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"Four Questions For: Jessica Grounds, President of WUFPAC (Women Under Forty Political Action Committee) Jessica Grounds, 27, is the President of the Women Under Forty Political Action Committee, or WUFPAC. WUFPAC is a nonpartisan group dedicated to getting young women elected to federal and state office. They provide resources and funds and help to promote the candidates they endorse. She agreed to sit down and talk to me about why it&amp;#x27;s not just important that more women are elected to office but why it helps if they&amp;#x27;re young when they get there. Megan: Why is it important for more young women to run for (and get elected to!) office? Jessica: Young women have a different perspective not only from men, but from older women as well. They bring a unique and critical voice not to just so-called women&amp;#x27;s issues like pay equity, choice and child care, but also to issues like national security. It&amp;#x27;s also important that young women get involved because Congress is an organization that rewards experience. You have to serve there a while before you have enough power to form the agenda as well as affect it. Women are only 16.8% of the House and 16% of the Senate. We can&amp;#x27;t continue with that as the status quo. We need women from every walk of life, from every stage of life, to be running for office and staying in office and getting seniority. Megan: What are the barriers keeping young women from running for office in the country? Jessica: There are a lot of answers to that question! The biggest problem is that many women lack promotional skills&amp;amp;#8212;and some women feel that they &amp;quot;shouldn&amp;#x27;t&amp;quot; run for office, that it&amp;#x27;s a boys club, that they wouldn&amp;#x27;t be good at it. There are fewer of us in state-wide and federal roles to look to, although that is changing. The local party machine plays into it as well, and by that I mean the system that picks the next person &amp;quot;ready&amp;quot; to run. Women aren&amp;#x27;t a big part of that system, as they more often come to politics based on an issue like schools, health care, or national security. The fundraising element is also hard for young women&amp;amp;#8212;statistically, this group is less likely to give to candidates and more likely to give to non-profits. So if young women candidates are looking to their peers for financial help, there&amp;#x27;s less of a resource pool from which to draw. Megan: Even though she&amp;#x27;s unlikely to get the nomination, do you think Hillary&amp;#x27;s campaign is having effect on getting more young women involved in politics and running for office? Jessica: Absolutely, 100 percent! I think it&amp;#x27;s so important to have seen a woman who is a viable candidate. In addition, there are a lot of women in high-ranking positions in her campaign, unlike in many other campaign offices, so I think seeing women in those positions of power is really inspirational to the women working on campaigns at lower levels and volunteering. Megan: It&amp;#x27;s still true that most women in elected offices in this country are Democrats. Why would you say that is? Jessica: We are a nonpartisan organization, so we&amp;#x27;re dedicated to supporting all young female candidates regardless of their political affiliation. I think the Democratic party platform tends to attract more women with its emphasis on health care and education. Issues like fiscal responsibility and terrorism don&amp;#x27;t resonate as much with young people, and women in general, who are at the start of their careers. The Republican party should work on reaching out to and attracting young women because they are out there and they are interested. Also, I notice that that women tend to get involved where they see themselves in the people that are already running and the people that are already in power, and there are just more visible women in the Democratic Party. Many thanks to Jessica! We&amp;#x27;ll be posting more &amp;quot;Four Questions For&amp;quot; pieces in the coming weeks&amp;amp;#8212;thanks for all the suggestions on who to ask. In the meantime, what do you think about what WUFPAC does? What&amp;#x27;s keeping you from running for office? &amp;amp;#8212;Megan"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/blogs/glamocracy/2008/05/why-arent-there-more-young-wom>