In the News

Eating ice cream for breakfast is obviously good for the soul, but this year, it's also good for women in politics.

“It’s so hard to break through and to increase the number of individuals that are engaged at the polls. My hope is that changes. I think that if we continue to see momentum, which we are, and [have] individuals stepping up and becoming more informed, and knowing that their voice matters — not only at their city council meeting and by running for office, but also at the ballot box —[it] will most definitely have a positive affect on overall voter turnout.”

“Talking with a lot of our Republican stakeholders and our Republican members…it is a difficult time to be a young Republican woman,” Bresnahan English said in an interview with Refinery29. “They have different policy perspectives, and it’s been difficult for them to find exactly what the right place is for them in terms of party infrastructure.”

“There is definitely momentum,” says Erin Loos Cutraro, the Founder and CEO of the non-partisan She Should Run. “There’s a sense of urgency among women to both fix what is broken and provide their experience and perspective to create healthier government.”

Gone are the days where She Should Run had to constantly explain why our mission was worthwhile. Our new reality is a community of tens of thousands of women discussing the best ways to get onto local boards and commissions, how to handle sexism, and how to navigate local politics.

Whether it's through networking or ground support, the organization [She Should Run] has a simple mission: Get 250,000 women in office by 2030. It's ambitious, but if achieved, it would mean achieving gender parity among U.S. elected officials (All told, there are 500,000 elected positions in the U.S.)

She Should Run announced in July that it was launching a national campaign to achieve gender parity among America's elected officials by the year 2030..."We really felt like it was important to make it clear that we're in it for the long haul," Cutraro told Axios in July. "We know it's not going to happen overnight."

By the numbers: More than 15,000 women have contacted She Should Run — a nonpartisan organization dedicated to recruiting and training women to run for elected office — since last November.

"It's about building the pipeline," Erin Loos Cutraro says. "If we want to see equity for women in government in our lifetime, we have to have record-breaking election cycles in the next few cycles to come," she says." We know this isn't going to happen overnight, but we cannot let off the gas right now."

Founder and CEO Erin Loos Cutraro says this new crop of political talent is “sick of not having their voices and perspectives represented” and recognizes “the impact they can make at all levels of government.”

This year, thousands of women have said they want to run for office. What’s motivating them? In partnership with She Should Run and VoteRunLead, we surveyed 750 female potential candidates to find out.