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The Women Leading the First Study of Diversity in State and Local Government [Episode 15]

"Most local governments are run by white men, so there hasn’t needed to be a conversation about what diversity looks like."

We’re doing something a little different on this episode. Instead of chatting with a woman in state or local office, we talked to two women studying female representation in state and local government.

Libby Seguin and Lauren Stott are both graduate students leading the nation's first comprehensive look at the gender, age, race and veteran status of all executive positions in state and local office. 

It's nearly impossible to find out exactly how diverse local public leadership is. But along with the nonprofit Engaging Local Government Leaders (ELGL), Sequin and Stott are trying to fix that.

And apparently, this is something a lot of people care about. ELGL didn't have the money for the project, so it created a Kickstarter campaign, and with the help of donations, it raised more than $26,000.

In this episode of "The 23%: Conversations With Women in Government," Seguin and Stott discuss why data like this is needed and how they hope it will bring about change.

"Most local governments are run by white men," Seguin says, "so there hasn’t needed to be a conversation about what diversity looks like."

Listen below. You can also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, and check out our archives.

 


 
*CORRECTION: The original version of this misrepresented the timeline of the project.

Caroline Cournoyer is GOVERNING's senior web editor.
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