Winning

What we've already won is huge

Kamala Harris speaking in my hometown of Kalamazoo, Michigan last week.

It’s often been observed that anyone who would write a book about women leaders back in 1990 and title it The Female Advantage must be optimistic, if not downright deluded. And I do plead guilty to being a glass half-full type. 

But this passion for looking on the bright side has kept me going through decades when many saw only incremental progress for women, and when the plaintive question “Why so slow?” dominated conversations about women in the workplace. Focusing relentlessly on the positive has enabled me to keep setbacks in perspective, maintain my spirits and the spirits of those around me, and discern the shape of a more hopeful future. 

Recently, women’s progress in the workplace has seemed at odds with setbacks in the political arena, especially in regard to reproductive rights and the kind of casual public misogyny that tries to pass itself off as free speech. But my habit of looking for positives has become too ingrained to permit the kind of pessimism and fear I hear many expressing about next week’s election to cloud my perspective. Women have simply come too far to accept going back. Finding our voices, we’ve lost the habit of submission. And too many men support our aspirations.

Male support has become a major workplace theme, starting in 2014, when UN Women announced its HeForShe initiative, spurring organizations large and small to follow in its wake. The guiding idea was that, since men as well as women benefit from women’s empowerment— at work, at home, in public life— they should make common cause to improve women’s standing. Whereas women had previously been urged to engage male colleagues primarily as mentors and sponsors— a relationship that implies a difference in status— the program urged both men and women to engage one another as allies, a more reciprocal form of relationship. 

I was thinking about this as I watched Barack Obama, Tyler Perry, Bruce Springsteen, and Senator Raphael Warnock take the stage with Kamala Harris at her October 24 rally in Georgia. Warnock made the theme of alliance explicit when he proclaimed that “Our individual location isn’t as important as our collective destination. We are one people. Let’s rise together. Let’s win the moment together!”

This obviously struck a chord with me, as Rising Together is the title of my latest book. And as Warnock rightly pointed out, our ability to rise together depends on our ability and readiness to build alliances broadly. Not just across the gender, but across race, ethnicity, age, sexual identity, religion, interests, class, beliefs, and values. 

This is what Harris has been doing with extraordinary skill since July 21, when she began her unexpected campaign. In that short time, she has managed to build as broad a coalition as we have seen in our lifetimes, with supporters ranging from Liz Cheney to Bernie Sanders. And she has done it by exercising leadership, giving allies a platform, and articulating a vision for a positive future

This is why I remain optimistic, both about the future of women and the outcome of this extraordinarily consequential election. Yes, the possibility remains that November 5 could go a different way. But the activation of so much passion in the service of “winning the moment together,” as Warnock says, and the extent to which Harris has put gender cliches about female leaders to rest, suggest that one key long-term battle has already been won. 

Like what you’re reading? Click here to order my most recent book Rising Together, or How Women Rise, both are available from Amazon or from your favorite bookseller.