After a long week of waiting, refreshing Google, and discussing basic mathematics, yesterday, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were named the next president and vice president-elect of the United States of America.
Although I was already fairly confident in the outcome, when The Associated Press finally called the race, I found myself as grateful, relieved, and exhausted as the day I gave birth. It’s been a lot to say the least, but it’s also been worth it if for nothing else than to finally see a woman in a position of political power that puts her just one heartbeat away from the presidency.
Not only is Harris the first female, first Black, and first South Asian vice president-elect, she is also the highest-ranking woman ever in the line of presidential succession. And that, my friends, is a really, really big deal.
While I am of course comforted by the fact that Donald Trump’s presidency now has an expiration date, this blog isn’t about him. In fact, nothing is about him anymore - a fact I’m sure has done more damage to his ego than the votes he lost in Pennsylvania. No, what this blog is about is the historical undoing and lasting impact Harris’s win has and will continue to have on the women who call America home.
It’s difficult to deny that women have been historically underrepresented in, well, everything. We’re underpaid, undervalued, underserved, and quite simply, unequal. We’re also consistently doubted because, I think, we are also fiercely feared. We are, afterall, the only gender capable of bringing life into the world, which is perhaps the most powerful and intimidating skill of all.
But if you really think about it, the concept and practice of inequality in America isn’t just crazy, it’s of fairy tale nature in its sheer existence.
If, for example, aliens were to land in the United States and ask what women do in this country and we were to respond and say women work, birth and raise babies, pay bills, prepare meals, clean, console, love, help, teach, organize, create, support, problem solve, schedule, empathize, maintain, strengthen, plan, handle, and put everyone and everything before themselves, the aliens would say, cool, cool, take me to your female leader. And then we would say, oh no, in spite of all of this, a woman is not in charge; we don’t think she could handle it. And then the aliens would take off their space gloves and slap us pre-duel style and tell us we’re all a bunch of idiots.
Understanding what women do and how we contribute is why owning my strength and position as a woman is more important to me than who I am as mother, wife, daughter, colleague, sister, and friend. I wholeheartedly believe not just in women’s rights but in advocating on behalf of women in every facet of life. I am a feminist through and through and I wear the title just as well as I wore my pre-pandemic four-inch heels.
Unfortunately, for me, and for so many others, this hasn’t always been the case. The term, “feminist” is viewed as radical, as a bad thing. My freshman year of college, I remember a friend asking me whether I was a feminist and I quickly said no. She then asked whether I believed in equal work for equal pay and I just as quickly said yes. “That’s feminism,” she said. She then went on to explain that while the word itself often gets a bad rap, it’s actual purpose is to simply establish basic social, professional, economic, and political equality among the sexes. So I wondered, how is this something we haven’t agreed to already? How is this a radical idea?
Then I got older and I entered the workforce and I was paid less than my male counterparts and I was sexually harassed in and outside the workplace and I was talked down to and made to feel less than and I realized, holy shit, the concept of gender equality really is damn near nonexistent. We must do better.
Which is why, since learning about the election of the first ever female vice president, I cannot stop thinking about and feeling for all the women who came before me and all the women who will come after me and all the women in the here and now. I also cannot stop thinking about the fact that equality is actually tangible in the political arena for the first time in our nation’s history, and how it’s about damn time.
Last night, Harris reflected upon the struggle of women “who have fought and paved the way for so many,” and she made it a point to say that while she may be the first woman in this office, she certainly won’t be the last. Perhaps most importantly though, she gave American women a sincere call to action when she said, “Dream with ambition. Lead with conviction. See yourselves in a way that others may not because they’ve never seen it before, and know that we will applaud you every step of the way.”
Ultimately, Kamala Harris’s election to the office of the vice president gave me something I haven’t felt in a very long time: Hope. Hope that women will be treated equally. Hope that women will know their worth. Hope that women will continue to lift one another up, and hope that our country will someday soon understand and celebrate that women are the strongest, most resilient creatures on this planet and the ones who actually get shit done. I also hope that one day, when the aliens come to visit, we take them to a woman’s office where she will tell them how we can and will run the universe - together.
Title Track: “Run the World (Girls),” Beyonce. Listen here.
