In US Election, Women Won Big

The 2020 United States election has left a lot up in the air and voters around the country wait anxiously for final results, especially for the presidential race. However, we don’t need to wait to know that women around the country shattered barriers and won several big victories. 

From women of color taking (or keeping) elected positions to women’s roles in moving the needle in countless ways, ladies led the way. It has been an election of firsts: the first Black and South Asian woman nominated or elected Vice President, the first openly transgender woman elected state senator, the first woman elected mayor in Miami-Dade County, the first Republican women elected to the House in both Iowa and South Carolina, Wyoming’s first female senator, the first Black congresswoman elected in Missouri, and many more milestones. No matter your political leanings, this has been an election of broken barriers. Read on for more details on how women are leading.

Record Number of Native American Women Elected to Congress, from The Guardian—“According to a Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) report, 18 indigenous women were running for congressional seats this year – a record in a single year.”

Women Have Made History in the 2020 Election, from Elle—“Before any races were even called this November, women had made history. A record number of women ran for office in 2020—surpassing the record set just two years prior. More Republican women ran for U.S. House seats than ever before, and a number of women were poised to bring new representation to the halls of Congress and to their state legislatures.”

New Mexico Makes History, Becomes First State to Elect All Women of Color to the House, from People—“New Mexico is now the first state with a House delegation comprised entirely of women of color. […] All of the six major party candidates who ran in New Mexico’s House races were women.”

All 4 Members of ‘The Squad’ Reelected to House, from CNN—“All four congresswomen known as the Squad—Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts—have won reelection, CNN projects. Since taking office in January 2019, the lawmakers, all women of color, have electrified the left’s progressive base and lit up social media.”

Kamala Harris Makes History As the First Woman to Become Vice President, from Vox—“Harris has made history: No woman has ever served as vice president or president in the US. Her election to the office — and the representation she brings — is significant for many voters. […] Harris’s nomination for this role was groundbreaking. As the new vice president, Harris could play a major role in shaping policies and priorities for a Biden administration, while sending a strong message about what’s possible for other women and people of color.”

Juneteenth: Freedom, Progress, and Celebrating Black Voices and Lives

Juneteenth—celebrated June 19 in the United States—marks the day those held in slavery were told they had been freed. The date commemorates June 19, 1865, when it was announced that tens of thousands of African-Americans in Texas had been emancipated, and for all its significance is only one step in the complex and painful history of racial inequality in the US. Today, Juneteenth remembers that day and the events that led up to it, educates Americans about history and current events central to the Black community, and is a time Black Americans come together to celebrate their resilience, culture, and progress. 

We’ve put together a collection of articles and stories centering on Juneteenth—family stories; celebrations of black womanhood; the economic, political, societal, and deeply personal pressures still faced by Black Americans today; and how to respect and observe the holiday, including a petition for Juneteenth to be recognized as a national holiday. We honor Black women and the entire Black community today, and we pledge to work to listen, respect, celebrate, and amplify Black voices.

One Woman's Quest to Make Juneteenth a National Holiday, from NPR—“A 90-year-old Texas woman is trying to make Juneteenth, a holiday that honors the freedom of slaves, a national holiday. She’s walked around the country and will end her petition in Washington, D.C.”

10 Ways To Observe Juneteenth This Year, from Women’s Health—“So if you’re a Black American—this is our Independence Day, and it deserves to be observed. If you’re worried about how the novel coronavirus pandemic will affect Juneteenth this year, and maybe some of your plans got cancelled already—don’t worry. There are plenty of ways you can still take part. How? Well, you can start by signing 93-year-old activist Opal Lee’s petition to make Juneteenth a national holiday, which is long overdue.”

This Juneteenth, We Should Uplift America’s Black Businesses, from The Brookings Institution—“Women—and specifically, Black women—were also underrepresented as business owners in the survey. Women represent more than half of the U.S. population, but they owned only one in five businesses (just over 1.1 million) in 2017. This was about the same proportion as it was in 2012. Black women owned less than 1 percent (one in 130) of the nation’s businesses in 2017, even though Black women made up 6.6 percent of the country’s population.”

Ida, Maya, Rosa, Harriet: The Power in Our Names, from The New York Times—“For nearly two centuries, Black women passed on names as remembrances of struggles for freedom, dignity and citizenship. We can find these stories in articles, textbooks, museum exhibits and even popular culture. But the lives of these sheroes are not being newly discovered in the 21st century. Instead, they are inherited from women who handed them down to inspire next generations. Passed along, from mothers to daughters to granddaughters, our names carry with them visions of freedom.”

