The Year of the Woman
By: Ashly Stracener
The year of 2018 has proven to be a groundbreaking year for the political landscape of America. In this year’s elections, women have played one of the biggest roles that they ever have in America’s political history.
Previous landmarks for women in politics would include the addition of the 19th Amendment in 1920 giving women the right to vote. However, more recently, 1984 would mark the first year a female, Geraldine Ferraro, would run for vice president on a major party’s ticket. Of course, most would also recognize 2016 as a huge landmark when Hillary Clinton would become the first woman presidential nominee of a national party.
Landmarks like these have led to more and more victories for women and women of color alike in politics, such as the victory many are celebrating in 2018. The largest number yet, 255 women ran for office in two of the major parties. Currently, nearly half of the Democratic women candidates have won their races for 93 of the seats and Republican women have won nearly a quarter of their races for 13 of the seats in Congress. While this number of women running and the subsequent number of elections won may be small compared to the actual number of seats, it is progress towards more equality in Congress. It has been over a decade since such a large amount of women have ran for Congress: In 1992, 117 women ran for congress with close to a quarter winning their seats.
Many are calling back to the 1992 elections which many news organizations hailed as the Year of the Woman and many are labeling 2018 the same as well. While only time can tell, many are predicting these elections could lead to a turning tide for women of all backgrounds and ethnicities in this gender imbalance.
America is founded upon an ideal of democracy and the free marketplace where the best ideas will rise to the top and succeed. However these are ideals, due to human nature, will not always succeed. Yet this does not mean discrimination based on race or gender, an unchangeable fact, should be acceptable behavior. Democracy calls for equal representation, or at least as close as is possible. Currently in America, women make up over half the population.
America's Population of Men and Women in 2018
Men and women are like right and left hands; it doesn't make sense to not use both. We're half the people; we should be half the Congress.
Jeannette Rankin
(First woman in Congress)
While a few percentage points may not appear to be a huge difference, this small percentage gap actually refers to over five million more women in the U.S. than men. While equality may never be achieved, it is a standard that American politics is currently not even close to achieving where women, currently, make up 108 of the 535 seats in Congress.
Men hold 80% of Congress currently.
Women fill only 23 of the 100 seats in the U.S. Senate.
19.5%
Women contribute to only 85 of the 435 seats in the U.S. House.
The large size is not the only unique feature to this year's female election as the group is extremely diverse. Deb Haaland and Sharice Davids will be the first Native American women elected to Congress. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar have become the first Muslim women to represent their states in the House.
There is also a high amount of veterans, mothers and younger single women. Mikie Sherrill is an example of this new diversity, a mother of four who was a Navy helicopter pilot before becoming a federal prosecutor. Not only are these women raising diversity in gender and race, but in backgrounds and political experience as well. Many of these women cite real life experience as part of their platform when being critiqued for their lack of experience in the political arena.