Natalie Davis, a public opinion expert and professor at Birmingham Southern College, spoke Monday in the second installment of the Women’s Political Initiative lecture series.
Davis spoke of the importance of women in politics, the integral roles they play and why young women need to become involved in the political arena.
“Close your eyes and imagine an Alabama state legislature that 93 out of the 105 house seats and 30 out of the 35 Senate seats are occupied by women,” she said in the opening of the lecture. “Currently, we have 17 women in office in Alabama. We rank 50th in the nation for the percentage of women in the legislature.”
Davis ran for Senate in 1996 and has continued to be heavily involved with politics at the state level. She spoke of the discouragement women often face because political fields are often male dominant.
“We don’t want you to get hurt’ is something women will hear when wishing to run for elected office,” she said, “Women have succeeded in so many other fields; why not politics?
“A majority of voters are women, over half of women work outside of the home and over 25 percent of households are headed by single mothers,” she said.
Education, childcare, health care and senior care — these are all things women care about, she said. It is not that men do not care; these issues are just not their top priorities. The Alabama legislature has accomplished almost nothing in the past five years.
“We did establish a state nut,” she said, “I know a lot of state nuts, but this one is the pecan.”
Davis said that breaking into politics was not a simple task for a woman.
“People are not born Republican or Democratic, aggressive or introspective, bitchy or not,” Davis said. “You have to learn. Women are not supposed to want power. It is an ugly word, so often we do not search for it.”
She said the population has a positive view of women in politics. The problem is that women do not run. It is important to have critical mass at the front end in order to have a high yield at the conclusion.
Davis advised the young women in attendance to get involved early, to volunteer with a campaign now and to consider a possible career in politics — one not necessarily as an elected official. She also spoke of the merits of internships.
Brittany Filasek, a freshman majoring in biology, said she had not considered politics until now.
“She made it seem like you can get involved and it is fun,” Filasek said. “A campaign might be something I would try, but I would like to take a political science class first.”
“You are at an age where all of this counts. You want to graduate college and live here and raise your children here,” Davis said. “Unless you do that, Alabama won’t be a place you would want to live.”
