Some hopeful signs for women in politics - The Boston Globe
But apart from that one race, how did women leaders fare on Tuesday? The answer: surprisingly well. The defeat of Hillary Clinton in the presidential campaign has obviously overshadowed every other contest, but the success of down-ballot candidates provides an encouraging antidote to despair. Women continue to climb the political ladder, and with any luck the election of a misogynist like Donald Trump will spur even more to throw their hats into the ring.
Start with the Senate, where Tammy Duckworth knocked off an incumbent in Illinois and Kamala Harris won an open seat in California. Harris, the state’s attorney general, is just the second African-American woman elected to the Senate. In Nevada, Catherine Cortez Masto won the race to succeed the retiring Harry Reid, making her the first Latina to win a Senate race. Overnight, the number of women of color in the Senate quadrupled (to four).
In the House, newly elected women included Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the first Indian-American to be elected to Congress. Delaware elected its first woman to Congress, Lisa Blunt Rochester. After Tuesday, only two remaining states, Vermont and Mississippi, have failed to send at least one woman to Congress.
Digging deeper, a record number of women sought seats in state legislatures this year, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, though a final count of the winners was not available as of Thursday. And results from voter initiatives and referendum questions provided examples of women’s clout at the ballot box. In Washington state, for instance, a measure backed by Planned Parenthood and many women’s groups, to allow authorities to take away an individual’s firearm in an emergency, passed; victims of domestic violence will be among the biggest winners to benefit from that law.
That’s not to deny the obvious challenges facing women of any party. Sexism undoubtedly still plays a role in politics, and it may well have doomed Hillary Clinton. She was subject to thinly veiled attacks on her “stamina” during the campaign, a ridiculous charge that nonetheless proved effective. It’s still too easy for foes to portray women in politics as power-mad harridans, an innuendo that no man ever has to answer to.
And yet, the hints are already growing that Clinton’s defeat is having a galvanizing effect on women. Emerge America, a nonprofit organization that trains women to run for public office at all levels, said it had seen a significant uptick of interest since Tuesday. “Social media is just blowing up,” said Andrea Dew Steele, the organization’s director. “Women particularly are looking for something, some way to channel their shock into a positive outlet. This is a great way for women to say, ‘I’m not going to take this.’ ” In Pennsylvania, the number of women who had begun the application process to the organization had nearly doubled since Tuesday, Steele said. In Oregon, the number of applicants has risen from 60 last year to 110 this year.
Ever so slowly, the political system in America is tilting toward equity. And if the outrage felt by millions of Americans after Tuesday yields a wave of women candidates in 2018, then Clinton’s campaign could yet leave a historic legacy for America.
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