Female VP and house speaker normalize the idea of women in top leadership.By Andrea Stevenson Conner
On April 28, 2021, President Joe Biden started his speech to a joint session of Congress by highlighting the fact that two women—Vice President Kalama Harris and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi—were seated behind him on the podium. And that this was a good thing.
“Madam Speaker, Madam Vice President,” he said. “No President has ever said those words from this podium. No President has ever said those words. And it’s about time.”
The presence of Harris and Pelosi behind the President “demonstrated a measure of progress in the quest for gender equality in the U.S.,” wrote Adam Gabbat in this article from The Guardian.
Perhaps even more importantly, their presence ignited the gender multiplier effect, the idea that elevating one woman elevates many in a quantifiable ripple as she inspires or directly reaches out to others.
To be sure, when girls and women around the world saw Harris and Pelosi there serving as the second and third most powerful politicians in the U.S., they couldn’t help but expand their thinking about what is possible for women in this country. Never before had two women sat in those positions during a Presidential address to Congress. Yet, when asked about it, Harris told reporters it was “normal.”
Having women with political power is already more normal in other countries, where women are and have been very successful heads of state. Think of New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, Germany’s Angela Merkel and Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
We can help make having women in leadership more normal here, too. Let’s let the power of this moment wash over us and inspire us to push the gender multiplier effect along.
Talk with women in your life about the value of having female leaders. Be inspired by the leadership of Harris and Pelosi to be the best leader you can be—and bring other women along with you. Then watch the positive effects multiply.
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