In Miss Juneteenth, a Mother’s Dream Deferred, from The New Republic—“Though the tension between mother and daughter remains center stage, Miss Juneteenth’s broader subject turns out to be the political economics of surviving as a black woman in Texas.”

How 13 Black Women Are Celebrating Juneteenth This Year, from Cosmopolitan—“Over the years, Americans have honored the day in beautifully diverse ways from participating in Juneteenth parades to attending rodeos to making the journey down to Galveston with their families. But this year is remarkably different than years past. This year, Juneteenth falls amid unprecedented demonstrations and support for the Black Lives Matter movement following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Oluwatoyin ‘Toyin’ Salau, Dominique ‘Rem’mie’ Fells, Riah Milton, Ahmaud Arbery, and multiple hangings. [...] I’m dedicating the day to signing petitions to demand justice for Black lives and defunding the police, researching which brands I consume that benefit from inhumane prison labor, and discovering more Black-owned businesses. Here's how other Black women are planning to spend the day.”

Starting the Year Strong

Happy New Year from The State of Women and Women Investing in Women Digital! We hope you are all starting the year strong, healthy, and with clear vision on goals, progress, and challenges for women in the coming year and decade. This week, we've collected just a few stories about women around the world—and whether it's women directors breaking records in the past year, preserving systems that work to empower and raise up women, changing outdated ideas that need to evolve, or new initiatives to promote entrepreneurship for women and girls; we think it's clear that the world's women are looking forward with 20/20 vision!

Female Directors Broke Records in 2019, from Fortune—“(A)t the ceremony, women mostly won in the acting categories, from Phoebe Waller-Bridge to Awkwafina to Michelle Williams (who used her speech to champion reproductive rights). Ellen DeGeneres, with an emotional tribute by Kate McKinnon, was the first person besides Carol Burnett to receive the Carol Burnett Award for outstanding contributions to television. Overall, some talented women accepted golden statues last night—but as awards season continues, hopefully we’ll see more women behind the camera honored, too.”

Challenging Our Gendered Idea of Mentorship, from Harvard Business Review—“The reality is that just as women benefit from male mentors, sponsors, and allies, men also gain from the mentorship, leadership, and sponsorship of women. But stories about women leaders are scarce, and they often narrowly focus on how women help each other. Even more rare are examples of the positive impact women leaders have on the careers and business of men. This imbalance reinforces negative bias about the ability of women to lead and contributes to the scarcity of women at the top.”

Why Professional Networking Groups for Women Remain Valuable, from Fast Company—“What the study shows is that women who focus on making a lot of professional contacts may not necessarily receive the same benefits that men get from doing so. They need to supplement that with closer connections with other women they trust. The study’s authors speculate that these inner networks help not just with finding opportunities, but also by exchanging advice specific to the unique challenges women face.”

Recognizing Workplace Challenges Faced by Black Women Leaders, from Forbes—“Gender bias makes career advancement markedly harder for women than men. But gender bias is not the only discriminatory obstacle women face in their careers. Women whose social identities are different from the dominant workplace expectations—that is, women who are not white, straight, less than 40, and childless—encounter three additional obstacles: having to navigate more precarious lose/lose double binds, being forced to conform to cultural norms that may be at odds with their social identities, and encountering biases in addition to those about gender. These three sorts of obstacles are brought into sharp relief by comparing the workplace experiences of black women and white women.”

What Goes Into the Production of a New Girl Scout Cookie Brand, from Fortune—“‘These messages not only remind girls about the leadership abilities they already possess within them, but they also remind consumers that buying Girl Scout Cookies powers amazing and important experiences for girls,’ Girl Scouts CEO Sylvia Acevedo tells Fortune. ‘Whether it’s through selling the new Lemon-Ups cookie, Lemonades, or any other cookie in our lineup, the Girl Scout Cookie Program fosters a multitude of business and life skills in girls, preparing them to be the ambitious entrepreneurs and leaders of tomorrow.’”

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Honoring the Power and Progress of Black Women

The United States is observing Black History Month all February with stories, discussions, celebrations and more honoring the lives and works of black people as we continue the fight for equality—and the success, strength, and talent of black women is often front and center. Here are a few articles that caught our eye this week.

