"The shortage of women in politics never mattered to me."

"The shortage of women in politics never mattered to me." 

I often use this line when I speak about Emerge.  I say it mostly because it is true, but also because it may resonate with women who feel the same way.  It may especially resonate with women who walk in multiple worlds of underrepresentation, but maybe not for the reasons supposed.  Among the women of color I know, we are not desperately trying to decide whether our skin color trumps our gender.  Contrary to the narrative that observers of last year's primary tried to construct, we women of color do not make our political decisions based strictly on information that would be available on a candidate's driver's license.  Rather our political decisions often come down to shared values, for which ethnicity or gender may or may not be a proxy.  I don't think I'm alone in saying that I do not care what my candidate looks like or which bathroom my candidate uses if my candidate agrees with me that the job of an elected official is to represent the will of the constituents with care, honesty and intelligence. I want to elect candidates who share my view of what a public servant should be.

So why train women to run for public office?

For me, the lesson has been that while women may not always agree on the issues, we share many core experiences that lead to precisely the values I want in a candidate.  Put a group of 20-25 diverse women in a room - as Emerge does each year across the country - and we will connect on surprising levels.  We have all struggled with inadequacy and doubt.  We have all told someone exactly what we think of them, at least once.  We have all made bad choices and lived to learn from them and even laugh about them.  We have all been the pillar of strength when our families or communities were falling down around us.  We have all known and admired a woman who saved someone's life, or we are that woman.  We have all chosen our integrity over something else that seemed much more powerful at the time.  We all have an amazing accomplishment that we rarely share because we didn't do it for the glory.  If you were setting out the qualifications for a true leader, would that not be the list?

As women, we take much of this for granted.  Of course my best friend from elementary school adopted her niece when her aunt died, even though she already had four children of her own.  Of course my mother would drive an hour to work in the middle of the night when a foreign student at her university attempted suicide.  Of course my law partner had surgery for cancer, did a three-week trial, then went in for radiation treatment.  That's what women do.  What does this have to do with politics?

The short answer is, it has everything to do with politics.  The Emerge program trains women to run for political office by using these gifts as the centerpiece of their campaigns.  The women who come into the program are different from the women who graduate from the program.  They have a deepened sense of their call to service.  They have a heightened awareness of the roles that gender, ethnicity and other factors will play in their campaign and their work as an elected official.  They understand how to navigate culturally-charged issues.  They know how to raise money without compromising their ideological freedom.  They still lie in different places along the political spectrum, but these shared values connect them.  Most importantly, we help women to stop taking for granted those qualities that make them a trusted and respected leader.

That's why I and many other women across the country dedicate hours of our free time to make Emerge the premier political training program in our states--for women.  When women are not at the table, we are missing the voices that hold our communities together.  How could that not matter?

Sarita Nair is the Board President of Emerge New Mexico and a Board Member of Emerge America. She is an attorney at Sutin, Thayer and Browne in Albuquerque, New Mexico.