Despite All the Setbacks, 2017 Was the Year That Women Took Charge

The Women’s March on January 21 quickly became a lifeline to those struggling to get through their days in November of 2016. And when three times the number of people attended the Women’s March than attended the Inauguration, it became clear that the resistance was born.
“It was the first breath of hope I’d felt since the election; the first time I understood that the American people have the power to take back the country,” Mara Gerstein, Executive Director of The People, which works to create media in defense of democracy, told VICE Impact in an email exchange.

In the ensuing weeks, people started to mobilize: weekly rallies sprung up outside congressional offices, and tens of thousands came together on phone calls for action. People began to internalize what it meant that Clinton won the popular vote, even as a huge segment of the population sat the election out. It meant there were others, many others, with shared values. And those values were now under attack.

“People started coming together and realizing they had to use their voices,” Teresa Younger, CEO of the Ms. Foundation, told VICE Impact. “It happened from the grassroots, which is why I believe we are in a time of real change.”

The Women’s March brought together 5 million people on all seven continents in nonviolent protest. Gloria Steinem, founder of Ms. Magazine, spoke to the crowd in DC.

“This is the upside of the downside,” she said. “This is an outpouring of true democracy like I have never seen in my very long life… This is a day that will change us forever because we are linked.”

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It was a gathering before the storm, because the storm was indeed coming. The attacks on women’s and environmental rights have been widespread, and women have suffered more than their fair share. In one of his first presidential memos on January 23, 2017, President Trump moved to expand the Global Gag Rule, which cuts off international funding to healthcare organizations that provide contraceptive care or recommend abortions, even in the case of saving the mother’s life. This disproportionately affected poor and rural women in Africa.

More recently, President Trump rolled back ACA coverage of birth control, citing religious freedom of employers and allowing virtually any employer to choose whether their employee had the right to access birth control coverage. Where Obamacare made contraceptives a required preventative health service and allowed millions of women to obtain free birth control, these rollbacks mean based on religious or moral beliefs, an employer can opt out of this benefit. This rule is still in the period of public comment, and you can make your voice heard.

And for someone who ran on a platform of limiting government interference in personal lives, Trump has gotten awfully personal in women’s rights over their own bodies. When a 17-year-old immigrant woman, described as Jane Doe, sought an abortion this past fall, the ORR (Office of Refugee Resettlement), led by Trump appointee E Scott Lloyd, dragged her through precious weeks of court battles attempting to prevent it. Government officials suggested that if she really wanted the abortion, she could just return to Central America. On October 18, at a court appearance with lawyers from the ACLU, Judge Tanya S Chutkan said, “I am astounded that the government is going to make this 17 year old girl who has received judicial authorization for a medical procedure to which she is constitutionally authorized choose between a pregnancy she does not want or returning to the country from which she left.”

The case garnered national attention, and on October 25, she had the abortion. Activists rallied around her, bearing t-shirts that read things like “I am Jane Doe.”

As the Trump administration brings that case to the Supreme Court, the juxtaposition is startling: a man who everyone has heard talking about assaulting women’s bodies making decisions for women about how their bodies should be cared for.

“The fact that we have a man that brags about sexual assault in our highest office is an attack on women every day,” said Gerstein. “It makes women less safe.”

Younger agrees.

“When the tapes came out and Trump was elected,” she said, “we realized our own safety could not be entrusted to an ideal leadership.”

Trust is the operative word here, and at the Ms. Foundation, the core belief has always been to trust women. It’s been a crucial part of the #metoo movement, which has inspired millions of women to speak out and tell their stories.

“We know when we amplify those voices and trust women it gets us to the end result,” said Younger.

According to Danielle Gram, the quickest way to amplify voices is through equal representation in government. That’s why she founded Project 100, an organization devoted to getting 100 progressive women elected to Congress by the 100th anniversary of the women’s right to vote in 2020. Currently, only 1 in 5 members of Congress is female, so we’ve got a long way to go. But for all the hurdles of 2017 (and perhaps because of them), it’s become a year of great momentum for women.

“More than 400 women have declared a run for Congress in 2018,” Gram told VICE Impact. “That’s more than double what it was in 2016. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.”
First-timers like Danica Roem are winning longshot races and more seasoned political veterans like Deb Haaland have the opportunity to make history and demonstrate real equity in government.

With the recent election of Democrat Doug Jones over Republican Roy Moore in deep red Alabama, there’s hope that there’s room for change in Congress. If women, minorities, members of the LGBTQ community, and people of diverse religious backgrounds can rise up against the injustices of the past year, it’s possible that these obstacles will lead to long-term progress.
“For many years we have watched men in leadership swing the pendulum one way or the other,” said Younger. “We need more voices at the table to ensure that the pendulum swings towards justice.”

Reproductive health advocates are in the fight of a lifetime and the time is right now to weigh in one way or the other about the availability of health care in the United States.