I’m certain
that “election exhaustion” finally hit us all this week, and we’re happy to
never see a scowling politician’s face or hear the ominous background music of
the thousands of negative ads.
Today, our Board President sent me an article that share some brighter news from election results:
20 women were elected to the U.S.
Senate – the most ever
77 women (with a few races still
uncertain) were elected to the House of Representatives
the first Asian-American woman, Mazie
Hirono, was elected to the Senate – she is also the first Senator born in Japan
and Buddhist
Massachusetts has elected its first
female Senator, Elisabeth Warren
a 31-year-old female Iraqi war
veteran, Tulsi Gabbard, who is also Hindu, was elected to Congress
Tammy Baldwin, the first openly gay
person, and the first woman Wisconsin has elected, has a new seat in the Senate
Iraqi war veteran and triple amputee
Tammy Duckworth take a seat in Congress
Claire McCaskill defeated Todd Akin to retain her seat
New Hampshire, which elected a female
governor this year, will send the first all-female congressional delegation to
Washington
2012 is also
a year setting a record in the number of 28 minority women elected: 13 African American,
9 Latinas, and 6 Asian/Pacific Islanders.
The
Huffington Post summarized women’s impact on the election: Women proved
once and for all that female voters are paying attention, and that their
support wins elections. Obama would not have been able to win the
election without the support from women – female voters made up 54% of the
electorate and favored the President by 11%, resulting in an 18-point gender
gap.
In a country
that is more than half female (50.8%) with an electorate over half, one in five
Senators will be women, and 18.13% of Representatives will be female – nearly
an 8% increase since the 2008 election.
We’ve come a
long way since Jeannette Rankin was elected as the first female in Washington
in 1917…but there’s a long way yet to go.
Jeannette
Rankin (right) on April 2, 1917, with Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the
National American Woman Suffrage Association, at the group’s headquarters in
Washington, D.C. Later that historic day, Rankin was officially sworn into the
65th Congress.
To read
the article from policymic: http://www.policymic.com/articles/18780/mazie-hirono-and-tammy-duckworth-women-make-history-on-election-night
Thank you
for working on behalf of 50.8% of our population with 110% of your energy.
