EP 35: 'Without Being Nudged' - Advancing Women in Government Leadership
Women are the majority of the United States, but only a slice of government leadership. On this episode, we talk with women working to turn the dial with research, myth-busting, confidence-building and a business case. (Tai chi, too.) We hear from the heads of the League of Women in Government, the president of N.C. Women in Municipal Government, and other local government officials who see positive trends but a lot of work to do. Oh, but first, we have to check in with a mayor and his mother who just made national TV. League of Women in Government http://leagueofwomeningovernment.org Morrisville, N.C., Council Member Liz Johnson (N.C. Women in Municipal Government President) http://www.townofmorrisville.org/index.aspx?nid=426 1976 ICMA report on women in the profession https://icma.org/sites/default/files/Women%20in%20the%20Profession%20Task%20Force%20Final%20Report%20July%201976.pdf ELGL's Local Government Diversity Dashboard Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/227502422/local-government-diversity-dashboard Rebecca Ryan - http://rebeccaryan.com "Spotlight on Clayton" with Mayor Jody McLeod and Mother Mayor https://youtu.be/x7n_ypVLvsU "The Mayor" promo with Mayor McLeod https://youtu.be/nePEnMR0RfM That old workplace film reel https://youtu.be/kxnVs-iZKlk
Top Keywords
- women 0.028
- mayor 0.015
- clayton 0.012
- mcleod 0.012
- government 0.010
- women government 0.007
- mayor mcleod 0.007
- leadership 0.006
- elected 0.006
- time 0.005
- heck 0.005
- positions 0.005
Transcript
On this episode of Municipal Equation. I have to be honest with you. I really thought that the barrier to women in the profession or becoming the city managers or county managers was really because there was kind of this backlog of baby boomers that were still in the profession and hadn't retired. But what we found through our research in that task force was that that actually wasn't the case.
When you are in any leadership position, it is critical that you do not just surround yourselves
with like minded people who reinforce your current views. What needs to happen today to enable the future you really want? How do we place more women in government leadership positions? What do we know about the complexity versus our assumptions? What don't we know? And how does the Tai Chi fit into all this? My name is Ben Brown, and this is Municipal Equation, a podcast about cities and towns in changing times from the North Carolina League of Municipalities, Episode 35. So before we dive into our main topic, there's something else I wanna start with real quick. Heck yeah. Let me play that again. Heck yeah. If that sounds familiar to you, you might have seen one of the promos that's been playing on national TV for a new sitcom called The Mayor. It's about a hip hop artist who is compelled to get noticed, and he'd also by filing to run for mayor, figuring that'll get his mixtape the attention it needs. And then he wins. Alright. Let me say real quick. This is not a paid promo for the mayor. I haven't even seen it yet. I plan to, but I haven't yet. Anyway, no. I'm I'm not being paid for this. I'm just highlighting it here because you might have noticed the promos they're running on TV show actual mayors giving silly advice to Courtney Rose, the fictitious protagonist played by Brandon Michael Hall. So you'll see Philadelphia mayor Jim Kenney, San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer, Salt Lake City mayor Jackie Paskupski, Mesa, Arizona mayor John Giles, and Heck, yeah. This guy. This is mayor Jody McLeod of Clayton, North Carolina, which is right down the road from where I live. I I could be there in five minutes. And I get an email the other day saying, hey, mayor McLeod is on national TV right now. You gotta see this. And so I found the promo online. I watched it, and I'm like, okay. Well, obviously, I have to talk to him. My name is Jody MacLeod. I'm the mayor of the town of Clayton in Clayton, North Carolina. So how in the world did the producers of this national TV show come to find mayor Jody McLeod of Clayton?
Well, that was basically my first question for them. So I was in Los Angeles doing a photo shoot for a magazine. Just as an aside, mayor McLeod does professional floral design, and this photo shoot was related to that. And I got a call on my cell phone. And generally, when you're under contract, with a photo shoot like that, all of your attention is provided to the company that contracted out the people. Sure. But my cell phone rang in the workroom, and I looked, and it said Los Angeles, California. And I thought this must really be someone upstairs Mhmm. Trying to get in touch with me, so I answered my phone. Right. And when I did, the lady said, you know, this is so and so with the ABC network, and we're looking for mayor Jody McLeod. And I said, well, this is Jody. And she said, well, mister mayor, is now a good time to talk? And I said, is anything wrong? Because, you know, when you get a contact from a nationwide, network, it's like, what's wrong? Sure. And so she was like, well, we're actually working on a new sitcom that's coming out in October. It's gonna be entitled The Mayor. And it's where this 22 year old African American rapper decides to run for mayor in his town. Mhmm. And he really doesn't know what he's gotten into once he wins the election. So he's gonna be calling around different mayors across the country and getting some advice. Right. And we would like for you to be one of those mayors. And I was like, wow. So how did you find me? I said, because I've already Googled best all town mayors in America, and my name did not come up. And she died laughing.
