In 1956, Catherine Dobbs made local history by becoming mayor of Barberton.
No Summit County city had ever elected a mayor in a dress before. No Summit County city would elect another for 42 years.
Even in 2015, a woman at the helm of a city is a rare thing.
Consider:
• Among Summit County’s 13 cities, seven women have been elected mayor. Set aside Stow and its uncanny run of three female chiefs, and that leaves 12 cities accounting for the remaining four. That’s in the history of a county that just celebrated its 175th anniversary.
• Of 21 candidates who filed in city mayoral races this year, three are women. That’s 17 percent in a county where women make up 51 percent of the population and, presumably, the electorate.
No aberration there. Our region mirrors the nation, said Susan MacManus, a former Cleveland State University professor and now a political scientist and analyst at the University of South Florida.
While the issues at play are complex, MacManus said, they all boil down to one dominant truth: “Women won’t run.”
Of course, a few have run, and the folks who study them say they don’t see a problem with voters, campaign donors or the groups and businesses that endorse candidates. All things being equal, women fare as well as men.
Researchers say women also appear to be a great fit for the job. As a whole, their gender’s life and career experiences give them an edge on issues relating to families, senior citizens, social services, health care and education. As a bonus, women are perceived to be far more likely than their male counterparts to reach across the political aisle and promote cooperative leadership.
So with all of that in their favor, what’s holding them back?
Aspirations
Girls don’t dream about becoming mayor when they grow up. More significantly, they don’t dream about becoming mayor when they get elected to city council.
It’s not uncommon for a man to see the council as a steppingstone to higher office, but research shows female council members tend to get involved because they want to represent their neighborhood, and the part-time role fits into busy, family-oriented lifestyles.
The five local women who know what it’s like to sit in the mayor’s seat say their ambition was more of a sudden development than a slow, deliberate process.
Stow’s Sara Drew said Mayor Karen Fritschel encouraged her to make the jump when term limits stopped Fritschel from running again. Twinsburg’s Katherine Procop said former mayor James Karabec suggested she consider the position as he was on his way out.
Two other women were political rookies undaunted by a history of male predecessors.
“I had never run for office before and my decision to run for mayor was based upon the fact that as a Stow resident, I believed that the city was growing and needed a more progressive leadership,” said Lee Ann Schaffer, an attorney and Stow’s first female mayor.
Arguably the boldest leap was made by Amy Addis, who said six years as a secretary at Norton City Hall taught her “what was working and what was not and why.”
“The work I was doing exposed many shortcomings that I believed were harming the city and stagnating its future.”
In 1999, Addis ran against her boss and defeated him in the Republican primary before going on to win a four-year term as Norton’s first female mayor.
Campaign support
Parties can make a difference if they want to promote gender diversity on the ballot, MacManus said. There are examples of party bosses who successfully set out to increase the number of women in political office.
Parties that don’t encourage it may even unwittingly be sending a different kind of message through their silence.
“If parties don’t aggressively pursue them, I think it’s less likely [women] will come forward,” she said.
Summit County could be the poster child for that notion.
The nonpartisan cities of Stow, Twinsburg and Green collectively account for 33 years of female mayor experience.
“Even though I am in a party, the party was not involved very much,” said Fritschel, a registered Democrat.
Meanwhile, cities with partisan primaries share just 10 years of women in office.
Addis, the only living example of a female mayor to win a partisan city, said even then she didn’t rely on party support.
“To the best of my knowledge, the local Republican Party did not seek out women to run for elected office in Summit County. I do not recall receiving much support from the party until after I won the primary election, which was minimal,” she said.
Women too often fear they won’t be able to raise enough money to be competitive, MacManus said. They’re wrong. Research shows no gender discrimination when it comes to financial support from parties and individual supporters.
But it’s also true that in small local races, candidates often reach into their own pockets to pay for yard signs and fliers. With women on average making 78 cents for every dollar a man makes, those pockets are decidedly smaller.