How This Digital Influencer Is Adding More Seats to the Table, from Forbes—“My hope is that eventually there are many more women of color who can create their own events and get consulting gigs with these companies. You can’t make a change if you aren’t in the rooms where decisions are being made.”

Meet ‘Black Girl Magic,’ the 19 African-American Women Elected As Judges in Texas, from NPR—“This cycle, Harris County also saw record numbers of Hispanic-American, Asian-American and LGBT candidates. And the more such candidates win, the more it encourages younger people of diverse backgrounds to believe they can do the same.”

Black Women Are Making a Name for Themselves As Tech Entrepreneurs, from USA Today—“We’re in a moment right now, black women, black women founders, Latinx women founders—we’re in a moment where people care. Our goal at digitalundivided is to turn that moment into a movement.”

100+ Books by Black Women That Should Be Essential Reading for Everyone, from PopSugar—“Diverse literature is more essential than ever in today's current climate. Books are some of the best tools for developing tolerance and empathy, and few books are as rich and nuanced as those penned by black women.”

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Image credit: Cflgroup Media | Pexels

Bozoma Saint John Will Star in Her Own Documentary Series

Marketing sensation Bozoma Saint John will star in her own documentary series set to air on Starz. The series will feature personal and professional lessons, with insights from Saint John as well as others, emphasizing an overall message of showing up “wholly as ourselves,”—a push for authenticity, especially for people who might feel like outsiders. It's a message Saint John lives out daily, as a member of various minority or underrepresented groups and a trailblazer who has taken unconventional paths toward her current success.

The series will explore the diverse parts of Saint John's own identity—a child of immigrants from Ghana, a black woman, a mother, a widow—as well as issues personal and professional, and how they affect and can be influenced by her life and the lives of others. Everything from her love of fashion to how to be a nontraditional corporate executive will be explored with Saint John's own unique flair.

Click through to learn more about the documentary in the full article from Fast Company.

By Nicole Laporte

Bozoma Saint John, who has risen to business celebrity status thanks to her work for PepsiCo, Beats, Apple, Uber, and Endeavor, is now burnishing her personal brand.

The marketing star, who’s currently CMO of the global media conglomerate Endeavor, will host and produce the upcoming documentary series Bozoma: Being Badass on the Starz network.

Saint John describes the show as a cross between Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, Mister Rogers, and The Oprah Winfrey Show, telling Fast Company that it will bring a sense of “purposefulness” to a range of topics that span her personal and professional life, from her love of fashion to the challenges of being a single, working mother and widow. (The show comes by the Bourdain comparison honestly: No Reservations‘ Alex Lowry is an executive producer on Bozoma. Anjula Acharia is also exec producing.)

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Image credit: Greg Doherty | Getty Images

London Breed Sworn In as First Black Woman to Serve as San Francisco Mayor

San Francisco native and former acting mayor London Breed was sworn in as Mayor of San Francisco yesterday, making her the city’s first black woman to hold the position—and only the second woman overall. A champion of helping everyone, regardless of their circumstances, Breed is a great example of the importance of the voices and influence of women, especially women of color and women from underrepresented groups. Breed’s election also puts her in rare company: The mayors of most of the United States’ largest cities are men, and some large cities like New York or Los Angeles have never had a woman mayor. 

Click through to read an article from PBS NewsHour from the day of Breed's swearing in; with more the election, Breed, and what the milestone means for representation.

By Janie Har

SAN FRANCISCO — London Breed will make history Wednesday as the first black female mayor of San Francisco when she is sworn into office in the city that has come to embody extreme wealth and poverty in the modern age.

She will take the oath outdoors on the steps of City Hall in a public ceremony before at least 1,000 spectators. Afterward, she will meet well-wishers in her new office — an open house tradition that dates back a century.

The 43-year-old Breed succeeds Mayor Ed Lee, whose unexpected death in December prompted a special June election to serve the remainder of his term.

Breed, a San Francisco native, has pledged to address the city’s most pressing problems, including homeless tent camps, open drug use and unbearably high housing prices.

She also says she is committed to ensuring that impoverished African American and other minority children receive the opportunities they need to advance.

Breed grew up in public housing and frequently talks about the tough love and support she had growing up, especially from her grandmother who raised her.

She also learned from mentors and neighbors who early on spotted potential and encouraged her to study hard. Now she will earn an annual salary of $335,996.

