The Decade of the Woman: It's Here

If you're thinking to yourself smugly, “Not my wife…” you’d better come out from behind the sports section and get a clue.

Believe it: today is the first day of the rest of your political life.

You’ve been hearing for months that this is the year of the woman and waiting, as you might await a solar eclipse or a volcanic eruption, to see what it looks like when it finally arrives.

So, take a look. Under your own nose, in your own backyard, at your own voting booth. It’s here. Not just the year of the woman, but the decade of the woman. To be followed, we can hope, by a forever-after when politics as usual will be inclusive, needing no labels or slogans.

This is not a onetime gimmick or a photo opportunity. It’s a real change. Finally.

Politics has changed. Politicians have changed. The political power has changed. Not going to change—changed.

When you hit the polls on Nov. 3, you will be looking at an unprecedented number of women candidates. Nationally, 18 women are running for U.S. Senate, another 154 for the House. Georgia could very well end up with three women in Congress.

It’s possible that this is a real phenomenon, not something that can be explained away by the usual suspect rationalizations.

Georgia already has a woman Supreme Court justice—Leah Sears-Collins, a Black woman who won a statewide election. Fulton County has a woman sheriff—Jackie Barrett, a Black woman, thought to be the first in the nation. DeKalb County may have a woman CEO and has had a majority-female commission for the past year. Practically every metro county has elected or will elect a woman commissioner, school board member, or General Assembly member.

This Decade of the Woman is not about women trying to act like men once they get into office.

Of course, not every woman on the ballot is going to be elected. But that doesn’t alter the fact that women’s time is here—now. Sure, it caught some observers (read: open-mouthed male political pundits) by surprise.

It’s been a long time coming. I’m not sure I can tell you when it all started, but I can tell you exactly when it shifted into high gear and became unstoppable: 1991, the day Professor Anita Hill looked a bunch of middle-aged white guys in the eye and accused a Supreme Court nominee of sexual harassment—and was dismissed. By the white boys, but not by the women out here in TV-and-voter land.

The televised hearings were the catalyst for the change we are living right now. The match thrown at the stash of gasoline that had been stockpiling for years.

I cannot remember anything that so united women and baffled men.

Among women—and I’m not just talking about lesbian-rights activists or $200,000-a-year female lawyers or even mouthy women journalists—I mean women you work with, share carpool duties with, stand in the checkout line with. Your co-worker, your neighbor, your sister—were talking about this, thinking about this. And there were not very many of them who didn’t believe just about every word Anita Hill said.

Across the city, across the country, there were untold numbers of discussions in which a male voice said, “But what I don’t understand is why she waited so long to say anything…” And the women, who would be poles apart on almost any other issue, looked across the elevator or the conference table or the lunch counter and made eye contact in instant understanding: Why she waited so long to say anything is probably the easiest thing of all to understand.

Ask any woman who’s held a job in the last 25 years if the clearest message wasn’t: “You’d better be tough. You want to play with the guys, you’d better get used to our rules.”

Sometimes that meant working harder, longer, for less. Sometimes it meant putting up with “honey,” smutty jokes, or worse. And complaining meant becoming a “whistleblower” and risking your career.

So most women didn’t complain. They just kept working. They toughed it out.

Now, the guys—some of them—are struggling to stay in charge and are misreading this development as surely as they misread the events leading up to it.

Case in point: the prime-time Hillary-bashing during last summer’s GOP Family Values festival in Houston, which did not play well in Peoria—or in North Fulton or South DeKalb. Nor was it redeemed by Marilyn Quayle and Barbara Bush doing their June Cleaver impressions.

So yes, this is the time of women in politics and women in the political process. Isn’t that great?

Well—yes and no.

There’s a catch. (You knew that was coming, didn’t you?)

The catch is that politics isn’t what it used to be. Not as much fun. Not as profitable. The problems are bigger. The resources are shrinking. Private lives are public. Character is questioned. Lots of guys are stepping aside.

And now, here’s the irony: Women are getting into politics now—just as it’s gotten hard.

Find the office with the worst problems, and you’ll find the place where a woman has the best chance of being elected. From the DeKalb County School Board to the state of California.

Not that this we-blew-it-now-you-can-have-it phenomenon is new. Ask Black officeholders.

Take education: women were allowed to teach, while men administered. Once the schools were expected to solve everything from nutrition to domestic violence, then women were allowed into admin roles.

Take the military. Take banking. Take social work.

Still—it’s going to work anyway.

When have women ever had it easy when they were breaking new ground?

Ann Richards had it right: Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did—but backwards and in high heels.

By the time women are allowed in the game, the rules have changed.

But there’s a wonderful irony here. Women are used to change. And middle-aged women? Especially good at it.

These female candidates didn’t just fall off the political turnip truck. They are middle-aged women who have paid their dues—raising families, working jobs, toiling in professional and political vineyards.

They’ve been the women’s movement all along.

They aren’t unformed dilettantes. They know who they are—and so do we, when we read their names in the voting booth.

Finally, there are advantages to middle age. For every trick gravity plays, there’s a layer of skin shed, a sense of self gained.

These women have been working 40 or 50 years on who they are. They know about family values. They’ve struggled. They’ve waited—often while being told there were no odds against them and even if there were, why didn’t they speak up sooner?

This change, this Decade of the Woman, is about midlife fulfillment—not midlife crisis.

This is not a revolution. It’s a natural progression.

This is not the ’60s—it’s the ’90s. Most of us don’t have time for revolution. We’re too busy running companies, teaching algebra, crunching numbers, feeding cats, volunteering.

This isn’t about angry women in fatigues. That’s a male fantasy.

Yes, there’s anger—but it’s female anger. And there’s a difference. We’ve learned how to use it.

This is about a cross-section of women—not a voting bloc—but women who may never again be so united on any one thing.

And despite all this, I’m the least radical person you know.

Feminist? Absolutely. Proud mother of a feminist, daughter of one. But I’m not waving a bayonet.

And that’s the point.

This time of the woman has come because it’s being led by people like me. Like your mother. Your daughter. Your wife.

Not a coup. Not an overthrow. A fundamental change.

Full membership for women in the political process.

It’s here.

Year of the woman?
You bet your sweet life.
Decade of the woman?
And then some.

‍