Arushi Subba, right, a senior at Seneca Valley High School, and her friend Kasey Roberts organized the Girls and Leadership Summit in Harrisburg to encourage girls to take on leadership roles in school.

JACKSON TWP — After she realized the disparity between the number of women and men in leadership roles, Arushi Subba knew she had to do something to change those numbers.

So with the help of her friends, the Seneca Valley High School senior organized the Girls and Leadership Summit. The first summit was held in October, in Harrisburg.

“I think it was really cool that it was not a partisan issue,” Arushi said. “In the women's caucus, there are all parties and in our panel, every women we talked to said it was an issue.”

The first summit went so well that the organizers hope to host another in the spring in the Pittsburgh area, Arushi said. They are in the process of turning the group into a 501c3 nonprofit to continue their work in different locations and eventually offer scholarships to other girls.

The issue of female representation in places of power first came to Arushi's attention while she was at the Youth and Government convention this past spring in the state capitol.

The YMCA Youth and Government convention allows students from across the state to participate in a mock government experience where they debate and pass bills as legislators.

Arushi and her friend, Kasey Roberts of Boyertown, Berks County, both ran for higher positions in the mock legislature, but lost. However the experience made them take a closer look at the pool of people running. Only three of the 12 applicants were girls, Arushi said.

Then they took a closer look at the Pennsylvania state Legislature. Of the 253 members of the state's General Assembly, 47 are women. That's 18.6 percent of the Legislature, which is “really, really low, especially considering 51 percent of the population is women,” Arushi said.

Their solution was to create a daylong summit for girls to encourage them to be leaders in their schools, communities and government. Arushi and Kasey recruited friends from their schools, including Tara Bhatia, a senior at Seneca Valley High School, to plan the event.

The inaugural summit was held Oct. 21 in the Capitol in Harrisburg with 36 high school age girls from all over the state taking part.

The girls participated in workshops and panels, one led by state Rep. Mary Jo Daley, D-148th, about how she got into the male-dominated world of politics.

Reps. Daley, Margo Davidson, D-164th, and Marcy Toepel, R-147th, and Patria de Lancer Julnes, a professor of public affairs at Penn State Harrisburg, did a panel together where girls in attendance asked about leadership, hardships they faced and positive things about being women in power.

Arushi and Tara said that from the summit they found one of the issues is not that girls and women are unqualified to lead, but that they lack the confidence to speak up for themselves or push for these roles.

“Our favorite thing was becoming unapologetic about what you do,” Arushi said. “A lot of what we're trying to stress is making girls feel qualified.”

Tara, who is president of the National Honor Society at Seneca Valley, said she's felt hesitant or even intimidated at being the only female on an executive board in various groups. It was interesting to learn as she met with different female politicians in planning the event that the issue is not that women aren't winning races, it's that they're not running for seats in the first place.

“Some girls felt it was so hard to get their voices heard,” Tara said. “It was interesting to hear other people's perspectives.”