The Batten school hosted a conference entitled “Women, Leadership and Policy” Friday, in which a panel of federal, state and local female leaders discussed challenges facing women in policymaking careers.
Panelists included Virginia lieutenant governor candidate Jeannemarie Devolites Davis, a former state senator; Holly Edwards, former vice mayor of Charlottesville; and Kathleen Hartnett, former special assistant and associate counsel to President Barack Obama.
Davis said she first experienced challenges as a female legislator while serving as the only Republican woman in the Virginia House during her first term. “I was sexually harassed twice by my colleagues on the floor … and that motivated me to do a lot of reading,” she said. “I learned early on that I had to prove myself, or I was never going to be asked to do anything significant.”
Obstacles also exist for women at the local level of government, Edwards said.
But during her time in the White House, Hartnett said the highly competitive environment challenged both women and men to speak up.
“There’s a lot of Type-A people in the White House, so we don’t have a lot of people who don’t feel compelled to get a word in,” Hartnett said. “It’s interesting to see women come to the table in a different role.”
Women in policy fields can also be each others’ worst enemy, Davis said. She said during her time in the legislature she often encountered what she referred to as “queen bee syndrome.”
“Women talk about how they need to help each other and empower each other and when they get up there they don’t because they don’t want anyone up there with them,” Davis said.
The panel also discussed the consequences women face when taking time off work to raise families or pursue other plans. Highly competitive fields can be particularly challenging for women in this regard, Hartnett said.
“We’ll have to put other policies in place to really incentivize [these choices],” she said. “People who have been trying to find ways to accommodate these realities, but it’s still a challenge moving forward.”
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