tracks because they feel pressured to choose between family and work, Bright said.

“Until men feel the same societal pressure, then we’re going to be sitting here without change. When men and women have an equal role in home-life responsibility, then we can move towards equal roles in politics,” Bright said.

Bright is currently executive director at The Hattie Caraway Foundation, Inc., a nonprofit organization which encourages women to get involved in political office and public life in Arkansas. Bright’s organization and others like it are important because young women often believe they don’t belong in politics, Curtis said.

In sixth grade, Curtis’s teacher asked each student what they wanted to be when they grew up and wrote down their responses on the chalkboard. Many girls in Curtis’ class called out careers such as model or actress.

But when Curtis said she wanted to be president, the teacher laughed and said, “Don’t get ahead of yourself now.”

“It was perfectly acceptable for women to dream about being models or actresses, but when I said I wanted this position of power, I was told that I shouldn’t,” Curtis said.  “From the very beginning, society finds ways to whittle away at women’s ambitions.”

Political science professor Stuart Thorson said that women running for office today realize the notion that’s been planted in their minds is wrong.

“Somebody or a set of somebodies made them realize they could do something that they’ve often been told wasn’t for them,” Thorson said.

Though the political science professors are roughly two-thirds male, Curtis said she has never felt a lack of support. Thorson has mentored Curtis when she’s encountered obstacles, and currently advises her on her senior thesis.

“Politics is a profession in which you get bruised a lot,” Thorson said. “You need a support system. You need someone to pick you up again.”

Published on April 7, 2014 at 1:33 am

Contact Lydia: lawilson@syr.edu