... Never Done

While our exhibition may end here, the story of "The Path to Leadership" for women in Montgomery County continues. As the proverb goes: [1]

"Man may work from sun to sun, but a woman's work is never done."

Since at least the days of the suffrage movement, the County has witnessed countless extraordinary, community-minded women step up and step into leadership positions in civic organizations and county politics. Real progress has been made since the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, but for Montgomery County, like the rest of the country, there is more to do.

In 2018, the Commission for Women published its report on the Status of Women in Montgomery County. The report examined trends and changes related to various aspects of women's lives in the county.

While the report highlighted several areas of progress for women in politics, the findings also showed opportunities. Currently (as of 2020), only one woman serves on the County Council. And, no woman has yet to serve as County Executive.

"As of the 2018 general election, only one of the nine incoming County Council members is female: incumbent Nancy Navarro. The prior County Council had two female members, which included Nancy Navarro and Nancy Floreen... Women hold all eight Board of Education seats (up from seven before the 2018 election), including the recently elected Student Member. Women also hold a majority (four of seven) of the elected circuit court judges and the Clerk of Circuit Court office. However, women hold no other countywide office—and a woman has yet to serve as County Executive ... Nationwide, 21 percent of the most populous 100 cities in the United States have a woman mayor—including neighboring Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD."


~ Status of Women in Montgomery County, 2018. Montgomery County Commission for Women.

As of 2020, here are just some of the women leading the way in Montgomery County. Like so many of the women before them, all of these women served their communities through clubs and associations, committees or commissions, and grass-roots organizations prior to their elections or appointments. [2]

Maryland State Senate:

  • Cheryl Kagan

  • Nancy King - Majority Leader

  • Susan Lee - Majority Whip

Maryland House of Delegates:

  • Julie Palakovich Carr

  • Dr. Lorig Charkoudian

  • Charlotte Crutchfield

  • Bonnie Cullison - Assistant Speaker Pro Tem

  • Kathleen Dumais

  • Anne Kaiser

  • Ariana Kelly - Deputy Majority Whip

  • Lesley Lopez

  • Sara Love

  • Lily Qi

  • Pamela Queen

  • Emily Shetty

  • Jheanelle Wilkins - Parlimentarian

Montgomery County Council:

  • Nancy Navarro

Commission for Women:

  • Nicole Drew - President

This, of course, is only a partial list; it does not include the mayors and council members of local cities and towns nor the numerous women who serve on commissions, committees, boards, and other organizations in support of our community.

“When I'm sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court] and I say, 'When there are nine,' people are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that.”

~ The Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Justice.

Strikingly, for the first time in history, the Montgomery County Board of Education is all women, with women of color representing a quorum, an achievement that was likely never imagined 100 years ago when area women's clubs were still battling to have the first woman appointed to the Board.

Montgomery County Board of Education as of 2019:

  • Shebra Evans - President

  • Brenda Wolff - Vice President

  • Jeannette Dixon - At-Large

  • Dr. Judith Docca

  • Patricia O'Neill

  • Karla Silvestre

  • Rebecca Smondrowski

Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent and Members of the School Board, 2019. Montgomery History Photographs Collection.

Footnotes:

[1] No one source was found for this proverb. One site suggests author Jean Little (1932-2020) as the source; however, a form of the proverb can be found in Cassell's Book of Quotations by W. Gurney Benham in 1914 (via Google eBooks).[2] Sources for this information: