There’s a sign associated with the start of every season. For autumn it’s the leaves turning brown, for winter the proliferation of festive jumpers and for my favourite season of all, students' union election season, its facebook groups with pun heavy titles and the excessive use of #1.

There’s something else these groups tend to have in common, especially if they are asking you to vote for your next president; they are urging you to vote for a man.

Now this isn’t one of those blogs where an NUS officer hectors you about something on your campus whilst skilfully ignoring our own problems because some of the main offenders are NUS election groups.

There’s a worrying underrepresentation of women in NUS positions, particularly National President;

• Last year no women stood to be National President
• Only seven of NUS’ 55 presidents have been women
• In the last four years there have been 12 candidates for National President only two of whom have been women

We pride ourselves on being a representative organisation but if our political leadership isn’t representative of over 50% of our members we’re doomed to fail.

The importance of women leaders can’t be overstated, having a women in a leadership position changes peoples ideas of what a leader is. At my first NUS conference seeing a strong woman president gave me the confidence to get up and speak in what was a pretty macho environment and knowing that women could succeed in NUS  kept me involved even when everything around me seemed to be conspiring to keep me out.

This week I met some really impressive women activists, who were all thinking about whether or not to run for women’s officer in their union, all would have been great candidates but we keep coming back to the same thing in our conversations. Why they wouldn’t be good. Why they didn’t have enough time to do it well. How they weren’t confident public speakers.

This is the same conversation I’ve had with dozens of women over my time in the student movement who tell me that they aren’t running for SU President, aren’t running for a liberation committee and aren’t running for NEC. I’ve yet to have that conversation with a man.

As women we’re told by everyone to sit quietly in the corner, that confidence is always arrogance and that we should sit back and listen but to see the changes we want to see we have to stand up and be counted.

So with nominations drawing to a close think about standing for block, think about standing for a VP position, think about standing for National President and think about the change you can make not what might hold you back.