It turns out that a whole team of people working for the TV show scoured the web and asked around and ended up finding a series of videos about Clayton called spotlight on Clayton, and they featured mayor McLeod. And they loved him. And mayor McLeod definitely has a fun, upbeat way about him. I mean, there's no missing the fact that he's really, really passionate about his town. And then the TV show folks checked into the town of Clayton itself a little bit further. It's a town of about 20,000 people. And we're apparently impressed by the work that's gone into running the town and engaging with its people. So they're like, mayor McLeod is our guy. You know, we gotta put him in a promo for the mayor.
So a couple of weeks later, they sent a crew from Los Angeles to film this. But Mayor MacLeod wasn't the only Clayton resident they were interested in. And the night before, like, at 10:00 in the evening on the East Coast, they sent an email and said, by chance, would your mother be able to help us with this?
If you saw the same videos that these producers saw, you know why they wanted Mayor MacLeod's mom as well. That look like water and waves and that that flow through the whole piece. Alright. This is from a spotlight episode from 2014 about all the public art around Clayton. And no lie. It's one of the best things I've ever seen, and you're about to find out why. For choosing my my sculpture, and I hope everyone in Clayton loves it.
And, yes, ladies and gentlemen, today, I am joined by mother Mayer. Please welcome my mom, Mavory McLeod. Mama, thank you for being with us today on Spotlight on Clayton. Thank you. We've been having conversations this afternoon all about the public art in Clayton, and we just wanted to get your thought and your feedback on the sculpture entitled Love Arch.
Well, I don't like it. I just think to me, it's vulgar, and I'm not proud of it being here where people on this thoroughfare can see all of it. I really do not like it. And I'm honestly, I'm surprised that someone has not put some clothes on these people as long as this has been here. And so you were saying earlier that some of your friends kinda felt the same way. I've had several friends say something to me about it, and they didn't like it either. And they also said who in the world my friend, who in the world picked this for our town? And since they know my son's the mayor, I got a lot of those questions. I said, well, I don't know. I said, but he sure won't meet.
That is great. And it wasn't me, and I don't like it. And the thing that you're most happy about is what? That it's coming down. No. That you you no. The thing you're most happy about is you don't have to walk through it. So let's slide again. We'll take it from the side. Well, I'm So what is it? Let me ask my question. So what is it that you're most happy about? I am so thankful that it's here where it is
so everybody does not have to come to the Clayton Center through here to see all this.
Alright, folks. There you have it. Noticing that public art is the oxymoron. Public for everyone. Art maybe not so much. But today, we wanna thank mother mayor for joining us today and for expressing your opinion. You're the best. Thank you. Well,
that's where I feel.
And that's a cut. Thus, one of the promos for the mayor TV show.
Hello? Mayor McLeod. What's up, mayor? Got a sec? Heck yeah. What is the best part of the job? Having my mama around. Yes. It is. What and what is the worst part of the job? Having my mama around. Watch it. Sorry, mama. You're slouching, Joe, to sit up straight. Well, you let your mom talk to you like that? You got a problem with that? No. No. No. And Clayton mayor McLeod and mother mayor get a national spotlight.
But, seriously, this whole thing stemmed from a moment of character and humanness conveyed through a great communications effort on part of the town of Clayton, incorporating people, actual voices that speak to the town and have some personality and fun. Like back in episode five, when Damien Graham from the city of Raleigh talked about the importance of local government presenting itself not as a cold, unfeeling machine, but, you know, as real people making tough decisions, having a good time, being authentic. And speaking of which, mayor McLeod said this sitcom, the mayor, is full of authenticity as well, and it's true that mayors call other mayors on the phone to spitball and trade ideas.
