For many liberals, last Tuesday served as a discouraging setback in the fight for equality.
The narrative many of us — myself, I admit, included — championed was one of unrelenting progress: eight years after the election of the first black president, we were going to elect the first female president. It seemed in line with the natural order of things of the unstoppable march toward a more egalitarian future.
As shown by Tuesday’s election, this was clearly a false narrative. To me, it’s one that is quite similar to that of many people’s misconception of evolution. By that, I mean the notion that natural selection works toward some ultimate goal of creating a species that is the culmination of all that species can hope to be. Instead, natural selection simply selects for the specimens best suited for a particular environment.
In the same way, our country doesn’t necessarily advance in a particular direction at all times. Granted, as time has passed, we’ve moved in a progressive direction. But sometimes, our country just is — hiccups, bumps and all.
So, yes, Tuesday was a setback. But to paint it as a total loss would be to paint it in black and white terms, something that perhaps the media and pollsters did in their gross miscalculation of the outcome of the election. While disappointing, Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump is not the only thing that happened last Tuesday.
For example, a record-breaking 38 minority women were elected to Congress, making it the most diverse it’s ever been. Among those women were several notable first-time legislators: Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto, who is now the first Latina senator; California’s Kamala Harris, who is now the first Indian-American senator; and Illinois’s Tammy Duckworth, who is the first amputee to be elected to the House of Representatives and the first legislator to be born in Thailand.
As we can see, while it was not a day of firsts for the White House, it was certainly one for Congress.
And that’s something to celebrate. While women as a whole did not make ground in representation in Congress this election — there are still an unchanged 104 women in both chambers — this new addition of diversity is a positive.
These women will bring new perspectives and life experiences to the legislative process, and hopefully we’ll soon see the beneficial effects of having a body of elected representatives that more accurately reflects the country as a whole.
Still, though, last Tuesday is a sign that we need to continue striving to advance the political agency of women and minorities in this country. At roughly 20 percent of elected representatives, the presence of women in Congress is hardly revolutionary. It only puts us in the middle range of countries for female representation.
Rwanda, which is first in female representation in legislative bodies at 64 percent in their lower house and 39 percent in their upper house, accomplished this in a unique way: in 2003, they instituted a quota system mandating that 30 percent of all representatives had to be female.
It’s an interesting fix, and certainly one that seems to work; according to Inter-Parliamentary Union Secretary General Martin Chungong, “Gender quotas have proved extremely useful in changing countries.”
It’s definitely food for thought and something that we might take into account in the future. But for the immediate, current moment, let’s celebrate the progress we have made.
acgroove@indiana.edu
