Lest We Forget…

The night Hillary Clinton clinched the nomination for the Democratic Party, I got emotional. I didn’t expect it. As a matter of fact, if you had asked me beforehand how I would feel, I’m almost certain I would have shrugged it off. But when I heard Alicia Keys’ song, This Girl is on Fire, and saw the “glass ceiling” breaking while watching the Democratic National Convention, I got choked up. And I liked getting choked up, feeling what my mother and her mother before her would never feel. Hope for the futures of daughters everywhere. Hope that their roads are paved without the nearly insurmountable obstacles that only one gender must overcome. Obstacles that we really don’t think about as much…until we really think about it.

A woman has never been president of these United States of America. Now, it’s not because a woman has never been qualified. Many women have been as qualified as all those men who were elected. But women need to be almost overqualified for the job of president and any other male dominated career. No matter what anyone thinks of Hillary Clinton she is qualified and her resume can run circles around most men who have applied for the job going back years. And no matter what anyone thinks of Hillary Clinton, she has smoothed the path so that other women can walk more freely.

I came across an article that served as a reminder, just like the moment from the convention. The 2016 election is historic in a GOOD way. It may not mean as much to millennial women who may have taken so many rights for granted, but for those who lived without those rights, this moment is emotional.

From the article link below:
Her parents divorced when she was a girl, in the 1960s, when banks could deny women loans if they couldn’t get a man to co-sign. “My mother couldn’t get credit. She couldn’t buy a car without a male signature. She couldn’t get an apartment without a male signature.” Unthinkable…now.

A woman has made it to a position where she could be president. Unthinkable…then.

We’ve come a long way, baby.

(article link) http://huff.to/2etmFmO