Breed was most recently president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for more than three years,

On Tuesday, colleagues toasted her and outgoing Supervisor Jeff Sheehy at their final meeting.

Breed thanked her colleagues for their dedication and promised to work with them no matter their disagreements.

“You can’t please everyone. Not everyone is going to like you, not everyone is going to do what you want them to do,” she said.

“And what I noticed about this board, and what made me so proud to be a part of it is, we stand our ground, we do what we think is best and we try to fight for the people we represent.”

Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

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At inaugural Power Rising summit, black women celebrate wins, strategize for upcoming battles

More than 1,000 black women from all 50 U.S. states gathered in Atlanta February 22 through 25 to learn from each other, inspire one another, and develop strategies to galvanize black women as drivers of positive change.

The sold-out event, Power Rising, held its first gathering this year to help black women access and tap into economic, political and social power to elevate themselves—as well as one another, their local communities, and the nation—and to raise their voices. The gathering, planned by and for black women, highlighted businesswomen as well as the political and social power and influence black women hold. Read more and click through for the full article from the Washington Post, and check out Power Rising online for more information.

ATLANTA — Between pastoring a small church, teaching college classes, volunteering with an anti-violence group and running for Congress, Stephany Spaulding didn’t think she had the time to go off to a women’s empowerment summit.

After spending two days with hundreds of black women juggling similarly busy and civically engaged lives, Spaulding can’t imagine not having attended Power Rising, a conference aimed at connecting African American women to share ideas and strategies for improving their communities.

More than 1,000 women attended the three-day event at the Westin Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta, where big-name speakers and grass-roots activists shared wisdom, laughter and even a few dance moves in joyous affirmation of one another.

Spaulding, 39, who lives in Colorado Springs, praised “the energy, the strength, the power and the direction of women that I’ve been able to connect with” by attending the conference. “Even if our paths to getting where we’re going are different, I believe we are all going to the same place. We want justice and love and liberation for everyone.”

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Women's March 2018 Calls on White Women to Give Black Women a Seat at the Table

Black women have been organizers; trailblazers; and supporters and leaders of everything from community nonprofits and counseling services to free health clinics and advocacy for children, disabled people, and students. Still, modern feminist activism and discussion often focuses on white women, sometimes to the exclusion of women of color. This year, the Women's March focused on the importance of making true progress for all women—and both celebrating and fighting for the rights of black women. Read on to learn how this movement is working to become more inclusive.

By Marie Solis

LAS VEGAS—Black women are the next powerhouse force in American politics—and the Women's March wants to help them be front and center in 2018 and beyond.

Speakers at this year's "Power to the Polls" event on Sunday in Las Vegas gave special attention to women of color and black women especially, whose contributions to the feminist movement they said have been ignored and pushed to the side for too long.

"This march is being led by women of color," Nina Turner, the president of Our Revolution, a Democratic political action organization, told a roaring crowd. "But...let me put a special message out to black women: Don't let anyone make you feel marginalized. If you feel you aren't getting the respect you deserve, do what [Congresswoman] Shirley Chisholm did—don't just bring your own seat, kick down the door."

Women's March co-chair Carmen Perez put out a similar call to action, focusing on white women's responsibility to create space for people of color within the movement and in the political arena.

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6 Things We Can Thank Black Women For

By Korin Miller womenshealthmag.com -

The movie Hidden Figures is cleaning up during awards season (raking in $119 million in box office sales, according to ComScore), and critics have applauded the cast’s portrayal of the brilliant African-American women who helped launch astronauts into space in the early '60s.

The film is based on a true story, but you probably never heard about it at school. Unfortunately, the women who inspired Hidden Figures aren’t alone—there are many black women who contributed substantially to history and yet never got the widespread credit they deserved.

Here are just a few advances in modern history that we owe to black women:

The Right To Vote: Ida B. Wells     

We often associate the names Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony with women getting the right to vote, but the contributions of Ida B. Wells shouldn't be overlooked. Best known for her work in the early civil rights movement, Ida also started the Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago, which was the first African-American women’s suffrage organization, according to the Washington Post. In 1913 she attended the Women’s Suffrage Parade in Washington, D.C., despite white organizers telling her and other black women to march at the back of the line. She refused, and pushed her way to march at the front of her state’s delegation.