I will tell you this on a super serious note. I'm so excited to see that a national network would spotlight what it's like to be a mayor. And I guess really any elected official in what they go through from the time they're elected and the learning curve that they have to experience and the leadership field that they have to acquire. Sure. Sure. And I think the sitcom is gonna show everybody, how important it is to be a part of your community, to be out there and making a difference. We we shouldn't have to be, you know, grasping at straws to find candidates to run for local government. We should have an outpour of people who wanna be in public service. And this television show is gonna show you all the great possibilities that, you know, men and women and, boys and girls can do in their community to help make a difference. Oh, and about that, heck yeah. You know, the best part of the whole video shoot was really this. So, you know, we had, two small scripts that we had to stick to, and we shot those two small scripts. And then they have this section called wild line where they ask you a question, and, basically, you give them the smartest comeback you could think of on the comeback you can think of on the spot. Uh-huh. And so that part was a lot of fun. And one of the questions was, do you have your own parking place at Town Hall? And I'm like, heck, yeah. Do you get a special parking spot? Heck, yeah. Heck, yeah. Tell me about the giant Like, the first hashtag all around everywhere was, you know, heck yeah. Now we have t shirts printed up that say heck yeah. I was like, it's just catching on like wildfire. But at the very end, the director said to me, is there anything else you'd like to say to this character? And so I
said, you know, so this guy's a rapper. Right? And he said yes. So I did my rap. Stuff. Write it down. Have you thought about a career in hip hop? You got to get it because your town can't succeed if the mayor ain't with it.
Actually used that on the final night promotional video. I couldn't believe it. It was awesome. But when I finished my rap my taping my rap right then, the room was completely silent, and my public information officer wouldn't blush and look at me, like, I cannot believe you just did that. And then lo and behold, that's the big key feature on all three of the promotional videos. I was like, yes. Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
This is an impromptu tai chi class, kinda. I recorded this in a ballroom at a hotel in Raleigh, and the room was filled with women who work in the field of government, one way or another. Elected officials like council members, staffers. I think there were some students in the mix. And at the head of the class was Rebecca Ryan. She's a futurist,
and she's into tai chi. That's gonna be our style. And the motion is almost like we're gonna do it all for a it's almost like pulling back and swirling a baseball or, like, pulling back and swirling a football. So, one of the keys in martial arts in Tai Chi is you always start going the opposite direction to pull your opponent, then you actually end up. So you're like, hey, look over here. I'll slice your hand.
Could you, explain the tai chi part of it? Yeah. So,
you know, when we think about time, we often have only a chronological view of time. You know, TikTok time, calendar time. But there's the Greeks had two words for time. Kronos was one. That's the chronology time. But Kairos was the other one. And Kairos time is about taking action in in the right moment. Like, there are supreme moments when sort of God stops time or, you know, God stops everything else and you can just step through those moments or God or whomever you believe in. And, so the purpose of doing this Tai Chi activity was to help people have sort of a chronological view, a left to right view of things, but also to be able to strike and to step in to the, you know, the moment and take the take the cut at the right moment. So tie that in with, government service or working in the government sphere. Yeah. Absolutely. So I I think we could all agree that most of our lives are driven by Kronos. TikTok time, the budget season, the the election cycle season, the, you know, two years, four years, whatever it is. And and the term of a of a career, you know, a career in public service. The rule of 88 is what we have in Wisconsin, where your age and your years of service. So we measure so many things based on TikTok time. But we're in a moment right now when many things are changing and some need to change more drastically and some need to change more thoroughly and we have to recognize these supreme moments. They don't always come. And when they do, we have to be ready to take action. And so steering that into the theme today, which is women in government. Yeah. Right. So we had, the women today thinking through possible futures for themselves. But then and so so very much TikTok time. You know, over the next ten years, fifteen years, twenty years, what could my future look like? So a lot of TikTok time in here. But then we asked, what needs to happen today to enable the future you really want? What are you willing to kind of do your Tai Chi move on right now to enable the future that you want?
So it's not breaking news that women are in the minority of government leadership. In terms of numbers, positions held in top executive or elected offices, it's men by a wide margin. Not just in government, a lot of fields. And those fields that are dominated by women, the so called pink collar jobs, are just kinda considered to be aligned with the quote unquote natural strengths of women, combined with the social weirdness that a man might feel pursuing that kind of role. You know, women's work. And of course, I'm speaking just in general historical terms, of course. But and and you don't need me to set this up. You know what's out there. But a lot of people say there are consequences when it comes to an imbalance between men and women at the top of government, at any level. Local, state, national. And at the same event where I spoke to Rebecca Ryan. By the way, it was it was called Engaging Women in Public Service, put on by the UNC School of Government, along with ICMA, ELGL, and the League of Women in Government. At this event, I caught up with the people heading up the League of Women in Government to talk about it because they're rolling on research and a huge growth in membership nationally in an effort to get more women involved in government leadership.
