By Cheryl Mattox Berry
When I was growing up, the women’s rights movement to gain equal pay, equal access and control over our bodies was called feminism. The word lost its cache over the years as women climbed the corporate ladder, and younger women decided that having it all wasn’t their No. 1 priority.
Like so many things that have been recycled, feminism is back, but it has a new name – girl power. It showed up at the polls Tuesday when women, young voters, blacks and Hispanics helped re-elect Barack Obama as president of the United States.
I was in a funk going into this election. I feared that young women, particularly new voters worried about their ability to afford college and get jobs, would buy into Mitt Romney’s fairytale economic plan and turn their backs on the gains women have made over the last 50 years. Every time I heard Romney say he would get rid of Planned Parenthood and overturn Roe vs. Wade, I thought about my girlfriend whose mother took her to get a backroom abortion when we were teens.
So much was at stake. I prayed that a single issue – the economy – wouldn’t throw girls/women back into the Dark Ages. I didn’t want my 22-year-old daughter and teenage nieces to wage war on the same sexist issues that I did as a young woman. Now, I realize that I didn’t give female voters enough credit. I didn’t know the strength of the girl power movement. I thought it was just another catchy phrase coined by e-marketers.
Female voters saw through the negative ads of Romney and the Republican Party, both hopelessly out of touch with women, blacks, young voters and Hispanics. By turning out in such large numbers, women voters delivered a strong message: “We’re a force to be reckoned with.” Unfortunately, until we get more women in Congress and a female president, women will continue fighting the same battles again and again.
Never underestimate the power of your voice and your vote. Girl power can change things in your school, city, state and country. Just remember what women and young voters accomplished on Nov. 6, 2012. When I saw the faces of teenage girls and young women in Lafayette Square across the street from the White House and in the crowd at McCormick Place, I was reassured that we would never be second-class citizens again.
Photo: ABC News