Let’s celebrate each and every ‘first’ for women
In the whirlwind that is our current news culture, the firsts for women still get plenty of media attention. We’re not yet ready to take these firsts for granted.
Ontario just said farewell to Kathleen Wynne, its first female — and openly gay — premier.
Wynne lasted five years and like her five other female provincial counterparts across the country who shattered that particular glass ceiling, she had only one term to make her significant mark.
No one ever guaranteed that once a woman breaks a barrier, the job is hers to keep. Sometimes she finds herself quietly sweeping up the shards of glass as she ruefully contemplates what to do next.
In the last few weeks, there have been some notable firsts.
On June 19, Karina Gould, Liberal MP and minister of democratic institutions, did something no MP has done before: she breastfed her 3-month-old son Oliver during Question Period in the House of Commons. There’s viral video to prove it.
Look! There she is, sitting in her House of Commons seat, baby’s head against her breast, his tiny hand searching her shirt. No big deal.
“No shame in breastfeeding!” Gould cheerfully tweeted, “Baby’s gotta eat & I had votes. Clearly still work to do ... Glad @HoCSpeaker & parl colleagues supportive! :)”
I like to think Gould was not only doing what had to be done but also slyly making a point. Our democratic institutions will not fall if a woman breastfeeds her baby in public.
There were congratulations but also tsk tsking about Gould showing a bit of breast. And one man groused on Twitter: “Was her son elected?” Your point, sir?
Wise words on Twitter from writer Sarah Boesveld summed up my own reaction: “Mixed feelings about this — on the one hand, what a nice show of support! On the other hand, not sure I’d want … attention on me while I’m trying to feed my baby? And the applause really underscores the fact that breastfeeding in public is really not totally accepted yet.”
When a well-meaning senior media guy began musing online about a parliamentary breastfeeding “booth” I checked out. It’s done, fellas, move on.
In New Zealand, the new mom/powerful job theme continued as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern became only the second female prime minister in the world to give birth while in office.
Benazir Bhutto, the late prime minister of Pakistan, gave birth to a second child while in office in 1990. Since that was 28 years ago, consider Ardern a first in this century.
As Ardern received global congratulations on daughter Neve’s birth, she promised she would be back to work in six weeks and “reachable” until then (a deputy PM is in charge).
My favourite response was from columnist Chitra Ramaswamy in the Guardian, who archly noted the impossible standard this set for the rest of mother-kind: “You, too, can expel a tiny human from your body and be up and running a country in six weeks. Inspiring, no?”
And in New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shook the Democrat political world to its rafters
She added: “For those of us looking after babies in a society where workplace discrimination against mothers is standard, there is a disconnect between news affirming the victory of feminist choice and the domestic reality.”
Much closer to home, the recent firsts included a popular announcement among my fellow journalists that the Star would appoint managing editor Irene Gentle to be the first female editor-in-chief in its 126-year history.
Two of Toronto’s four daily newspapers already had female editors-in-chief, but you celebrate each institutional breakthrough as the barriers fall. Gentle’s female counterparts, women in top media jobs in many different publications from all across the country, jubilantly acknowledged this by jointly signing their names to a big bouquet of flowers. “It was the kindest, strongest, most powerful message I can imagine. I really do still get goosebumps every time I think of it,” Gentle said.
Powerful women know that each first matters.
Two more firsts: Chiefs of Ontario, an organization representing the province’s Indigenous chiefs, just elected RoseAnne Archibald as its first female leader and regional chief.
And in New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a charismatic 28-year-old Hispanic political newbie — and acknowledged Democratic Socialist — shook the Democrat political world to its rafters by defeating powerful longtime Congressman Joe Crowley in a safe Democratic seat in a district primary.
Ocasio-Cortez is now likely to become, by next November, the youngest congressional representative in history. She achieved this victory by focusing on her gender, her ethnicity and her community roots. Her campaign video was fantastic.
More than a decade ago, I was wondering aloud whether we even needed to acknowledge these firsts anymore. Did they matter, say, to a younger generation of women?
Remarkably it seems more important now than ever to celebrate the firsts. And not just because, for young girls and women, if you can’t see it, you can’t want to be it. The #MeToo movement has shed a harsh light on how women have been bullied, sexually harassed and held back on the job. That movement — and the alarming political situation in the U.S. that may see the Supreme Court reshaped to deny women their reproductive rights — has made it even more urgent for women to reach the top in media, business and politics.
We need to get to the point where there are so many women in influential positions that a woman is no longer the first, second or even third woman to break that particular barrier.
That’s when it will really be no big deal.