As a young woman, I was moved and inspired watching Barbara Jordan speak out eloquently for the rule of law on the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate hearings; Geraldine Ferraro stand onstage as the vice presidential candidate for my party; Barbara Mikulski shake up the U.S. Senate; Dianne Feinstein take on the NRA; and Shirley Chisholm run for President. What hadn’t felt possible suddenly was.
When Chelsea was a little girl, I saw the power of representation through a new lens. I watched her leaf through the pages of her children’s books, searching intently for the girl characters. Now little girls have a new group of fictional heroines to look up to, including Wonder Woman and General Leia (she got a promotion from Princess). Slowly but surely, Hollywood is moving in the right direction.
That’s why it meant so much to me to see all the little girls and young women at my campaign rallies and all the moms and dads pointing and saying, “Look. You see? She’s running for President. You’re smart like she is. You’re tough like she is. You can be President. You can be anything you want to be.”
After the election, I received a letter from a medical student named Kristin in Dearborn, Michigan. She wrote,
I saw you speak for the first time as a small girl. My mom took me, and helped me up to stand on a fence and held me by the back of my overalls because I kept trying to wave to you and cheer you on. I was so ecstatic to hear such a smart woman speak, and I’ve never looked back. You never let that version of me down. I read your history as I got older, and then I got to see more speeches and read your writings. You never let down the older versions of me either.
To this day, even knowing how things turned out, the memories of all those proud and excited girls—and the thought of the women they will become—means more to me than I can express.
I know that there are some reading this who will sneer. Representation! It’s so soft, so wimpy, so liberal. Well, if you can’t imagine why it would matter for many of us to see a woman elected President—and that it wouldn’t matter only to women, just like the election of Barack Obama made people of all races, not just African Americans, feel proud and inspired—I’d simply urge you to accept that it matters to many of your fellow Americans, even if it doesn’t to you.
I wish so badly that I had been able to take the oath of office and achieve that milestone for women. Still, there were many feminist moments in this election we shouldn’t forget. I will always remember Bill’s speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. At one point, he uttered the memorable words, “On February 27, 1980, fifteen minutes after I got home from the National Governors Association conference in Washington, Hillary’s water broke.” Watching from our home in New York, I had to laugh. That was the first time that had ever been said about a presidential nominee. I thought it was about time.
There’s another moment I want to note that a lot of people missed when it happened but which I will never forget.
A few days before election night 2016, Beyoncé and Jay-Z performed at a rally for me in Cleveland. Beyoncé took the microphone. “I want my daughter to grow up seeing a woman lead our country and know that her possibilities are limitless,” she said. “We have to think about the future of our daughters, our sons, and vote for someone who cares for them as much as we do. And that is why I’m with her.”
And then, that infamous 1992 quote appeared in giant block letters on a huge screen behind her. “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was pursue my profession.”
Something that had been controversial was being reclaimed as a message of independence and strength—just like I had meant it to be all those years ago!—right before my eyes.
Thanks, Beyoncé.
Will we ever have a woman President? We will.
I hope I’ll be around to vote for her—assuming I agree with her agenda. She’ll have to earn my vote based on her qualifications and ideas, just like anyone else.
When that day comes, I believe that my two presidential campaigns will have helped pave the way for her. We did not win, but we made the sight of a woman nominee more familiar. We brought the possibility of a woman president closer. We helped bring into the mainstream the idea of a woman leader for our country. That’s a big deal, and everyone who played a role in making that happen should feel deeply proud. This was worth it. I will never think otherwise. This fight was worth it.
That’s why I am heartened that a wave of women across America have expressed more willingness to run for office after this election, not less. I’ll admit, I was worried that it would go the other way. And I will always do my part to encourage more women to run and to send the message to little girls, teenagers, and young women that their dreams and ambitions are worth chasing.
Over the years, I’ve hired and promoted a lot of young women and young men. Much of the time, this is how it went:
ME: I’d like you to take on a bigger role.
YOUNG MAN: I’m thrilled. I’ll do a great job. I won’t let you down.
YOUNG WOMAN: Are you sure I’m ready? I’m not sure. Maybe in a year?
These reactions aren’t innate. Men aren’t naturally more confident than women. We tell them to believe in themselves, and we tell women to doubt themselves. We tell them this in a million ways, starting when they’re young.
We’ve got to do better. Every single one of us.
Motherhood, Wifehood, Daughterhood, Sisterhood
I don’t know what it’s like for other women, but growing up, I didn’t think that much about my gender except when it was front and center. Like in eighth grade, when I wrote to NASA to say that I dreamt of becoming an astronaut, and someone there wrote back: Sorry, little girl, we don’t accept women into the space program. Or when the boy who beat me in a student government race in high school told me I was really stupid if I thought a girl could be elected President of the school. Or when I heard from Wellesley College: I was in. On these occasions, I felt my gender powerfully. But most of the time, I was just a kid, a student, a reader, a fan, a friend. The fact that I was female was secondary; sometimes it practically slipped my mind. Other women may have had different experiences, but that’s how it was for me.
My parents made that possible. They treated my brothers, Hugh and Tony, and me like three individual kids, with three individual personalities, instead of putting me in a box marked “female” and them in a box marked “male.” They never admonished me for “not acting like a girl” when I played baseball with the boys. They stressed the importance of education, because they didn’t want their daughter to feel constrained by tired ideas of what women should do with our lives. They wanted more for me than that.
Later in life, I started to see myself differently when I took on roles that felt deeply and powerfully womanly: wife, daughter to aging parents, girlfriend, and most of all, mother and grandmother. These identities transformed me yet somehow also felt like the truest expressions of myself. They felt both like pulling on a new garment and shedding my skin.
I don’t talk a lot about these pieces of my life. They feel private. They are private. But they’re also universal experiences, and I believe in the value of women sharing our stories with one another. It’s how we support each other through our private struggles and how we find the strength to build the best possible lives for ourselves.