Each weekday, after work and just before dark, there is a small window during which—as a candidate for a House seat in Connecticut’s state legislature—I have a precious few hours to knock on doors and introduce myself to voters.

It isn’t uncommon for me to have my 3-year-old daughter, Parker, in tow. The reason: I can’t always afford a babysitter.

Hello! My name is Jiakun ‘Jack’ Li, the new research intern at RepresentWomen. I am a recent graduate from Johns Hopkins University Applied Economics Program, a teaching assistant at School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) for Macroeconomics, and a research assistant on STATA programming and code replication for Assistant Professor Ryan Kim at SAIS. I was born and raised in Shanghai, China, a city bursting with endless nightlife and countless entertainment. After work, I enjoy trying out new restaurants (I appreciate all types of cuisine, especially Chinese, Thai and Italian), working out, playing board games (Settler of Catan) and watching GoT/West World. In addition, I love learning new languages (Spanish in progress) and hope to achieve Italian or Portuguese next.

In January 2017, I landed in Washington, D.C. and I witnessed the historical outcome of the 2016 presidential election. I was deeply struck due to the subsequent influence of politics on people’s daily lives, such as the 2018 Tax Reform and the termination of DACA program, which strengthened my interest in politics and led to the research internship at RepresentWomen.

When I signed up for “Theories of International Relations” last year, I never expected to learn as much about feminism as I did.  And yet, while sitting in my first class, I was introduced to the works of J. Ann Tickner – a feminist IR theorist who argues that omitting women from political theory leads to women being omitted from political practice.  Through that class, I learned that there are structural causes for the underrepresentation of women in politics, and that this is evident not only in the makeup of our leaders, but also in how our future leaders are being taught.  

Studying Tickner motivated me to learn more about what can be done to remove the barriers that prevent women from being elected into office.  Because representation matters. Whether it’s a name on a book or a ballot, representation encourages participation – and I strongly believe that it is necessary to create more opportunities for women to be representatives in this country.  What I did not anticipate, was how quickly I would find this opportunity.

Women’s participation in Somali politics has traditionally been low, and a controversial topic in the country. Somali society typically ascribes to more conservative notions of a woman’s role in family and community life, rarely envisioning a position of political leadership in a male-dominated system. This has been changing, but there’s a long road ahead.

Greetings!

According to this piece on Broadly:

Coming from a patriarchal society in Central Asia, it is a great challenge to advocate for women’s political participation and gender advancement. When I meet colleagues from governmental institutions and even from civil society organizations, they ask two questions: “Why does the political participation of women matter for our country and is it difficult to advocate for gender advancement while being male?” My simple answer is that I think about the future of my daughter and little sisters who are potentially vulnerable to issues such as underage marriage, bride kidnapping, gender based violence, and girls education.

My interests in gender advancement increased during my PhD research on Central Asian civil society, whereby I investigated the role of women in our society. Five years of research on the civil society sector of the post-Soviet region totally changed my view on gender issues and it gave me a great opportunity to explore cultural and traditional barriers faced by women and adolescent girls across the region. Hence, after my PhD research I committed myself to work in the area of gender equality at the academic and professional level.

In high schools around the country, the number of men and women that are interested in politics, and that run for student government are about equal. In college, about 52.93% of student government positions are held by women, which is representative of undergraduate students demographics.  But that parity is not maintained after college. Despite making up 51% of the population, women only make up 20% of congress, and the problem isn’t just getting elected – only 22% of this year’s senatorial candidates are women, which is the highest it’s ever been, but it still shows how few women are running. So why aren’t women running for office nearly as much as they do in a scholastic environment?