SC Women In Leadership Is Balancing the Scales in South Carolina’s Public Offices

Photo Credit: Sam Holland

By Rebekah McCubbins

SC Women in Leadership is making waves in elections across the state of South Carolina, and they have a message for you: no matter who you are, you can lead.

SC Women in Leadership (SC WIL) began operating in 2018 with the initial financial support of 100 founders–women and men of all backgrounds–committed to gender parity in the state’s elected offices. Sara Ballard, COO of SC WIL, shared that a mere 14.7% of elected offices in South Carolina are held by women. “And we’re 51% of the population in the state. So we certainly need to make progress there,” she explains. Sara joined as a founding member of the organization in hopes of balancing the scales.

SC Women in Leadership isn’t solely focused on major statewide offices. Their goals center around the idea of creating a “pipeline” of women, beginning with hyper-local offices. “We want to support women for town council, for city council, for school boards,” says Sara “All of those local offices make an enormous impact on our state as well as giving women that experience serving.”

The organization is committed to equity across party lines and demographics. “We are a multi-partisan organization supporting any and all women who are interested in running for elected office or seeking public appointed board and commission positions across the state,” Sara shares. “Whether you're a CEO or whether you're a stay-at-home mom, you have something to contribute.”

Their goal for the upcoming year, which they call ‘More in 2024,’ is to “triple the number of women who are running for elected office and seeking a public appointed board.” According to Sara, “that equates to more than 800 additional women in the pipeline.”

To help women get started, SC WIL offers proprietary research to find “the most winnable seats.” Sara says this ensures that “if they are going to run, they can make good use of their time and resources with seats that are approachable, that are winnable in this and the next election.” The organization offers multiple training sessions each month focused on these ‘opportunity seats,’ to help women “get a high-level overview of what the historical election data means” and create “a campaign strategy with support of the other training and resources that SC WIL offers.”

And that’s not the only training opportunity that SC Women in Leadership offers. They offer a variety of opportunities to learn, from in-person conferences to virtual ‘office hours’ highlighting specific topics. Office hours trainings are “deep dives into mostly campaign topics, but also some appointed office topics.” Each topic is offered on a recurring basis throughout the year, so you don’t have to worry about missing an opportunity. “The idea of office hours is that there are multiple cycles during the year where we offer the same sessions that we would in a day-long conference format,” explains Sara.

But even a one-hour scheduled training can be inaccessible for some women, and SC WIL is committed to finding ways to break down those barriers. The timing of their organization’s founding has, in some ways, contributed to their success in creating accessible training options. “It was a really interesting time when we first got up and operating,” Ballard shared. “We just got on our feet and then COVID hit.” While still in its infancy, SC WIL had to make major changes to its strategies. “So we have been learning what the new world is like, and figuring out how to accomplish our mission of increasing the number of women in elected and appointed office across South Carolina.”

As the world went virtual, SC WIL saw new opportunities to train women to run for office. “One of the needs that we saw in the feedback from our participants was that there was a place for an online self-paced training resource,” Sara explains. “You may need to do it while you're waiting in the car line, or you may need to do it after your kids go to bed at night, or once you get off work in the afternoon, or Saturday morning. But on your timeline, you can dig into campaign topics like developing your campaign message, finance, compliance, navigating the media, and more.”

But Sara says that with all of the training that they offer, the first hurdle is helping women understand that they are qualified. “Women think that they have to check every single box on the job description in order to be qualified. And the things that women are doing in their jobs and their households qualify them for office,” she says. And the qualities of an elected official aren’t limited to career experience. SC WIL believes that women’s unique perspectives are important as well. “Wherever they come from, whatever their experience and background, we need those perspectives in public office. We need to hear those voices.”

For women who want to get involved, Sara says, “We want women to run and apply for appointed boards and commissions.” But that’s not the only way to be a part of their mission. If you don’t want to run for office yourself, or aren’t ready yet, you can encourage others to run. “We hope that women will look around in their communities and find the women that they think are good leaders, or women that are already leading [who] maybe wouldn’t qualify themselves as leaders, and ask them to run.”

To get started on your journey to leadership in SC or refer a woman in your community, visit scwomenlead.net/more-in-2024. You can follow SC Women in Leadership on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube at @scwomenlead to stay in the loop about the work they are doing in communities across South Carolina.