Women make Congress most diverse ever

THERE is very little good news coming out of the US these days, and the leadership, in the form of Donald Trump and his supporters, is exhibiting deep, vexing shades of racism, bigotry, misogyny and xenophobia.

However, the swearing into office of the nation’s most diverse Congress in history is undoubtedly cause for celebration.

The 116th US Congress has a record 102 women, forming 23% of Congress.

Although there are limits to what one person can achieve in Congress, this is an unprecedented moment that could signal a progressive and positive shift in American politics.

Congress is the US’s bicameral legislature and consists of two houses: the House of Representatives and the Senate.

The 116th Congress not only includes more women than before, but includes all sorts of women – of colour, from different cultural and religious backgrounds and of different ages.

Fifty years after Shirley Chisholm, teacher and politician, became the first black woman elected to the House of Representatives in 1968, the US Congress has more than 20 black women for the first time.

Among them is 44-year-old Ayanna Pressley, the first black Congresswoman from Massachusetts, and who is joined by another black woman, also a trailblazer in her district, Jahana Hayes, who is Connecticut’s first black Congresswoman.

Breaking ground for other minorities are Sylvia Garcia and Veronica Escobar, the first Latina Congresswomen from Texas, and Deb Haaland and Sharice Davids, the first Native American women to make it to Congress. Davids is openly lesbian.

Among others, these women are standing in the glow of a momentous time in history but, as usual, “the proof is in the pudding” and they have much work ahead.

Hopefully, they will live up to the vision they have all eloquently articulated, and deliver on promises made. May their election truly embody the words of Chisholm, who said: “My presence before you symbolises a new era in American political history.”