Women Run the West

Western women got the right to vote almost 150 years ago, so why do they still lag in political power? Women Run the West investigates gender inequality in state politics through a series of surprising election year stories. For listeners, these stories will present a familiar issue in a new light. Unlike political coverage focused on who’s up and who’s down at the polls, these stories will ask what the role of women in politics has been and where it’s headed.

Call for Pitches
We’re collecting news features and profiles about women in politics in Western states: from high school elections to school board positions to the highest office in the land. We’ll consider historical stories from the pioneer days and interviews with women running for office right now. Scenes can be from the campaign trail, from a candidate’s home, from a voter rally, from your state archives, from a school board meeting, from lunch with a candidate’s spouse, etc.

We want voters to care about gender inequality in our states, whether through the big picture or through a specific character. Good storytelling is paramount here; we’d rather hear a compelling story about a woman who ran for office 50 years ago than something timely and newsworthy that doesn’t have a focus yet.

Segments should be between 4:30 - 6:00 minutes so stations can run them during Morning Edition and All Things Considered between now and election night. Send your pitch to womenrunthewest@gmail.com. This can be a pitch for a story you’ve already produced or even already aired, but we still want to see that snappy paragraph pitch first. If we like what we read, we’ll ask you to upload the audio, then we'll add our tagline and push it out to the big bad world right from here.

About Us
The idea that would become “Women Run the West” was selected from more than 100 applications to participate in a June 2016 audio storytelling workshop at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C. We’re produced by Jennifer Pemberton (Utah Public Radio) and Caroline Ballard (Wyoming Public Media), with web support from Anna Rader (Wyoming Public Media).