Dayna Stock is the manager of the Sue Shear Institute for Women in Public Life at UMSL. She recently discussed with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch the fact that men still greatly outnumber women in elected office in Missouri. (Photo by August Jennewein)

Despite women registered voters outnumbering men registered voters in every Missouri county, men continue to hold more elected offices at every level in the state, according to a recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch article.

Dayna Stock, manager of the Sue Shear Institute for Women in Public Life at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, pointed out to the newspaper that part of this numerical anomaly is the challenge of getting women to run for office.

“We know that women have to be asked to run,” Stock told the Post-Dispatch. “They don’t come into the world and proclaim, ‘I’m going to run for office.’ The calculation women make is different than men. … They don’t know anyone who has done it, so they don’t think it’s something they can do.”

The Sue Shear Institute for Women in Public Life was established in 1998. The key objectives of the institute include the following:

• Track the participation of women at various levels of government
• Increase the presence of women appointees on boards and commissions
• Develop college women leaders
• Increase the number of women employed in policy making positions in government
• Encourage women to seek public office

Click here to read the full St. Louis Post-Dispatch article.