The chair of the Webster select board was wearing a polka-dotted blouse and drinking out of a Wonder Woman coffee mug at the
town governing body’s most recent meeting.
“It’s all about female power in Webster these days,” 54-year-old Nanci Schofield said, flipping through a binder of town ordinances.
As of Webster’s most recent election in March, the town’s top board for the first time in its history is comprised of all women. Twenty-six-year-old Bianca Acebron Peco was elected to join Schofield and Chris Schadler, 71, who won her seat during town elections in 2018.
“Leslie, our town administrator, even got us matching socks,” Schadler said. “They’re pink and they say, ‘Chicks rock.’
Despite advancements for gender equality in Webster, the number of women in local politics is still slim. Out of 42 towns in the Monitor’s coverage area, 102 select board members are men while 34 are women.
Webster is the only all-female board in the Monitor’s coverage area, and just five towns – Allenstown, Danbury, Epsom, New London and Pembroke – have a female majority on a select board.
“For all the advancements being made, we know local office tends to be dominated by an old boys network,” said Emily Baer-Bositis, assistant professor of politics at the University of New Hampshire. “It can be very difficult to break into that.”
Background New Hampshire is known for its all-female congressional delegation.
But like at the municipal level, the number of women in state-level positions is still low, with around 30 percent of women in political leadership roles.
It’s slowly increasing: During the November 2018 elections, the number of women in 24-seat state Senate increased from seven to 10. The female members of the 400-member House increased from 115 to 135.
Those who work in the field say women need training and encouragement to enter politics. One local organization, the New Hampshire Women’s Foundation, is offering that with their Women Run! program, which debuted a year ago. Women Run offers women interested in entering leadership roles a chance to build a social network and learn skills like campaign speaking and fundraising.
And it works: 20 Women Run! alumnae were on the ballot and 10 won their elections for the New Hampshire House of Representatives in 2018, said New Hampshire Women’s Foundation CEO Tanna Clews.
“Research shows that women don’t run unless they are asked to run,” Clews said. “We need to be calling on women we know who we think would be great in office and encouraging them and supporting them in every way we can.”
There are a few reasons women don’t run for office – the biggest one is representation. Women aren’t used to seeing other women in political leadership roles, said Jennifer Lucas, professor of politics at Saint Anselm College.
Women also tend to think they’re under qualified to fill leadership roles, Lucas said.
“Often women tend to see themselves as less qualified for office – they tend to downplay their own qualifications and say, ‘I’m not going to run until I have x, y and z experience,’ ” Lucas said.
The ones who do typically join politics out of a passion for a specific issue.
“A lot of women, when you interview them, they’ll say the reason they got into politics is they wanted to solve a problem at their kid’s school,” Lucas said. “It’s less of, ‘I wanted to have a career in politics.’ ”
That’s why the school board is the one job in local government where women hold the majority, according to Clews.
Margaret Byrnes, Executive Director of the New Hampshire Municipal Association, said a way to support more women in leadership roles is for men and women who are nearing retirement to mentor women coming up in the field.
“I think a challenge is just breaking in – having the confidence to break in and say that maybe this is more male-dominated and make the first step,” Byrnes said. “I think when women do that, we see positive results.”
The Women’s Foundation is working to collect data on how many women are working in local, state and national government. There’s no entity in New Hampshire that currently is collecting that data.
Webster Schofield is now the longest-serving member of the board after four years. When she joined, she was serving with two men. Schofield said she asked that the title of the board to be changed from “board of selectmen” to “select board” when she first took office. Now, she’s asking that her title be changed to “chairwoman” instead of “chairman.”
“I have noticed that there have been women chairs that still use the term ‘chairman’, and I just think, we don’t need to do that,” Schofield said. “You don’t need to be stepping into a man’s role. It’s just a role, anybody can have the role. You don’t have to be a man, you don’t have to be a woman. It’s just a position.”
Schadler said she’s proud to be a part of the first all-female board, and grateful for the town for being confident in her abilities. But she said there is a bit of pressure, too.
“We have to get it right,” she said. “We have to do a really good job.”
Acebron Peco, a digital marketer, has lived in Webster for a little over a year. She said she thinks women in her generation are going to be a lot more involved in politics.
“I’m fortunate enough to be in the millennial generation where I don’t really know any different or think it’s weird to have a woman on a select board or have a woman in office,”she said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re wearing pants and a skirt to me as long as you do a good job.”