Pam Antill, assistant city administrator, Santa Barbara, California, president of League of Women in Government,
Santa Barbara, California is where I live. Bonnie Sverczyk, city manager of Lynchburg, Virginia and vice president of the League of Women in Government.
I have to be honest with you. I really thought that the barrier to women in the profession or becoming the city managers or county managers was really because there was kind of this backlog of baby boomers that were still in the profession and hadn't retired. But what we found through our research in that task force was that that actually wasn't the case. What we were finding is that there was just a dramatic number of increasing number of women in the assistant position or the assistant CAO position. But for whatever reason, we're not able to make that hurdle into the CAO position. And, there was no other national group. There was a smattering of, state women in local government groups, three or four across the country. And so we thought, you know, there was a really big need for us to pull together a a nationwide board and to begin a not for profit that could help to do skills development and sessions like like this one that we're doing here at with UNC across the nation. And so we pitched that idea to a few of our colleagues across the country. And, two years ago, we formed as a five zero one c three. And two years later, we have 4,000 members. So we're we're growing like gangbusters and definitely have learned that our theory was correct. There's a need to have such an organization. So anecdotally, we're told, and we did a survey as a part of our task force, report, and one of the things that we found was that women felt as though they were, moving towards it. Much like the private sector, for example, they were moving towards really great mid level management positions and they would kind of get stuck in this middle. And we really wanted to try to figure out why that was. There's lots of different reasons why. Some is, in the area of confidence building. Some of it is in the area of, again, this this crush of baby boomers that we're still waiting. Everybody's waiting for positions to open up. But what we really learned was that there's biases gender bias and diversity biases across the country. We all have them. But it seems to affect women in the profession and people of color in the profession, very dramatically.
This is pretty evident if you go rooting through the old archive film reels from the nineteen forties and fifties about the workplace and job training. There are some film strips that specifically are for male supervisors dealing with women employees. Like that's what the film strip is about. You can imagine, you know, you don't need me to play clips from these to make a point, but I do wanna break out this one. It's from a film produced by the US government in the nineteen forties that does go so far to outline the context of the day in kind of a self aware way and make that male supervisor the fool in terms of misunderstanding the women who work for him. What's old stuff to you and me
is brand new to them.
And I was just thinking, what a dove I'd be doing something that's old stuff to my wife but new to me. Well, like baking a pie. How did it go today, Joe?
Oh, alright.
You troubled about something?
No. Everything went alright, Molly. But
you know, I had seven requests for time off today.
Well, I guess women don't realize what it means to stick on the job.
Maybe they don't.
How was your day?
Pretty quiet. I did the washing this morning and cleaned the house. And I took Junior to the dentist and then did the shopping. I put up 16 jars of jam this afternoon. Then I went to work on Junior's clothes. Joe, I'm sorry supper's late.
Nice going, old lady. You know, Molly, I've been thinking. Yes, Joe. Maybe some of those women and girls coming into the plant, well, maybe they have home responsibilities too.
Could be.
Maybe maybe they really do need time off. Perhaps I could rearrange their work schedule for you. I'm sure they'd like that.
So many of them have two jobs, Joe. One in the home, one in the plant.
Gee. I'm glad I thought of that.
Yes, dear.
If you couldn't tell, that yes, dear was said with kind of a smirk, kinda like the bless your heart kind of way. Anyway, that was 1944. So let's build back up to 2017. In 1976, a report under ICMA, the International City County Management Association, with what was called the task force on women in the profession, it identified barriers, like societal constraints, educational opportunities, lack of role models, things that might impact a woman in her life. And then within government employment, there are other barriers, like inadequate upward mobility opportunities and work assignments that don't exactly pave a way forward, like, you know, support work versus more professional work. Even more discouraging, the report said at one point, especially for the older women with years of service, is that often she must train the young men who come in at a salary higher than her own. End quote. Then you've got stereotypes like, you know, women get sick more often, or they work for pocket money, or just simply to have something to do, myths that would impact expectations from executives, all in this 1976 report, And it actually does a really good myth versus reality breakdown chart that you should read. I'll post the report in the show notes. Looking at ICMA's membership at the time, 13% of all those classified as assistants were women, but only 1.6% of those who held the title of assistant manager were women. So fast forward to 2017 and the leadership ratio. For example, citing ELGL, about 13% of local government chief administrative officers are women.
Over 50% of state and local government employees are women. Women make up over 50% of the master's in public administration degrees that are granted each year. And so it just doesn't make sense that there are not the same number of women that are also vying for these positions and getting these positions.
