Sunday, Oct. 15, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Some people say, “Wow, did you ever think you would live in a time when America’s vice president would be a woman?”
Well, yes. I actually thought Hillary Clinton would be the first woman president of the United States, smashing through a centuries-old glass ceiling to the highest office in the land.
I was sadly mistaken. That Kamala Harris is a groundbreaking Black and Asian American woman in the No. 2 role soothes the hard feelings only so much.
Women’s rights on a global scale have always been tenuous. Even U.S. women have struggled to emerge as a united and influential force in forging the nation’s path forward on topics ranging from gun control to health care to paid family leave.
Today it seems American women have never been so powerful and yet so powerless.
How did we get here? A look back reveals moments of progress and despair, but also a glimpse of a bend in the arc of the feminist universe that gives hope.
We all know what happened in the 2016 election. There’s no need to rehash it other than to say America missed its opportunity. The road to the first woman U.S. president again faded into the distant horizon.
Undaunted, millions of women seized the opportunity to band together as the next year gave rise to the historic Women’s March, and within months, the #MeToo movement, bringing new light to the sexual harassment and abuse women have endured since time immemorial. #MeToo gave strength to women’s words, ultimately shifting the power dynamic in boardrooms, classrooms, casting rooms and beyond.
Maybe one woman had not won, but we were as a group finally winning hard-fought battles to have our voices heard and our experiences believed.
Bills aimed at protecting women in the workplace and addressing women’s rights flooded state legislatures. Legal experts point to more than 2,300 bills sparked by the #MeToo movement from 2017 to 2021. Of those, 286 were passed into law,…
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