Women of America, You Blew It

For the first time in American history, 96 years after women were granted the right to vote in the U.S, and exactly 40 years after full gender equality in voting was finally achieved, the women of the U.S., the world’s greatest nation, had the opportunity to vote for a female candidate, Hilary Clinton.

So many articles have been written, so many words have been said in every media channel about this historic opportunity, about the possibility to break the ultimate glass ceiling, about how it would make such a perfect story: Right after America defeated racial bias and elected a black president for the first time in history, it would elect its first ever female president…

…and then you blew it.

You blew it, ladies. Don’t whine about America not being ready to break the glass ceiling. YOU weren’t ready to break it. You are the enemy of your own success. You were handed, on a silver platter, a chance to change the agenda on gender equality. But, instead, you self sabotage and preserve your ability to complain about your misfortune.

Only 54% of women voters voted for Hilary Clinton. Just slightly more than half.

In 2008, Obama won the votes of 93% of the black population. Why? Because they had an agenda. They wanted to see one of their own taking the white house by storm. They wanted to break the “glass ceiling” for the African American minority and prove that, in the America of 2008, 143 years after the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the U.S., black people are entitled to equal opportunity.

What about us? What about women? Is 96 years after we were granted voting rights too soon?

What was more important to us than breaking the glass ceiling? What was more important than proving that girls and women all over the world can reach for the stars, can be judged without bias? What?

Did you feel that the “woman candidate” was not good enough for you to prove this point? Did her opponent, a racist, womanizing sexist with zero experience in government and lots of experience with bankruptcy, seem so much better for the future of your children that you decided to forsake any agenda for equality just to see him in the White House?

If Lucy Stone and other founders of the U.S. suffragist movement were alive today, they would die of shame. They fought for your rights, they fought so you can impact the nation’s agenda and, on November 8, 2016, you abused these rights. You spit on their graves.

We talk a lot about gender bias in the work place, about the fact that women don’t have the connections to make it to the top, that they need to prove themselves twice as much, and that they are not appreciated enough by male colleagues. But, for the job of President of the U.S., none of that matters. Hillary Clinton didn’t need any of that. All she needed was for you women to go out there and make your mark with the right vote.

But, you blew it.