CNN predicted it the “Year of the Woman,” and rightfully so.
From citywide marches to the congressional floor, in 2018 women have established themselves as forces to be reckoned with, and have proven time and again that they are not going anywhere.
A record-breaking midterm election has brought 117 diverse women to the House and Senate, with around one third being women of color, according to a report by The New York Times. Among these women include Sharice Davids and Deb Halaand, the first Native American women, and Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, the first Muslim women elected to Congress.
What’s quite admirable is that these women running for congressional seats have true bravery in the face of hateful rhetoric. Rather than step back in fear of President Trump’s hostility these women have responded in such a fulfilling way, earning honest votes and seats in Congress where real change can be made.
The tremendous numbers regarding women voters don’t lie – this female-driven blue wave couldn’t have come at a more needed time in our nation. 97% percent of women who voted for a Democratic candidate for the House on Election Day emphasized the importance of electing more women to public office, and around 43% percent of women said to have used their votes for Congress in retaliation to the Trump Administration, according to data reported by CNN Politics.
Both quite unsettling and inspiring about this election is the fact that women have only just been able to break such barriers as these today in our estranged political system, smashing records and even doubling in numbers of women running for office in comparison to elections in the past, according to data by the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics. A relentless, decades-old fight for representation in some of the most important and esteemed governmental positions is finally being granted more and more the power for rightful change, for needed progression in a nation playing tug-of-war with ingrained values of intolerant partisanship fortified for so many generations. And the fight is still far from over.
I still remember the feeling marching through New York City this past January, the vibrant energy of the massive organized protest, the Women’s March. For hours, thousands and thousands of women and their allies continued the fight against injustice through the city streets in the bitter cold, in hopes to soon attain some level of victory against the current administration.
Seeing these midterm election results, this is the quintessence of empowerment and progression.