Home Security: Marie Van Brittan Brown

We take it for granted that we can spy on our pets while we’re at work and check out who’s ringing the door without stepping outside, but all of that became possible thanks to the inventiveness of Marie Van Brittan Brown. According to the New York Times, the nurse created a patented home surveillance device with her electrician husband in 1969. Their design enabled cameras to send images from peepholes to a single monitor so people could see who was outside the house. It became the basis for modern security systems.

Read more here.

Linda Goler Blount: President and CEO of the Black Women's Health Imperative

Considering every aspect of a person's identity when delivering medical care or when advocating for women's health is crucial. The president and CEO of the Black Women’s Health Imperative, an organization devoted to advancing the health and wellness of 20 million black women and girls in the United States, talks about making sure black women are included in conversations about women's health. She discusses self-care, mental and physical health, black women's experience of certain diseases, and more.

hercampus.com - “We need to create our own movements,” says Linda Goler Blount, president and CEO of the Black Women’s Health Imperative (BWHI). “We need to highlight our issues, highlight the research, and propose the policy and programs and solutions.”

Founded in 1983 on Spelman College's campus, the Black Women’s Health Imperative is dedicated to health advocacy for black women. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., they push for policies that focus on black women’s health. “It’s my job to get the kind of information that black women need so that they can understand what the issues are and what they should be doing,” explains Blount.

Since Blount took over BWHI four years ago, she has spearheaded an effort to empower black women to take control of their health.

After graduating from Eastern Michigan University with a Computer Engineering/Operations degree, and then going on to receive a Master’s of Public Health from the University of Michigan, she was immediately thrown into the health services research industry. From there she has launched a successful career that spans the public, for-profit, and nonprofit sectors - including seven years of market analysis for Coca-Cola and a number of years working with reproductive health and STD surveillance systems in Africa and the Caribbean.

Now, at the Black Women’s Health Imperative, Blount works to eliminate health disparities between black and white women. “We need to talk about us,” Blount explains about black women, “and the way that disease is expressed in us differently.” She stresses the importance of making health accessible – “at the Black Women’s Health Imperative, we’re taking the science and then translating it into something that women can understand, and most importantly act on.” This includes an upcoming article series in Essence magazine that will feature information about black women for black women.

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Awe-Inspiring Images Pay Tribute to Canada's Radical Black Feminists

Art has the power to inspire, illustrate, move us to action, and draw our attention to forgotten pieces of our own history—and one artist in Canada is bringing all of that together in a powerful series of images featuring black feminist heroes from Canada's history.

Black feminists often address—through their words or actions—intersections of racism, sexism, class oppression, gender identity and more in society. They argue that these issues are bound together in ways that compound the oppression that women—particularly women of color and others from multiple oppressed groups—experience.

What people may not always realize is that these pioneers fighting for human rights have been with us for centuries. Artist Naomi Moyer, a black woman living in Canada, wanted to draw more attention to Canada's black feminists. “I wanted to turn the few sentences that were written about these women from history books and online into a huge, colorful punch in the face,” she says in a feature by The Huffington Post. 

huffingtonpost.com - Mary Bibb was born in Rhode Island around 1820 as the daughter of free black Quakers. After becoming one of the first black woman teachers in North America, she involved herself in the anti-slavery movement.

However, following the 1850 passing of the Fugitive Slave Law, which demanded that all escaped slaves in America, including her husband, abolitionist Henry Bibb, be returned to their masters upon capture ― even if found in free states ― Bibb moved to Canada. Upon relocating, she and her husband began housing fugitive slaves in their home. Together they started publishing a newspaper, Voice of the Fugitive, the first major paper aimed at black Canadians.

Today, Bibb is considered the first black woman journalist in Canada. And yet, most Canadians do not even know her name. Self-taught artist Naomi Moyer, herself a black woman living in Canada, was disturbed by the lack of awareness surrounding figures like Bibb, women that Moyer could identify with and look up to.

“The school curriculum here is just as flawed and deficient as it is in the States,” Moyer told The Huffington Post. “Not one teacher, from kindergarten to college, gave me any book to read that was written by a black woman, let alone a black Canadian woman. The only kind of exposure most black people really got about ‘blackness’ or the black experience was through media and pop culture from the States.”

Moyer realized that it was extremely important for her to learn the names and stories of the women shaping Canadian black history. If no one else was going to teach her, she would do the research herself. The print series “Black Women in Canada” integrates Moyer’s research with graphic visuals that bring the under-acknowledged heroines to life.

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