Marching to Power

The following article by Susan Milligan was posted on the U.S. News and World Report website January 19, 2018:

President Donald Trump ignited a fire within women. And it’s still burning one year after the inaugural Women’s March.

Donald Trump had just been sworn in as president, and millions of women responded by taking to the streets the very next day in what would become one of the largest, if not the largest, single-day demonstration in U.S. history. They clogged the streets of Washington, D.C. by the hundreds of thousands, while “sister marches” were held in venues big and small, including the ten who demonstrated in Adak, the westernmost town in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.

It might have been a one-day thing, kind of a counter-celebration to the lesser-attended inauguration the day before and a chance for the the losers to let off steam after the 2016 elections. Instead, the Women’s March gave voice to frustrations and grievances women had been grumbling more quietly about for years. The number of women running for office (and winning already) has exploded. And as marchers prepare this weekend to hold similar (though most likely smaller) anniversary events across the country, those who attended the 2017 events have mixed feelings – excited about the women’s activism they have unleashed, but wondering a year into the Trump administration, what the movement has accomplished.

For Phoenix attorney Toby Brink, who crossed the country last year to march in Washington, the excitement over the new wave of feminist activism is tempered by the knowledge that the Trump administration has nonetheless made inroads on limiting abortion and birth control access and getting conservative judges confirmed to federal courts.

“That makes me feel more pessimistic. I wish the media would focus as much time on what’s going on silently,” Brink says. Still she adds, “I do feel more hopeful” than immediately after the election. “The march had such an impact on me. It was the first time I had been to a protest march. I can’t even think of an adjective” to describe the day, Brink says. “It was such a good experience after feeling so crappy from November until January. I felt relieved and hopeful after so many weeks of feeling devastated.”

It’s the conundrum that so many social movements must wrestle with: they need to keep the grassroots base fired up and active, but at the same time, they must interact with institutions to achieve actual change. Women’s marchers were ready to take to the streets and social media to make their case, but they also didn’t want their energies to end with a Twitter hashtag, like the #bringbackourgirls campaign to release Nigerian girls captured by Boko Haram. Women’s activists wanted more than consciousness-raising this time. They wanted

“For all women [the march] was a visual that said, ‘hey, we’re here,'” says Jennifer Carroll Foy, a Democrat and public defender who was among the record number of women sworn into Virginia’s House of Delegates after the November 2017 elections. But it was not just a one-day venting, she says. “This is going to be substantial change we’re going to sustain for a long time.”

Early indicators show that the movement has indeed had successes, both in provoking a dialogue on sexual harassment and pay equity and in getting more women elected to office. Following an expose in The New York Times about serial sexual misconduct by Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, women launched a “MeToo” movement that came to define the shift on sexual harassment. After years of feeling reluctant to speak out, worried about retribution, women (and some men) came forward with their stories, forcing resignations and firing of perpetrators in politics, media and entertainment. And while there have been worries that the movement has led to an over-reaction – maligning men whose behavior may not have risen to the level of harassment – the MeToo voices have changed the conversation about sex and power in the workplace.

Time magazine made the MeToo witnesses its collective Person of the Year. Merriam-Webster dictionary’s 2017 word of the year was a moniker that had once been derided as a divisive and radical word: “feminist.”

“It wasn’t just all talk and hype and momentum that stopped” after the marchers went home, says Dee Martin, a Washington, D.C. lawyer who is also on the board of the Feminist Majority. “I think it launched 1,000 ships. It was a catalyst for action and it was also a reminder that the threat is real. There is a real threat against women’s rights right now.”

Women’s advocates note that the Trump administration has indeed achieved policy changes counter to the marchers’ agenda. Trump signed the Global Gag Rule, barring family planning groups that receive government funds from even discussing abortion with patients (which has become standard for Republican presidents to do). It has rolled back Obama-era guarantees of birth control coverage under the Affordable Care Act (but this is being challenged in the courts). And it has confirmed a slew of (overwhelmingly male) federal judges opposed to abortion. The administration has also delayed an Obama-era rule guaranteeing overtime pay for certain workers (the law disproportionately affects women) and undone the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order. Among other things, the original executive order banned federal contractors from requiring sexual assault complainants to submit to forced arbitration to adjudicate their claims.

“We experienced the largest demonstration we believe has ever happened in our nation’s recorded history. What they seem to have decided is to just throw gas on the fire,” Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told reporters in a conference call.

But while women’s groups bemoan those actions, they are heartened by a massive influx of women running for office at the local, state and federal levels, a movement activists believe could top the 1992 historic “Year of the Woman.” According to a tally by the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, there are 390 women running for the House, 49 for the U.S. Senate, 79 for governor, 23 for lieutenant governor and 61 for other statewide office. Most of those contenders are Democrats, disheartening female officials and candidates in both parties, who say they would like to see a more bipartisan escalation of women’s voices in government. (A National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman notes that the GOP has fewer seats to compete for, since the party is in the majority, and adds that Republicans are running several minority female candidates this year.)

Women – especially Democratic women – have already made remarkable inroads in local races since Trump was elected. They include Atlantic City, New Jersey freeholder Ashley Bennett, who was spurred to challenge an incumbent who mocked the women’s march, wondering sarcastically if the demonstrators would be home in time to cook dinner. Bennett, a first-time candidate, won in November.

After getting hammered in state legislative elections in recent years, Democrat have flipped 34 seats from red to blue since Trump’s election (Republicans, meanwhile, have turned two seats blue to red). Of those 34, 22 are women, says Mara Sloan, spokeswoman for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. The group has identified 31 “spotlight” races coming up, and of that group, 20 are women, Sloan says, adding, “we’re definitely seeing more and more women stepping up to the plate” to run for office.

And public opinion appears to be catching up, as well. According to a recent poll by PerryUndem Research, 72 percent of voters have talked to a family member or friend about gender equality in the past year, and 43 percent of men have reflected on their own past behavior toward women, pondering if they had crossed the line to sexual harassment. Meanwhile, 44 percent say sexism is a “big” problem in society – up from the 30 percent who agreed with that statement in late 2016.

And perhaps most notable, in turning street demonstrations into concrete results, nearly 7 in 10 voters think the country would be better off with more women in office.

“I think that march and all of the publicity really was the bullhorn for all women, and now is the time to galvanize and get to work,” Carroll Foy says. “We can no longer be in the back seat. We have to be in the driver’s seat.” After November, women may be owning the road.

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