Noted Schaffer: “Gender-based pay disparities do exist and have been well documented and reported for years. Obviously, that leads to the conclusion that men have an easier time accumulating personal wealth.”
Constituent support
When Twinsburg’s Procop ran for mayor in 1999, she was “definitely concerned” about gender discrimination.
How could she not be? Several elected and appointed officials raised an eyebrow when she announced her candidacy, “one council member going as far as to tell me that I should be at home, in the kitchen, baking cookies,” she said.
Voters didn’t care for her cookies. They elected her with 67 percent of the vote and kept her out of the kitchen for 16 years. She’ll retire in December, one of the longest-serving mayors in Summit County history.
Norton’s Addis also sensed “strong bias” from some council members and a few city employees who no doubt still saw her as a secretary.
“As my campaign progressed and throughout serving my term, I received tremendous support from businesses, labor unions, builders and developers, civic and youth organizations, veterans groups, and men, women and families with the Norton community,” she said.
MacManus said credible female candidates don’t need to worry about the electorate, and they can expect an equal number of endorsements as male candidates.
“Those aren’t the deterrents they once were,” MacManus said.
Still, “credible” is a tricky word.
It means electable and recognizable, and the pool of men in leadership and business positions that put them in the public eye is far bigger than the pool of women.
“In local elections, name recognition is No. 1,” said Stephen Brooks, associate director of the University of Akron’s Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics.
While voters may not discriminate at the ballot, it would be naive to think that people don’t treat women officeholders differently.
When granted anonymity, some of the mayors were willing to admit there are frequent, subtle reminders that they are thought of as the “gentler sex.”
Family
Women have come a long way since the 1950s, when Catherine Dobbs decided managing her household wasn’t enough to satisfy her.
But women still tend to put their families first, and that stops many of them from pursuing full-time political offices, MacManus said.
In recent years, growing incivility throughout the country is pushing even more women away, she said.
“Politics has gotten so nasty, they don’t feel it’s worth it. If they have kids, they don’t want to run their family through it,” MacManus said.
Some women wait until the nest is empty to make their move. Fritschel’s two daughters had already graduated from college when she ran for mayor. Addis’ son was away at college for most of her tenure. Procop’s children were already through high school as well.
Even then, a supportive spouse is critical.
“I sometimes laugh that I need a ‘wife’ at home to write out the greeting cards, shop for birthday gifts and get supper on the table,” Procop said. “Fortunately, my husband will jump in and help whenever and however he can.”
Stow’s Drew, however, didn’t wait for life to slow down. When she ran for mayor in 2011, she was a single parent with a daughter who has autism and developmental disabilities.
Adjusting to her new position was a “herculean feat,” she acknowledged. “I spent a lot of time initially worrying that I wasn’t being the kind of mother that people expected me to be.”
Pressure
While voters are open — even eager — to see women in the highest elected offices, MacManus said there is an inherent cultural pressure on she who breaks the glass ceiling.
“The worst thing that can happen is for the first female mayor [of a city] to be a failure,” MacManus said. “Every female after that gets compared.”
Addis said she felt that weight.
“As a woman, I believe I was expected to succumb to the pressures and resign,” she said. She even faced — and defeated — a recall attempt.
Drew and Procop suggested women can be their own worst enemy.
“We worry about performance issues in all aspects of our lives. Are we being a good employee, leader, family member, parent and so on,” Drew said.
Added Procop: “I am extremely critical of my own performance and always feel that I have to work harder and smarter than anyone else.”
But Schaffer said it can be hard to determine whether that’s a gender issue at all.
“Every day I went to work knowing that my friends and neighbors voted for me to represent their best interests,” she said. “I’d argue that any public official who does not get overwhelmed by the weight and magnitude of that pressure isn’t doing it right.”
Paula Schleis can be reached at 330-996-3741 or pschleis@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/paulaschleis.