Sharon Geuea Jones rose from her seat in the audience after Monday night’s Columbia City Council meeting began, and walked over to the podium in the front of the room.
With her right hand raised slightly above her shoulder, Jones swore to faithfully discharge the duties of her new role — Fourth Ward council member — and support the charter and ordinances of the city of Columbia.
“This is a great community, and I am so pleased and privileged and honored to be able to represent it,” Jones said once she sat down with the other council members.
After Jones was sworn in, Mayor Barbara Buffaloe acknowledged the historic moment.
“You’ll notice this is the first time the Columbia City Council is an all-female council,” Buffaloe said.
Jones won a special election Aug. 4 to fill the vacancy after Nick Foster, the previous Fourth Ward representative, resigned to relocate to Georgia.
Columbia now joins a small group of American cities, including St. Paul, Minnesota, and Gulfport, Florida, that have an all-female City Council.
In Missouri, only 29.8% of local elected officials are women, according to data from the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
That percentage is similar to data from the rest of the country. The center’s researchers found that women hold 32.7% of municipal positions for American cities with more than 10,000 people.
Director of Data Chelsea Hill said researchers have found that women tend to be very involved in their community, so local government is a “natural fit.”
“Women will see an issue in their community and want to fix it, so the municipal level is a really good entry point into that,” Hill said.
Buffaloe also acknowledged the women who had previously held public office in Columbia. She specifically mentioned Betty McCaskill, Columbia’s first female council member, and Mary Anne McCollum, Columbia’s first female mayor.
“It’s not always easy being a female elected official, and so I just want to thank those who continue to serve, including the ladies up here with me right now,” Buffaloe said.
Overcoming obstacles
Third Ward council member Jacque Sample said she is “proud” to be part of Columbia’s first all-female City Council, and Buffaloe echoed Sample’s sentiment.
“I was really, really kind of awe-inspired by having an all-female council, especially because I’m only the second female mayor in Columbia,” Buffaloe said.
In a Facebook video posted on Friday, Buffaloe said that in her experience, women often “lead with empathy and collaboration.” She said they also tend to prioritize transparency and community engagement.
Although she believes the milestone is significant, Buffaloe said she and Mary Anne McCollum, Columbia’s first female mayor, have talked about hoping to get past the point of being labeled as a “female” mayor rather than just a mayor. McCollum was mayor from 1989 to 1995.
For Columbia politicians, being a female mayor or a female council member sometimes comes with obstacles that extend beyond the label.
Sample said she and other female council members have dealt with sexism and harassment on social media.
“I’ve seen people very blatantly rate the appearance of the female council members,” Sample said. “This was back when we had two males on council, and they didn’t care about what the men looked like, but they were rating us women on our appearance.”
Sample also said she has faced concerns over the physical safety of herself and her family.
She said she had an instance where someone would follow her in public, take pictures and post about it on social media. Sample said it was a “really unnerving experience” and something other women on the council have also encountered.
Sample reached out to the Columbia Police Department to intervene. She said she also completed a self-audit of her home and spent over $3,000 to install a new security system.
“When this position pays $6,000 and I have to spend over $3,000 for my own personal safety and the safety of my family, that’s ridiculous,” Sample said. “I don’t know of any male person who has served in this position who’s had the same type of problem.”
City Council members previously received an annual stipend of around $6,000, which increased to about $7,000 in May.
When Sample was elected to the position, she knew she would face people who were unhappy with decisions she made on the council. But she said she was not prepared for the harassment.
“I would really like to be meeting with the director about the zoning regulation, or meeting about the sidewalk that’s interrupted, or meeting about affordable housing, or meeting about the utilities changes that are coming,” Sample said. “Those are things I want to be talking about. I don’t want to have to be worried that somebody’s following me in public or gonna come to my home, or worried about what I’m wearing.”
Buffaloe also said people have made physical threats against her family, and she has installed security cameras at her house. She said her family has sometimes changed their routines and kept in touch with the police chief if she is going somewhere.
“Talking to my male peers in other cities, as well as counterparts within Columbia, they have not faced the same level of harassment that I have and that I’ve seen my other female elects face,” Buffaloe said.
Support from Missouri and beyond
Throughout Missouri, some organizations seek to support women as they face gender-specific obstacles in their political careers and leadership roles.
In Columbia, Buffaloe has worked with the nonprofit United Women’s Empowerment to promote the organization’s Appointments Project Journey Groups.
United Women’s Empowerment is based in Kansas City and strives to break down barriers to women’s economic growth and leadership through research, policy solutions and civic engagement. One of their initiatives, the Appointments Project, brings groups of women together to learn about civic leadership opportunities and navigate the appointment process in their communities.
Wendy Doyle, president and CEO, said the intended outcome is for women to join boards and commissions in their community, which may lead to future campaigns for public office.
In the Facebook video Buffaloe posted Friday, she noted that most of the current City Council members previously served on city boards or commissions.
“That experience and opportunity to get to know how local government works is instrumental to being successful in the role,” Buffaloe said in the video.
Doyle said Buffaloe has been a “great supporter” of the project.
“At the end of last year, when we had the celebration for an Appointments Project Journey Group, she came and was really a part of the celebration to encourage women to get engaged in the city of Columbia,” Doyle said.
While they and other groups offer organized support, Doyle said something much simpler can benefit women who are on the fence about running for office: endorsements from the people around them.
Teona McGhaw said women are sometimes hesitant to run for office, but if they are repeatedly asked to run for a certain position, it is more likely they will go for it.
McGhaw is the vice president of membership for the east region of the National Women’s Political Caucus, and she is also the former president of the its Missouri branch. It is a grassroots organization that trains and supports female candidates running for elected and appointed offices.
McGhaw said that for female candidates, speaking with other women who have already run for office or are in elected positions can be helpful.
“We try to put women in a room with other women who have done it,” McGhaw said.
For Jones, support came from the people who encouraged her to run for office after former council member Foster’s resignation and the people who dedicated themselves to her campaign through canvassing and other means. She said she received an “outpouring of support” as a candidate.
After her win on election night, Jones said the all-female council is “definitely historic,” and she emphasized the seven members will bring a variety of opinions to the City Council.
“We are seven very different people with very different backgrounds,” Jones said. “We’ve got a lot of different perspectives, and I think that people who think we’re a monolith are going to be very disappointed.”
