Western District

Sue Burtch

I joined Nevada NOW in 2018 and have been serving on the board since 2019. I was elected to the National Board last fall and I’m just starting to get my feet wet and would like to continue. In the last 8 years, we’ve elected the first female majority state legislature, put the most inclusive Equal Rights Amendment in our State Constitution, and we’ll be putting our state statute for Abortion Rights in our State Constitution this fall.

Currently, we are working on improving women’s healthcare in our state with our Reproductive Healthcare Bill of Rights which takes a full lifecycle approach to healthcare: it will include subspecialties at our UNLV medical school which will give us research in reproductive endocrinology and gynecologic oncology for example. We’re also recruiting volunteers to be nonpartisan poll observers this election season.  

I do hope I will be considered as a candidate for the Western Region. Thanks for your time. 

Mary Mosley 

I became a feminist in 1967 when I found out the man in my office was making twice as much as I was for the same job. A NOW chapter was started where I lived in 1974 and I joined. Since then I have been active in NOW and other women’s organizations, and feminism has become my life’s work. 
 
I have been active in NOW chapters in four states–Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, and now Idaho. I have held the position of chapter president, state president, lobbyist, and regional director, when we had that position. When I moved to Idaho in 2016, there was no NOW chapter, so I founded the SW Idaho chapter in 2017. We now have over 200 members and are quite active.  
 
I was on the National Board for two terms in the 1990s and have been on it again for the last two years. I believe we have done some significant work in that time, and I am proud to have been a part of it. 
 
I have worked on many campaigns with NOW. In Columbus, Ohio and Evanston, Illinois we were successful in getting more women on the police forces. Everyone still remembers me chasing the City Manager down the hall when I was 6-months pregnant because he wouldn’t talk to us about it. We also kept the senior center from discriminating against women in their programming. 
 
In Missouri I was NOW’s lobbyist for many years, where I learned a lot about politics and the legislative process. Here are a few of Missouri NOW’s successful campaigns: We worked on education issues, and were successful in getting the city of St Louis to stop requiring pregnant girls to go to a specific school just for them. We also got a school that had separate playgrounds for boys and for girls, to change that policy. We succeeded in getting a sexual harassment policy in one school district where the girls were being harassed because they lacked a policy. We worked with other women’s organizations to get the bust of a famous St Louis suffragist in the Missouri capitol building. When we found that toilet paper was rationed in the women’s prison, we delivered a load of toilet paper to the prison and made news all over the country. They said we were “on a roll.” We planned many events, such as lobby days, forums, and retreats. 
 
I taught at William Woods University in Missouri where I started a symposium on gender and race called Bridging Differences.  
 
I now have two granddaughters, and I continue my work to make the country a better place for them to grow up and thrive.