Hello, miss Johnson. Hey. It's Ben Brown. Hey, Ben. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Is now a good time? This is perfect. It's a good time. I wanted to talk to Morrisville, North Carolina council member Liz Johnson because, for one, she's the new president of a group called North Carolina Women in Municipal Government. And she's outspoken not only from a government staffing point of view, but also elected office.
There's two questions. Why do so few women choose to run for office? And then the follow on, how do we get more women into leadership positions in government? I think the answers, to those questions can be summed up in in two words, qualification and encouragement. And so qualification, women tend to think they're not qualified to run for office. They underestimate their odds and their chances of winning. They underestimate the support that they can garner. And in truth, women are uniquely qualified for leadership positions in government. Women tend to collaborate and compromise and to get to solutions for the greater good, and they tend to have the listening skills necessary to problem solve and to help improve their communities and to serve their citizens. So that's qualification. The second piece in my experience is encouragement. And everyone, men, women, we need to be encouraged to run, and this encouragement just isn't happening for women anywhere near the same rate that it's happening for men. Women are less likely to be encouraged by parents, teachers, family, political groups, and women are less likely to run without being nudged and sometimes being nudged more than once.
I'm sure all of you have listened to episode one of this podcast. If you haven't, I strongly urge you to because we hear from Dee Dee Adams, the Winston Salem city council member who basically goes for it no matter what she's doing. She's even cheated death, which is what episode one is about. A couple weeks ago, she was sitting next to Liz Johnson on a panel focused on women and local government.
Al, what led me to become a public servant, Again, just like Liz and all of us in this room, we started very early. I ran for ninth grade treasure. My twin sister told me we could win, and I told her I didn't know because I never ran for anything, but we won. And from there on, I've always done something. Again, we hear over and over, and I'm 63, and I heard it for probably fifty years. We don't support each other. That's right. I don't I don't I don't get it. I don't get it. You know, like, even when one of us steps out to run, you all know
the challenges we're gonna face. Council member Johnson said that kind of spirit for change needs to be plugged in at an early age.
The solution is multi pronged. As parents, we need to encourage our daughters to run for office. I have two girls. They grew up knowing that they needed they needed to be involved politically, whether that was, at a minimum voting to all the way up to running for office one day. So as parents, we need to encourage our daughters to run for office. As women in office in an elected position today, we need to reach out and encourage and empower other talented women, and we need, as women, to stop being our own worst enemy. Women need to own this issue and change the outcome to get more women into leadership positions in all levels of government. We need to empower each other, and then we need to support each other Mhmm. Moving forward. And, you know, bottom line, we need to encourage each other to go for it, to jump in, because there's never gonna be a perfect time.
And so how does that translate over to or how does that influence the the kind of work you're gonna be doing as president of the, the state, women in municipal government group? And, how does what what actions are you planning to take that address what you just talked about?
I have two goals right now, and one is to, to increase our membership and then to engage that membership so that they stay involved, that they are connected with other women across North Carolina, and that they stay in elected office. I think it's important that once a woman runs and wins, and and and typically, according to the Meredith College research that was done in 2014, sixty three percent of the women that ran for office in North Carolina won their races. So when when women run, women win. So once they get in office, we need to have a support system for them to stay in office.
Back to Pam Mantel from the League of Women in Government. She says there are additional factors that might impact how many women serve in government leadership,
and it's a dynamic connection between elected and appointed roles. One of the things that we're talking about with elected women is the statistics actually show us that the more women that are on an elected board, the less chance that a woman will be hired as the appointed official. Why? I don't know why. I don't know why we have new we wish we knew why. Some we we work with some really great people. We've had the opportunity to work with people, you know, way smarter than us. We work with doctor Mary Ann Cooper at the Stanford Center for, Gender Research. And one of the things that she's found in her research that she shared with us is the way that we are, socialized as we grow up and hopefully, this will change with with with future generations is that, there may be a spot for a minority candidate, but there's only one. So that puts women in a very competitive mode or even, people of color. There you know, there's only gonna be one spot for a person of color, one spot for a woman. And so sometimes what happens is that there's a dynamic that's created that if we have elected women that are working really, really hard to get their one spot, that there's some kind of inherent, sociological bias that comes into play that I can be the only woman in this group. We're trying to to to bust that myth because that's certainly not the case everywhere in The United States. We just want everybody to have an equal playing field.
