The 1990s began with feminists determined not to surrender the ground they had fought for in the Reagan era—and almost immediately, the stakes became impossible to ignore.
In October 1991, millions of Americans watched Anita Hill testify before an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee about sexual harassment allegations against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Outside the hearing room, seven women members of Congress marched to the Senate in protest. Inside living rooms across the country, conversations about workplace harassment that had long been dismissed or ignored suddenly became national news.
When Thomas was confirmed anyway, many women responded not with resignation, but with political action.
The result was the 1992 "Year of the Woman." At the start of the decade, only two women served in the U.S. Senate. Then voters elected four new women senators in a single election cycle, including Carol Moseley Braun, the first Black woman ever elected to the Senate. Women candidates flooded congressional races, and women voters helped decide the presidential election.
Once in office, this new generation of lawmakers translated representation into policy, championing landmark legislation including the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Violence Against Women Act and the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.
Women also won expanded investments in women's health and services for survivors of violence, while Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined the Supreme Court and women entered Cabinet positions in unprecedented numbers.
Yet the decade's gains unfolded alongside mounting threats. Antiabortion violence escalated, with clinic bombings, arsons and murders targeting providers and staff. Conservative media figures like Rush Limbaugh built audiences by mainstreaming misogyny and resentment, helping create the foundation for today's right-wing media ecosystem.
But despite those forces, feminism entered the mainstream: By the mid-1990s, large majorities of both women and men identified with feminist values.
The lesson of the 1990s is that political power matters. When women organize, vote, run for office and govern, they do more than change who holds power—they change what government can accomplish.
This essay is part of Feminist Lessons—part 2 of Ms.' our three-part FEMINIST 250 project—which explores what each decade of modern feminist history can teach us about power, democracy, backlash and social change.
The post Feminist Lessons From the 1990s: How Women Became a Political Force appeared first on Ms. Magazine.
