As this paper reported last week, Utah was recently ranked the worst state in the nation for women’s equality. According to WalletHub, which issued the rankings, the primary factor attributing to our distant lag behind No. 49 (Idaho) is the lack of women in our elected politics.
As the CEO and founder of a new nonpartisan nonprofit designed to increase the number of women in the Utah Legislature, I have spent many hours talking to Utah women about the possibility of them running for office. Almost uniformly, these women say: “I’d never.” The most qualified, sane, thoughtful, community-oriented Utah women I know resoundingly say, “Nope.