This story first appeared in CityView Magazine’s “The Women’s Issue” March 2026 edition.
Every time I’m reminded that March is Women’s History Month, I’m also reminded of my Mom. You won’t find her name in anyone’s history book, but she had her own special place nonetheless.
Mom was born in 1910, 10 years before the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote, and 64 years before the Equal Credit Opportunity Act gave women the right (really, not until 1974!) to have credit cards in their own name, without permission from their husband or some other male.
She was determined to make her own way in the world, regardless of the paternalistic society she grew up in. She graduated from high school in 1928, just one year before the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began.
That didn’t stop her. Not even a little—she was going to see at least a bit of the country beyond her Vermont hometown. She became a secretary (this was long before the age of “administrative assistants”) and found a home with a big oil company, working in Hartford, Connecticut, Syracuse, New York, and Albany, New York—where she met the guy who would become her husband.
The wedding had to wait while my Dad went off to fight the Nazis in World War II, but they married when he got home in 1946. I came along two years later. Mom took a few years off to make sure I got a good start in life, but she returned to work part time when I started school, and then full time when I started high school. She ended up running a college job-placement office, helping undergrads and graduates find careers in corporate America, sharing with young job-seekers a lifetime of knowledge about how the business world really works.
All of that is one of many reasons why I love and respect strong women who chart their own course through life. It’s why I married a strong woman—without doubt the best decision of my life.
And it’s also a reason why I want to see more women rise to the top in corporate and political life. We’re way overdue for a woman president; we need more women in Congress and sitting at governors’ desks. We need more female corporate CEOs (as of the middle of last year, there were 55 women leading Fortune 500 companies—a pitiful 11%). Why? The glass ceiling is still mostly bulletproof. And the aforementioned paternalism is still strong, albeit more quietly flexed now.
It may still be strong in Fayetteville, too. The current city council’s nine members include just two women—Lynne Greene and Brenda McNair. The city’s mayor has always been a man, with one exception, Beth Finch, who served from 1975 to 1981. City council member Kathy Jensen got about 38% of the vote last year when she challenged Mayor Mitch Colvin.
It’s not much different on the county board of commissioners, where Veronica Jones and Jeannette Council are the only women serving.
That’s also long been the case with Fayetteville city managers. I couldn’t find a historic list of all of them, but I know that since the 1990s, they’ve all been men. Women have served as assistant or deputy managers, but the top job has been male-only. Over at the county, former manager Amy Cannon was an excellent exception to the men’s club rule.
In North Carolina’s two biggest cities, the atmosphere is different. Both Charlotte’s and Raleigh’s mayors are women. In Charlotte, seven of the city’s 11 city council members are women. In Raleigh, four of the city council’s seven members are women.
There are a lot of ways to look at Fayetteville’s political dominance by men. Some of them not so flattering. But I’m inclined to a kinder view: There’s nothing here but opportunity. The city and county are filled with strong, educated women who know a whole lot about leadership. But for reasons of their own, they’ve chosen not to run for public office. I hope some will change their minds and give it some electoral effort.
Why? Because I’ve seen—at my kitchen table as a kid, and in a 50-year career as a journalist—the difference women can make when they’re equal partners in the management process. Management that’s swimming in a pool of testosterone tends to focus on issues in ways that sometimes sound like conversations on the bridge of a Star Trek Klingon ship.
Maybe it’s time for more of Fayetteville’s women to bring a balance to the issues, and to make some new and different history.
I’m betting my Mom would approve.