Women have only been elected members of the United States Congress for 101 years, of the U.S. Senate for 85 years, of the Hamilton County Commission for 39 years and the Chattanooga City Commission for 27 years.
On this Mother’s Day, it seems fitting to honor those women who chose not only motherhood but politics, or, if you will, not only politics but motherhood. Either way you term it, both can be full-time jobs, and neither are easy.
Here are just four who are or who have been active on the political scene in the last quarter century:
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- Dr. Candice McQueen, Tennessee’s commissioner of education, was running late several weeks ago but still wanted to give the Times Free Press editorial board plenty of time to describe an improvement strategy for several underperforming schools in Hamilton County. As the questions for her were concluding, she mentioned in passing wanting to pick up her two children in Nashville, still two hours away.
McQueen’s prescriptions for improving the state’s underperforming schools may not please everyone, but we’ve been impressed with the input she says she wants from parents, teachers and other stakeholders, the passion she has to improve education for all students, and the hard work she has had to put in to create the state’s plan under the recently submitted Every Student Succeeds Act.