INTERVIEW BY EVELYN SMYTH
Photograph from Jill Schupp
JILL SCHUPP, MISSOURI STATE SENATE, REPRESENTING THE 24TH DISTRICT
On reluctance to vote for herself: There was a Rabbi of ancient times, Rabbi Hillel, whose quote stays with me to the day. And what he said was “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” And since that time, putting that quote together with that reluctance to vote for myself, I have since that time voted for the person who I believe to be the best candidate. And when I ran I ran because I believed I was going to be the best person to represent the people that I ran to support.
On experiencing sexism: I didn’t experience what I would say was sexism until I got into the Missouri legislature. And I was surprised to see it. In the legislature our numbers as women who were elected officials were never more than twenty five percent. And what I saw from my women colleagues was that we all had a very strong belief that we had to know everything, be totally informed on the issues that were before us. We had to be able to speak on the floor from a place of absolute certainty and knowledge or we didn’t get up to speak. Our male counterparts didn’t have that same sort of self imposed pressure on themselves.
“I realized that I was not going to be handed a seat at those negotiation tables, that I had to take it upon myself to do that.”