I asked her about the data and breakdowns regarding women applying for government jobs, especially the c suite jobs, and what the numbers were in terms of applying and getting. And it's not so easy to get that info.
What we're trying to do right now is work with a number of recruiters across the nation to try to get at the data that you that you mentioned. Are women applying of that, number? How many are being offered an opportunity to interview? And then going one step further, how many are offered the position? A lot of that information is confidential, especially if they use an outside recruiter. So we're trying to work with, as one of our many, mission and task items for the next five years. That's one of the things that we're working on is, how do we get at that data? How can we do better? And one of the avenues that we've started is, in the absence of that data, let's go to trying to educate as many elected and appointed officials as we can about gender identifying gender bias, the the benefits of gender balance, and how to prevent and move forward in organizations that have identified gender biases.
So that piece about the benefits of gender diversity, a lot of people cite studies about that, about the actual business case for diversifying your supervisory. So it's not just about setting a goal of having an all female city council or an all female department head structure.
That would defeat the point. An all male public works or police department has the same challenges that an all female social services or human resources. And I only say department. I only say that because we do get a lot of our colleagues come up to me and they say, We're so excited. We have all women in our leadership team. And we're like, Well, it's not a we're talk we're talk we we're not trying to move men out of every position. We're just trying to have an equal balance and an equal opportunity for everybody to have those those positions. Departments kind of historically show that they have some of the same issues. Groupthink, not a diversity of thought, and and more chance of people doing the same thing all the time because it's always worked rather than looking at how it might work better, how we could be better in serving our communities, which is the ultimate goal of all of this. So gonna say, at at the end of the day,
this is about making our communities and our organizations stronger because we have gender diversity and leadership.
You know, this is not a women versus men issue. So, I I I it's important and necessary for good governing good governing that there be diversity and leadership and governance. So our all our elected officials need to reflect the citizens that they represent, whether that's gender, race, age, and the percentage of women in elected office has just really remained relatively stagnant. And that's across all levels of government, whether it's local, state, or federal. So, this diversity and leadership in government is incredibly important to make sure that we are solving the issues and finding solutions for all our citizens. When you are in any leadership position, it is critical that you do not just surround yourselves selves with like minded people who reinforce your current views. I think you do a disservice to whatever, field position you're in. It is critically important that you seek other views to understand the interests and the positions of other views, and and that's what leads to really inclusive and good solutions to problems.
And you will you will read this across all kinds of studies and reports and books. Men will typically step up even when they're not ready and they're not qualified, they step up. And they they don't they don't have fear for doing that. Whereas we kinda and it's just the way we are. We second guess or not even second guess, but think think it through a little more and wanna make sure and and I would say forget all that. You jump right in there. Let's do it.
If you don't see yourself in a position, then you don't think you can be in that position. So this diversity is important so that all people see themselves and then there's that hope and and you give folks that confidence that they can be in that position one day too. So that's why this diversity in in is very important.
To get a better picture of how diverse local government actually is, ELGL, a good friend of the podcast, is right now working on what they're calling a diversity dashboard. There's a Kickstarter page up right now to support it. And the goal is to collect data from every local government entity in The United States by December 31. They've got a method for doing this. It's been underway. I'll have a link to the Kickstarter page in the show notes to this episode at soundcloud.com/municipalequation. But you can also go to elgl.org and find the link pretty easily. It's right at the top of the page. Also link to everything else we covered in the episode, reports, organizations, that old film reel. The League of Women in Government is online at leagueofwomeningovernment.org. They're also on Twitter and Instagram. Their website has a ton of resources and articles that you can check out. And of course, I'll link to the videos and promos with Clayton Mayor Jody McLeod and his mother, Mavorene McLeod, or mother mayor. I'd like to thank them for being a part of this episode. Thanks for listening, and please send feedback. You can email me at bbrown@nclm.org. This obviously couldn't be a comprehensive tackling of the main subject we talked about today, but I still wanna I still want you to email me and point out what we didn't cover here with regard to women in government leadership. Maybe there's something you think everybody always misses in this conversation. There's a ton of angles on this. Doesn't have to be just one episode. Actually, it couldn't be one episode. But get up with me and let me know. Same goes for anything else we've talked about on this podcast overall. Reach out and talk to us. Us. I'm on Twitter. The handle is muniequation. That's muni equation. You can look us up on Instagram as well. Subscribe on iTunes. Leave us a friendly review. Really appreciate that. Municipal Equation is a biweekly podcast from the North Carolina League of Municipalities online at nclm.org. And we'll talk to you again soon. This is Ben Brown.
