Fifty years after US representative Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to the US Congress, women of colour across the US are preparing in record numbers to conquer and hold the floors of local, state and national legislatives. More than 600 black women candidates are, or have been, running for office in 2018. In the US midterms, Rashida Tlaib became the first Muslim woman elected to Congress, while Stacey Abrams came within a couple of percentage points of being elected the country’s first African-American female governor.
As Ayanna Pressley, member of the United States House of Representatives for Massachusetts's 7th congressional district, put it: “The people closest to the pain should be closest to the power.”
Many candidates who are women of colour are motivated by opposition to President Trump. Most run as Democrats, although they may express disagreements with the party’s leadership. But the movement is also shaped by the fact that women of colour are now emerging as the country’s most influential voting bloc.
Despite continued systemic discrimination and prevalent racial disparities, black women show great perseverance in pursuing education, receiving a higher percentage of degrees than women in any other major group, and are determined to take political action in order to change the status quo. Black voters made up 29 per cent of the electorate in Alabama’s special Senate election in 2017, with 98 per cent of black women voting for the Democratic candidate Doug Jones, a striking increase from previous elections.
2018 has in many ways been “the year of the woman”. The successful fight of women in Saudi Arabia for their right to drive, the global #MeToo movement, and the uprise of women in Ireland against the abortion ban demonstrate how widespread the struggle for equal and fair representation has become. But the experiences of previous “years of the woman” in the 1970s and in 1992 (the year in which a number of women were elected to the US Senate, and Anita Hill brought sexual harassment allegations against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas), could suggest some cautious scepticism.
While both 1970 and 1992 did bring significant advancements for women, they fell short of fundamentally altering the structures and power imbalances that are both still the manifestation and the cause of inequality and discrimination today.
Until recently, the public-facing leadership of the women’s movement has often been privileged women who were themselves beneficiaries of unequal structures. The conversation was hyper-focused on their demands or needs, and, once they had gained concessions, it became difficult to retune that conversation to the needs of women of colour. Even today we hear that women make 80 cents to a man’s dollar. In fact, for black and Hispanic women that figure stands at 63 cents and 54 cents, respectively.
This narrow representation of women’s needs will change in 2019 thanks to a process that began with Doug Jones’s victory in Alabama and has continued through 2018. Women’s political aspirations in general are being boosted by social media campaigns, such as the EMILY’s List Training and She Should Run’s #250Kby2030. And women of colour are increasingly coming out behind their own candidates.
In 2019 they will see this activism pay dividends.
Alaa Murabit is a doctor and a UN High-Level Commissioner on Health, Employment and Economic growth
Updated 23.01.19, 13:10 GMT: A clarification has been made to more clearly explain the number of black women receiving degrees in the United States.
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
