Monday night, the Board of Regents voted unanimously for Wendy Wintersteen as the first female Iowa State president effective Nov. 20. Although Wintersteen wasn’t my first choice, I am still proud to see a woman in this leadership position and hope to see more women in leadership and politics.

Although I don’t agree with voting for someone or supporting someone simply because they’re female (*cough* Betsy DeVos *cough*), I do believe that women need to be better represented in government and it seems like the only way to truly do this is to actually have women in these positions. 

A hot topic of discussion right now is the changes to women’s rights to birth control. The Trump administration has declared that employers can deny their employees insurance for birth control based on religious or moral reasons. 

In a recent viral video Sophia Bush, former One Tree Hill star and birth control advocate, explained that “71 percent of our elected officials are men. And they don’t know sh*t about birth control.” 

She goes on to explain the different reasons that women have for using birth control and argues that if more women were involved in the decision making, birth control access probably wouldn’t be up to lawmakers or employers.

More women are beginning to be involved in the U.S. government, but there needs to be more representation still. Currently in the U.S. House of Representatives, only 83 of 435 of the seats are held by women and of the 100 in the U.S. Senate, there are only 21 women. 

Women’s rights aren’t the only policies that would benefit from having a less gender-skewed government. The point of a government is to represent a nation and to make decisions that will benefit the people of that nation. If women’s voices are outnumbered and overpowered in politics, then they won’t be able to adequately represent American women. 

More diverse voices will help make smarter decisions. 

Again, I don’t believe in voting for someone just because they’re female. I do believe that more women should get involved in politics or run for office, and I believe that women in the government have earned and should be shown more respect than they are currently being shown. 

I’m excited to see what changes women will make in our government and what changes a woman will make to our university.