LWVMO: Missouri Legislative Update
Aug 26, 2026 · 40 min · 11 segments
Skyler and Michele sit down with Sandy Michaels and Kelly Sutton, co-Presidents of the League of Women Voters of Southwest Missouri and LWVSWMO members Liz Wertz, Emily Fessler, Anna Miller Lyu, and…
Because I do think, like Sandy said, that kind of starts with your upbringing.
So there's a whole group of women out there who are stay-at-home moms or don't have jobs.
But that's a segment that we're also fighting for equality for.
But I hate to leave them out of the conversation too.
um growing up you're taught that your role as a as a woman is to be a mother and so being the angsty teenager and um young adult that I was I'm like well and I'm never going to be a mother because screw that I don't want to do that right and so I had based a lot of my sort of life trajectory off of that kind of pushback against it thinking that I was being a feminist and like super powerful and all the things.
And I think, you know, in deepening my understanding about what it means to stand for women, I realized maybe I actually do want to be a mother.
And so as a young mother now, you know, my perspective and my idea has sort of shifted.
And that has also shifted a lot of the other priorities in my life because of how I had originally viewed feminism and what it meant to be a strong woman, I was very career orientated.
I based a lot of my self-worth off of what I could bring to the table as an expert in my field and the work and the quality of work that I put forward.
No, it doesn't, right? Like now that I'm a, you know, my daughter is a year old, I'm like, no, that is not what being a strong woman means.
And I've had to do some really deep internal work on separating out my self-esteem and my values around work and work ethic and being able to, again, as part of my sort of internal work, deepening and understanding of what being a woman means.
And again, how to show up for women who choose all kinds of different paths, not necessarily what we think of as that traditional path.
I really appreciate that, that we as women have our own experience of womanhood, be it, you know, having babies, not having babies, you know, all of these different ways avenues in which we can express being a woman and none of them are the same to each individual person.
And I just, I do love that about being a woman.
That
Because I do think, like Sandy said, that kind of starts with your upbringing.
So there's a whole group of women out there who are stay-at-home moms or don't have jobs.
But that's a segment that we're also fighting for equality for.
But I hate to leave them out of the conversation too.
um growing up you're taught that your role as a as a woman is to be a mother and so being the angsty teenager and um young adult that I was I'm like well and I'm never going to be a mother because screw that I don't want to do that right and so I had based a lot of my sort of life trajectory off of that kind of pushback against it thinking that I was being a feminist and like super powerful and all the things.
And I think, you know, in deepening my understanding about what it means to stand for women, I realized maybe I actually do want to be a mother.
And so as a young mother now, you know, my perspective and my idea has sort of shifted.
And that has also shifted a lot of the other priorities in my life because of how I had originally viewed feminism and what it meant to be a strong woman, I was very career orientated.
I based a lot of my self-worth off of what I could bring to the table as an expert in my field and the work and the quality of work that I put forward.
No, it doesn't, right? Like now that I'm a, you know, my daughter is a year old, I'm like, no, that is not what being a strong woman means.
And I've had to do some really deep internal work on separating out my self-esteem and my values around work and work ethic and being able to, again, as part of my sort of internal work, deepening and understanding of what being a woman means.
And again, how to show up for women who choose all kinds of different paths, not necessarily what we think of as that traditional path.
I really appreciate that, that we as women have our own experience of womanhood, be it, you know, having babies, not having babies, you know, all of these different ways avenues in which we can express being a woman and none of them are the same to each individual person.
And I just, I do love that about being a woman.
That
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