HOW ELECT HER ARE CHANGING THE FACE OF POLITICS
A CHAT WITH HANNAH STEVENS, ELECT HER.
Elect Her joined us this year for a team meeting; I managed to sneak a 30 minute chat with CEO Hannah Stevens for our Women’s History Month series.
Fun fact: Hannah is a childhood friend of one of the Anomalous founders, Sam!
Elect Her is an organisation dedicated to “building a world where 51% (or more) of elected officials are women”. And let me tell you, THAT is a world I wanna live in.
Only blue quoted text is the opinion of Hannah Stevens (marked HS), the rest is my own. Images are of Elect Her using The Home back in 2022.
WHO ARE ELECT HER?
HS: We are a tiny but mighty organisation nurturing the movement of women engaging in Britain's democracy.
We are here to motivate, support and equip women to stand for next office in all spheres of government and build a community of women around them so that they can thrive once they're there.
Founded in 2014 by Lee Chalmers, Elect Her are currently supporting over 1000 women on their political journey.
150 women, supported by this revolutionary organisation, have been elected into local councils and two into Scottish parliament.
And 400 are getting ready to stand … and counting!
THE ROLE OF ‘FUND HER’
Targeted at low-income candidates, Elect Her offer grants to a select number of women running for office every year. The selection process prioritises underrepresented groups such as women of colour, working-class women and disabled women.
Just when you thought Elect Her couldn’t get much cooler, eh?
HS: Activate is a fantastic organisation that was set up by some of our sisters a few years ago, and they started to build a fund to support women and campaigners.
We worked really closely together; they were providing the funding we were providing the training for candidates. And then in 2022, it was decided that we would merge our work just simply due to limited resources.
And so Activate merged into Elect Her and we now call that Fund Her. So we're both fund raising to bring in money for that and then distributing those grants to women who need it.
To select the successful applicants for the Fund Her grants, Hannah revealed that Elect Her have conversations with each of woman to learn more about their story.
This intimate, hands-on approach to an already fabulously meaningful initiative was a joy to hear about. The more I learned about Elect Her, the more it became clear that themes of sisterhood, ally-ship and support are consistently at the forefront of everything they do.
HS: It's a total privilege to hear the stories of women's experiences and their motivations and their passions, you know. We feel really, really lucky to be brought into women's journeys.
And by nature of having all these deep conversations, I think we've become experts in the lived experience of women in politics.
POLITICS & MENTAL HEALTH
When I consider politics as a career; my mind paints an image of a hardcore industry that evokes overwhelm, exhaustion and combativeness.
Hannah shared that Elect Her heavily value self-care to help alleviate the stress of being in politics. It dawned on me that this was ground-breaking, and the fact that it is ground-breaking is scary.
We discussed how mental health is quite possibly a universal issue amongst politicians due to stress and overwhelm.
HS: I think it's a much bigger problem than we are conscious of and unaware of and really, we need to get to the heart of that if we really are going to fix our democracy.
And ensure that we have the right people standing for elected office; and the right people means people that look and live like their communities.
So there's so much more that needs to be done and we can't fix it all about ourselves, but by putting self care as a priority in how we show up and how we encourage women to prioritise just a momentary check in with their souls whilst they're doing this, it feels like an important part of it and something we're continuing to explore.
It is encouraging to know that an organisation dedicated to preparing women for politics values self-care so highly; this emotional awareness is absolutely key to building resilience and self-compassion which are, I’d say, two pretty important qualities in politics.
Further to this, I’ve maintained for most of my life that there would be far less war if more women were in charge; I shared this with Hannah and she came through with the cold, hard facts to prove it.
HS: There's global research from King's College London and Westminster foundation for democracy that says: the countries that have more gender balance and equal representation are less likely to go to war. We used to joke about that too, but it's now literally true.
ADVICE FOR ASPIRING FEMALE POLITICIANS
For those of you who are wanting to run, or get involved in politics in anyway, this one’s for you. Elect Her are an ideal community to become a part of in your journey to making positive change.
HS: Firstly I’d say, we’ve got your back. I’d say come and join in, come and hang out with us. We'll talk you through all your concerns, and we'll give you the tools that you need.
We'll hold a mirror up to you, so that you can see that you have exactly what you need in place, but we'll help you kind of work it out for yourself so that you know that for sure.
One of our taglines is if you care, you're qualified. If you're even thinking about it, then you're the right person. If you've connected your own experiences with politics, then actually you are exactly the kind of person that we need to be exploring this and finding your role.
Not everyone's going to become prime minister. And it's not all about claiming the biggest amount of power. We need women everywhere. We need women inside political parties. We need more women in council chambers and in our Parliaments.
So, what could we expect from an Elect Her workshop?
HS: Authenticity, community and support - that's the foundation. They all do look very different, whether it's one to one, group sessions or big public in-person events.
Depending on where you're at on your journey, we can provide you tailored individual support for what you need.
WHAT’s NEXT FOR ELECT HER?
HS: I think this year is a really exciting new phase of our work where we're really continuing to grow our community and grow the number of ways that you can get involved.
So even if you're like ‘no, standing for election is not for me’, we want to really find ways that you can get involved and maybe you can support other women in your local area.
AH: That's also really cool because it's inclusive for personality types. It's inclusive for introverts. So then it's knowing that you're still putting some kind of effort in and that's really awesome that you've considered that.
HS: We haven’t got all of the answers yet. We haven't got the place to catch them yet, but that's the next piece of work.
2024 is the biggest year for democracy on the planet. More than half the world's population will be going to the ballot box this year. So we're conscious that you know, the UK is part of that.
General election is always a really good time for people to get involved even if they haven't done so before. All candidates need someone to deliver leaflets. You don't have to be a member of the party but find out who you want to support and find out ways to support them.
Elect Her have developed a fantastic downloadable toolkit for people who want to contribute to the election, but aren’t sure how.
In addition, a de-mystifying voting toolkit for those who find the process overwhelming or confusing.