Just who are ‘suburban women’?

Long Island Women’s Firearm Club President Lisa Ludwig (center) stands with members of the club’s board on Sept. 17 in West Babylon, New York. Ms. Ludwig enjoys the quiet of Long Island. “It’s a small community that has a lot of hard-working working-class people,” she says. “We are a growing town, full of residents who like their Second Amendment right, and plan on keeping it that way.” The club has seen an uptick in interest since the pandemic. “I definitely do not fit the stereotype of a suburban woman. For one, I am a female NRA instructor and preside over an all-women gun club. Hopefully, one day that would be the norm.”

Living in the Minneapolis suburbs for seven years, Mawuena Kaba appreciates the diversity of her neighborhood. “I remember my first fall in the neighborhood when I walked my kids to the bus stop and realized that my neighborhood was the most diverse place I lived,” she says, posing for a portrait in her neighborhood on Sept. 22.“I often think that politicians are referencing white, maybe conservative, Christian stay-at-home moms when they talk of suburban moms. They’re not referencing the moms who advocate for their kids education during school board meetings, the ones who pay attention to climate change even if in another state, the ones who are down at the Capitol at gun-violence hearings, the ones who go door-to-door for city council races. They certainly aren’t talking about me, a Black immigrant woman who speaks with an accent, a mother of Black children who still grapples with the realities of racial inequalities, having to sit on Zoom calls at work with the heaviness of the anguish my communities face, while also trying to figure out how I can close the opportunity [gap] between my children their white counterparts in school. And then of course, when people include me in the suburban mom category, it’s as if I shouldn’t have a voice. I had someone question my passion and unity for protests in Minneapolis because I live in a well-to-do suburb. We forget how intersectional and interconnected our identities and passions are.”

As a millennial in the suburbs, Ellie Thomas doesn’t understand why suburban men aren’t also being type-cast. “To me, this infers that society, or the political arena, is perpetuating the link between being a woman and being somehow weak, or not having our own opinions or that our opinions are swayed because of the ‘so very different lives’ we lead as suburban women,” the architect says as she sits outside the home she shares with her husband and dog on Sept. 28. in the suburbs of Boise. "I think that is a huge misconception. Many suburban women – at least those in my life – work full time like their husbands, some pulling more weight financially than their male partners, and the election deeply affects their lives like anyone else’s. We are using our brains and our life experiences, and the burden of our responsibilities, like any male counterpart, to make this very important decision of who and what to vote for.”

Having raised children in Lafayette, California, a family-oriented, upper-income suburb outside San Francisco, Melanie Speir values the sense of community she’s experienced in her 35 years here. While she doesn’t believe there is a stereotypical “suburban woman,” she does feel that they hold political sway. “Almost all of the women I know have become much more politically active this election,” she says, standing for a portrait in her backyard on Oct. 2. “They are appalled by the current divisive tone of civil discourse and polarization in our country and are squeezing extra hours into busy schedules to work for positive change,” she says.

The diversity of Framingham, Massachusetts, the Boston suburb in which she’s lived for 25 years, pleases Priscila Sousa, who doesn’t think that the buzz around “suburban women” reflects her or her neighborhood. Standing in her favorite park on Sept. 15, she says, “I’m single. I’m a Latina, an elected official, and an entrepreneur. Not exactly June Cleaver. Typically women like me migrate to larger cities but there is a growing population of us popping up in the suburbs,” she says. “I feel like suburban women’s issues are reduced to families, family planning, and the wage gap by politicians. Our issues are as diverse as we are and, believe me, we are very diverse.”

The retired Vice Mayor of Oakland, former Oakland City Council member, and state president of Black Women Organized for Political Action says she’s found the perfect neighborhood outside Fresno. While hers is the only Black family in her gated community in Madera, California, Dezie Woods-Jones enjoys the fact that she can still have heated political discussions with her neighbors that are respectful. Sitting in the living room of her home on Oct. 4, she says, “It's always dangerous to pigeonhole people. None of us are monolithic and when you look at a group of people and say, all African Americans, Latinas, Asians or all suburban people in very general terms, that doesn’t capture the real essence of the people and the spirit of that culture or that environment of that particular community. I think people eventually resent that and protest against that. They don’t want to be labeled in a way that doesn't give them the best options that they might want to choose for themselves.”

Alexis Townsend grew up in a neighborhood similar to the Idaho suburb where she’s lived for seven years with her family. “Most of my neighbors are retired. Many moved to the neighborhood when it was first developed in the late 1980s,” says the president of an architecture firm as she stands near her home on Sept. 28. “Is it the nation’s stereotype or a warped image created by politicians? I know a lot of women who live in the burbs and what they have in common is their ability and desire to be independent thinkers.”