NEW BOOK EXPOSES GLASS CEILING FOR WOMEN POLITICIANS AND ELECTION SECURITY VULNERABILITIES

Memphis, TN—October 14, 2021—A new book from a Memphis female politician explores why women are still not proportionally represented in the U.S. Congress, state legislatures, statewide executive, and mayor positions in the United States. There has never been a female president of the USA.

In 1920, American women secured the right to vote. Tennessee was the 36th state necessary to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Amendment passed by only one vote in the state house. Despite a hundred years of women's suffrage, there has never been a woman governor of Tennessee.

The portraits of 46 men who served as mayor hang on the wall in the Memphis city hall. To date, a female has never been elected mayor of Memphis.

The Arena: One Woman's Story, (Lady Justice Publishing, October 2021) shares author Carol J. Chumney's experiences as a woman in the political arena. In 1991, she gained election to the Tennessee state legislature at the age of 29. She passed landmark childcare reform, as reported in TIME magazine and the New York Times. As a veteran state legislator, experienced trial attorney, and Memphis city councilwoman, in 2007, she came within seven points of being elected the first woman mayor of Memphis. As an attorney, she also has taken the fight for election security reform to the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress.

The glass ceiling is the invisible barrier that keeps women from attaining higher positions despite their qualifications or achievements. Chumney's story is an inside look at local and state politics that exposes this barrier. As she says, "you first have to see it to defeat it."