What Talking Politics with Strangers Taught Us About Women in Politics
By Marley Duchovnay & Casey Moore,
Co-Founders of Project Divided
Marley and Casey, co-founders of Project Divided
Every single day, women make things happen. We carry teams and businesses. We innovate and problem-solve. We build consensus and stand up for what we believe in. We find ways to improve the lives of our families and our communities.
We are Marley and Casey, the two co-founders of Project Divided. Both of us were interested in politics from a young age for the same reason--we saw it as the way to impact positive change in our communities. As we grew, we found new ways to get involved in the political process--knocking on doors for candidates and picking up phones for local elected officials. While studying public policy at the University of Delaware, we put more tools in our belt as we studied community problems, searched for root causes and then learned about possible policy interventions to help address those issues.
But even with everything that we had learned, something seemed to not be adding up. What we were learning in class simply wasn’t being reflected in our political environment. It didn’t feel like many elected officials were searching for root causes and the conversation online usually felt pretty toxic. As young women passionate about improving our communities through political action, we wanted to do something.
We decided to take an unconventional path and create Project Divided. After college graduation, we packed up our car and drove across the country from our homes in Pennsylvania and Delaware to a small 4,000 person town in Central Texas called Smithville. While in Smithville we created a web series bringing folks of different political views and backgrounds together for conversations on some of the pressing issues of our day—all while working at a local restaurant to support ourselves. Our goal with this project is to increase communication and understanding between people of different perspectives in order to begin working towards solving the most important issues of our time.
Doing this work as a young woman comes with its challenges. Whether it’s questions about if we really could’ve created this idea on our own or suggestions about all of the things that guy we just met would’ve done differently, the two of us have had to get pretty good at discerning constructive feedback from the rest. In both subtle and not-so-subtle ways, our society tells girls and women that it is not our role to lead when it comes to politics.
We strongly disagree. Just like men, we are impacted by inaction on these pressing issues--from healthcare to the climate. And, in fact, when it comes to our ability to bring lots of different voices and perspectives to the table, to find creative ways to address problems in our communities, and then build coalitions to put those local solutions into practice, we think that women are incredibly well-suited for the job.
A study conducted by Quorum, researched the legislative successes of female Senators over a seven year period. To provide a brief overview, they found that female Senators were not only highly productive when it comes to introducing new legislation, but also collaborated with women across the aisle more frequently than their male counterparts did, and were able to garner more average co-sponsors on their legislation.
Our work with Project Divided has taught us much. While many aspects of this work are rewarding, and we have had the opportunity to step-out of our comfort zones in major ways, we also realized that there is still much more work to be done. During our time in Smithville, for example, both the Democratic and the Republican county parties were led by bold, strong women. Additionally, we had the chance to meet and learn from women leading in local government, non-profit organizations, and businesses. However, to be fully honest, we also were confronted with people who mistook our eagerness with niaveté, and people who sought to take advantage of young women who were new to the area. Luckily though, in all of these cases, we had empowering women to support and back us up.
Looking around in your community, you will find girls and women who are already tackling the problems they see around them. From teachers working to ensure that their students have adequate supplies, to students themselves taking action on preventing gun violence or speaking out about climate issues. Perhaps, we ourselves are these people, too! In honor of this recent International Women’s Day, we hope that each of us will take a moment to thank a woman or girl in our lives who we see striving to make an impact, and that we, too, will hold ourselves accountable to acknowledge our strength and ability to create change.
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If you are interested in learning more about Project Divided or checking out our Web Series, please visit our website here, or visit us on Facebook here!