10-15-2023 Women to Watch - Flipbook - Page 50
By Michelle Deal-Zimmerman
On women’s rights, a decade yields
mixed results as fight for equality rolls on
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women’s rights. Specifically, the U.S. Supreme Court’s rollback of Roe
v. Wade last year, reversing the constitutional right of women to seek a
legal abortion and leading many states to ban the procedure even without
exemptions for rape, incest and the health of the mother.
Suddenly, women were losing.
And not just on abortion rights. Alarmingly, women may also be losing
the support of younger generations. A survey last year by the Southern
Poverty Law Center found a near majority of men under 50 say feminism
has “done more harm than good.”
And that wasn’t all.
“Across the political spectrum, men under 50
are in even greater agreement that ‘men should
be respected and valued more in our society’ — a
belief held by 65% of younger Republican men
and 60% of younger men who are Democrats,”
the study found.
Is it not possible to value both men and women?
To welcome the unique gifts that every gender
brings to society and to make space for their goals
and their success? Of course it is. However, first
women must be seen as equals — and that remains
the missing element.
But there are signs of renewed determination
among women to have an equal say in making
decisions for ourselves and our country.
As we face down another election in 2024,
Maryland has elected exactly one woman as U.S.
senator since 1789. Former Sen. Barbara Mikulski served from 1987 to 2017, at the time the
longest-serving female senator in history. Women
hold 25% of seats in the U.S. Senate, while representing over 50% of the U.S. population, according
to the Census Bureau.
There are a record number of women serving
in the U.S. House — 28% of seats. It’s the highest number in U.S. history
and an increase of 59% from a decade ago, according to Pew Research.
Just 4% of Supreme Court justices have been women, historically. In
2020, Justice Amy Coney Barrett became only the fifth woman to serve
on the court. Two years later, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson became
the sixth woman. Since 2017, 50% of the justices confirmed to the high
court have been women.
In off-year elections around the country, women have flexed their
political muscle at the ballot box, derailing plans to further tighten
anti-abortion laws in several states.
“Women are not without electoral or political power,” Justice Samuel
Alito wrote in the Supreme Court opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade
in June 2022, perhaps foreshadowing an energized new era of women
on the rise.
The challenge will be to harness that power to create deep and sustainable change, assuring American women the right to determine our own
destiny. Only then will we truly be equal. And only then will America
be winning.
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ome people say, “Wow, did you ever think you would live in a time
when America’s vice president would be a woman?”
Well, yes. I actually thought Hillary Rodham Clinton would be
the first woman president of the United States, smashing through
a centuries-old glass ceiling to the highest office in the land.
I was sadly mistaken. That Kamala Harris is a groundbreaking Black
and Asian American woman in the No. 2 role soothes the hard feelings
only so much.
The decade since The Baltimore Sun launched Women to Watch has
been a roller coaster of recurring challenges and sometimes discouraging results for women.
Women’s rights on a global scale have always
been tenuous. Even U.S. women have struggled to
emerge as a united and influential force in forging
the nation’s path forward on topics ranging from
gun control to health care to paid family leave.
Today it seems American women have never
been so powerful and yet so powerless.
How did we get here? A look back reveals
moments of progress and despair, but also a
glimpse of a bend in the arc of the feminist
universe that gives hope.
In 2013, the same year The Sun launched
Women to Watch, the tragic aftermath of a deadly
shooting inside a school in Newtown, Connecticut, was supposed to be a turning point in gun
control. The deaths of 20 children and six adults
— all women — at Sandy Hook Elementary, failed
to move Congress to action. Since then we have
seen school shootings over and over again, with
more than 50 in the past decade.
We all know what happened in the 2016 elec- FREEPIK
tion. There’s no need to rehash it other than to say
America missed its opportunity. The road to the
first woman U.S. president again faded into the distant horizon.
Undaunted, millions of women seized the opportunity to band
together as the next year gave rise to the historic Women’s March, and
within months, the #MeToo movement, bringing new light to the sexual
harassment and abuse women have endured since time immemorial.
#MeToo gave strength to women’s words, ultimately shifting the power
dynamic in boardrooms, classrooms, casting rooms and beyond.
Maybe one woman had not won, but we were as a group finally
winning hard-fought battles to have our voices heard and our experiences believed.
Bills aimed at protecting women in the workplace and addressing
women’s rights flooded state legislatures. Legal experts point to more
than 2,300 bills sparked by the #MeToo movement from 2017 to 2021. Of
those, 286 were passed into law, according to a report in Politico.
While not exactly a watershed moment of solidarity with women,
creating lanes for equality is not all or nothing. A rush of incremental
progress in a period of only a few years felt monumental.
But the #MeToo backlash would soon result in a massive erosion of
Michelle Deal-Zimmerman is senior content editor for features and an advisory member of The Sun’s Editorial Board. Her email is nzimmerman@baltsun.com.
50 | 2023 | WOMEN TO WATCH