By Chasity Wells-Armstrong
Chasity Wells-Armstrong is the Founder of Catalyst Coaching & Transformation and Creator of the SCALE™ Framework for Public Sector Leadership, which she uses to support mayors and municipal teams with strategies and resources. Wells-Armstrong is the former Mayor of Kankakee, IL and has served on the Mayors Innovation Project Steering Committee since 2020.
Women’s History Month Was Created Because Democracy Failed Women
It failed to record women’s contributions.
It failed to recognize women’s leadership.
It failed to share power.
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter issued a proclamation recognizing National Women’s History Week. Congress later expanded it into Women’s History Month to correct a national habit of omission.
Today, that correction is being challenged.
Research from the Mayors Innovation Project, including the Under Pressure report, documents two pressures that undermine Women’s History Month in real time: civic intimidation and institutional obstruction.
Threat One: Civic Intimidation
Harassment, threats, doxxing, and public degradation are common.
This is not only about the woman in office. It is about a woman considering a run. It is about shrinking the pipeline. It is also about the little girls watching and learning what leadership costs.
The imbalance is measurable. Under Pressure found that in office, 25 percent of women mayors report being harassed three or more times per month, compared to 10 percent of men. Women also report much higher rates of sexual harassment and threats directed towards their families than men, both while campaigning and while governing.
This is where cognitive reframing matters. It is the discipline to keep decisions anchored in mission and community outcomes when the environment is trying to bait, shame, or frighten you into shrinking.
Threat Two: The Quiet Rewriting of Authority
When women become mayors, authority once treated as routine can suddenly become controversial.
Budgets are scrutinized.
Ordinances are revisited.
Tasks considered routine for prior mayors – committee appointments, professional development opportunities, oversight on resource allocation – are questioned.
Under Pressure documents higher rates of attempts to limit women’s authority once they take office.
I have lived this. When I became mayor, I was the city’s second woman mayor and the first Black person ever elected in its history. Within my first month, ordinances were challenged. During my tenure, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests nearly tripled. FOIA has strict response timelines, and state law allows extensions when records must be gathered.
The tactic is simple: flood the system, strain limited capacity, force lawful extensions, then accuse the administration of not being transparent. That is power being renegotiated after the voters already decided. After I left the office and a White man held the seat, the volume dropped significantly. That is not a coincidence.
This is where boundary negotiation becomes critical. Women can govern inside the law, uphold ethics, and still face blowback when decisions are not popular with the board. In a strong mayor system, appointment authority may sit with the mayor, with advice and consent. Yet council members may still pressure a mayor to install their preferred people or obstruct appointments.
This is also where leadership longevity becomes threatened. Longevity is the ability to stay in office long enough to deliver sustained outcomes. When women’ s executive authority is undermined, it makes it more challenging to deliver on their bold agendas. Without protection and enforceable authority, the leadership pipeline contracts.
“Thicker Skin” Is Not a Strategy
When barriers are dismissed with advice that women simply need thicker skin, the message is clear: your experience is not worthy of validation and it does not deserve a systemic response.
What Must Change
If Women’s History Month was created as a correction, then our obligation is to institutionalize protection.
It means written standards of conduct with real enforcement mechanisms.
It means credible threat assessment protocols.
It means consistent training for law enforcement so responses do not depend on whether a particular chief takes it seriously.
It means guardrails that prevent retaliatory authority grabs disguised as reform.
It also means building ecosystems where women can thrive. Ecosystem building is not simply peer support. It is structuring systems where women leaders are protected, reinforced, and positioned for lasting impact. During my tenure as mayor, and since, I have found support and resources from a multitude of sources, including MIP’s Women Mayors Network, the African American Mayors Association, and RepresentWomen.
Women are 50.5 percent of the United States population, and they make up about 47 percent of the civilian labor force. There are currently just under 400 women mayors serving in cities across the US, accounting for less than 30% of US mayors.
And despite everything, women mayors keep saying yes to the work. Under Pressure found that 79 percent of women would encourage others to run for mayor. They do it because they are good at the job, because communities need steady leadership, and because democracy depends on who is in the room making decisions. Women are succeeding in their roles, but their success comes at a much higher personal cost.
So let Women’s History Month be more than recognition.
Let it be a line in the sand.
Because the measure of a democracy is not whether women are praised once a year.
It is whether women can lead, govern, and endure without being targeted for doing the job.