Despite the difficulties she experienced during her term in office in a state where she called politics a “full-contact sport,” Swift encouraged those in the audience to run or work for someone who’s running for office because women often tell pollsters that they never became candidates because no one asked them to run. “If you don’t run, you actually don’t get elected,” the mother of three joked.

Acknowledging that being a parent and a politician can require “sacrifice,” Swift said potential candidates shouldn’t fear that they have to be “completely prepared” and know everything in order to enter politics because the male candidates certainly don’t. “Your views are your value,” she said.

Swift said she regrets the recent emphasis on how “broken” our politics seem nowadays “because it appears to be such a brutal venue [that] good, decent people who want to protect their families don’t run.”

For those women who might consider politics - whether it’s very local or less so - there are plenty of resources out there, cheering women on.

There’s Rutgers’ University’s Center for American Women and Politics which has a non-partisan program “Ready to Run: Campaign Training for Women” with programs and practical info about running. The Center also is the home base for The 2012 Project whose motto is: “Don’t get mad. Get elected.” and includes an icon of a woman holding a flag aloft above her head. The White House Project, a nonprofit leadership organization, is not only interested in seeing a woman commander-in-chief, but is striving, through training programs, to create a “leadership pipeline with a richly diverse, critical mass of women” in government and business.

Know of a female friend who you think would be really good in office who you’d be willing to help? She Should Run has an online form where you could officially ask her to consider it. The organization promises to “make sure she gets the encouragement, connections and resources she needs. Whether she’s already talking about running or has never considered it, your vote of confidence matters.”

As you make your New Year’s resolutions and contemplate the brand, spankin’ new 2012 landscape, maybe you should pencil in “public office” ahead of your annual “join a gym” entry on that list. On second thought, maybe you should write it in pen. Why? This one quote from the founding president of The White House Project about the impact of the dearth of female pols on girls, from the eye-opening documentary Miss Representation: “You can’t be what you can’t see.”

Originally posted on
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