Selectmen currently serve terms of three years each, and those terms are staggered to ensure that only one member is up for re-election in any given year. Through the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, the number of Selectmen was not set in law, and therefore varied, sometimes greatly. In 1988, Barbara Trainor became the first woman to hold the position of Selectman in Freetown, giving the town a record of 305 years of all-male leadership. After her defeat in 1991, no woman was again elected to the board until 2006.