Here's why my soul chooses audacious hope after Harris's defeat
Democratic presidential nominee US Vice President Kamala Harris, reacts as she delivers remarks, conceding the 2024 US presidential election to President-elect Donald Trump, at Howard University in Washington, US on November 6, 2024.
What you need to know:
- When tears fell after Harris's defeat, solace came from unexpected places - from Solnit's words to the triumphs of women leaders across the globe.
- In a world that says wait 300 years for gender equality, the victories of Mottley, Sheinbaum, and Hassan tell a different story.
- The sleeve-rolling starts now.
If you are like me, then you might be at a certain see-saw point of these five known stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance after learning that America’s next president won’t be female, after all.
It's easy to ask, "What's the point of gender equality anyway?" when a country that's known to pontificate gender equality across the globe can't lead by example. But I won’t do that.
An American friend who voted for Kamala confessed that she wept when the results were announced. She told me: “We should have seen it coming, as the US Equal Rights Amendment has never been passed by the senate a century after a guarantee of gender equality was proposed in Congress.”
That was the first time I’d heard of the Equal Rights Amendment and my curiosity was piqued. According to the website Equalrightsamendment.org, the US needs the Equal Rights Amendment to makes things crystal clear for the lower courts, who apparently are still confused about how to handle cases where someone is treated differently because of their gender.
I've read analyses from political pundits about why Kamala lost so, I'm not going to regurgitate this information. Instead, I'm going to focus on my version of the sixth stage of grief; audacious hope.
My friend, the eternal optimist just like me, shared an excerpt from Rebecca Solnit’ book Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power: “They want you to feel powerless and to surrender and to let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving.”
Her words were the balm we did not know we needed for our wounded souls. And they restored our hope in achieving gender equality in political leadership and all other spheres dominated by men.
From Mia Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados, to Claudia Sheinbaum, the president of Mexico, to Samia Suluhu Hassan, the president of Tanzania, the tides are changing slowly, but surely. UN Women reports that as of January 2024, there were 15 countries in the world headed by women, and 48 countries overall which had ever been headed by women. There’s a personal sense of triumph I feel each time a woman gets to lead, and that’s why I choose to remain audacious in my hope that gender equality will be achieved, maybe even sooner than the 300 years that UN Women said it would take.
In her concession speech, Kamala said: "Do not despair. This is not a time to throw up our hands. This is a time to roll up our sleeves."
That’s the status I choose too, and invite you to do the same.
Ms Oneya comments on social and gender topics. @FaithOneya; [email protected]
