Just one glass ceiling shattered

“You’ve come a long way, baby.”

If you don’t recognize that reference, Hillary Clinton would. Back in the late ’60s and ’70s, as she began to elbow her way onto the bottom rungs of the male-dominated political ladder, a tobacco company was using that slogan to market cigarettes to American women. The idea was that they had made such enormous progress toward gender equality that, hey, “you’ve got your own cigarette now, baby.”

The slogan was part validation and part condescending taunt, but that’s how it was back then. The Equal Rights Amendment, a constitutional amendment to give women full legal equality, had just passed both houses of Congress by huge margins. “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex,” it read, and everyone expected its quick adoption by the states. Everyone thought that much of the battle had been won.

Instead, the ERA became an early victim of the culture wars, with conservative opponents claiming that it was anti-housewife, anti-mother, anti-family and anti-biblical. It came up for a vote three times in the Georgia Legislature, and was handily defeated all three times. It has never become law.

Given that history, it’s worth noting and celebrating that this week, almost half a century later, a woman was finally nominated to be president by a major American political party. And while the detractors have a point — Hillary’s long road to the nomination took her first through the White House as Bill Clinton’s first lady and political partner — that tells us more about us than about her. She took that route because the routes taken traditionally by males were closed to her.

If you want another gauge of how difficult that path has been, and how important Clinton’s example is, look right here at home, at Georgia. The people of this state have yet to elect a woman to serve as governor, lieutenant governor, U.S. senator, attorney general and a number of other important roles.

Even more compelling, look at today’s political roster: Georgia has 14 members of Congress and two U.S. senators. None is a woman. We have eight executive officers elected statewide, from governor through agriculture secretary and state school superintendent; none is a woman. Throw in the five public service commissioners elected statewide, and again all are male.

Thirty-three top state and federal offices. Thirty-three males. In 2016.

If the gender playing field were equal, that would be like flipping a coin 33 times and having it come up heads 33 times in a row. According to a coin-flip probability calculator — and yes, such things exist — the odds of that happening naturally, without outside forces influencing the outcome, are 1.16415 X 10 to the negative 10th power.

In English, that’s one out of 8.59 billion.

So yes, powerful forces are undoubtedly at work to produce an outcome like that. You may not see them or understand them or want to acknowledge them. But like gravity, you know damn well that it exists, because you can see its impact everywhere around you. Overcoming that is a truly historic achievement, an achievement that will make it easier for other women in other roles to also defy those forces and reach for the pinnacle.

We’ve come a long way, baby; we still have a long way to go.