The second annual Tolchin Symposium at Mason’s Schar School of Policy and Government in Arlington on Oct. 17 featured a panel of women in powerful positions discussing why more women are not in positions of power.
The symposium is named in honor of the late Mason political science professor Susan Tolchin who, with her husband Martin, founder and publisher of The Hill newspaper, wrote the book “Clout: Womanpower and Politics” in 1974.
The 90-minute discussion before 150 audience members at Mason’s Founders Hall auditorium was moderated by NPR political commentator Cokie Roberts, whose mother Lindy served in Congress, and included U.S. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), Maryland’s first woman lieutenant governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and 22-year judge Diana Becton, the first woman to serve as district attorney in Contra Costa County, Calif.
The symposium was part of the Schar School's Gender and Policy (GAP) initiative, led by professor and director of the Master of Public Policy (MPP) program Bonnie Stabile and professor Toni-Michelle Travis.