Samuel Martin - The Rise of Women in Government

Working to Ensure the ‘Year of the Woman’ Is More Than Just One Year

Summary

After the inauguration of Donald Trump, women have taken a greater stance in politics and government on many issues such as gun control and restrictive voting laws. Women have created social organizations that inform voters and that canvas neighborhoods in their community to promote voting to those who wouldn't normally vote. So much activism recently has led to this year being called the "Year of the Women" because of the stance taken by women and also because of the many seats taken by women in government this year. People believe that in this lull between voting times, the energy may fade, but they have hope because the catalyst for this activism is the current president, who still has a while left in office. Organizations have even been founded to provide information to those women running for office to help them to run in the right district so that they can have the highest chance of winning.

Analysis

This article was written on Monday, December 10, 2018 in New York. This means that the information is coming from a journalist extremely close to the government. I had heard about the rise in female activism this year, but I didn't know that it went to such great lengths. This relates to the women's suffrage amendment (19th amendment) that was ratified in 1920, because it gave voting rights to women after a while of activism. The audience of this is everyone, but mainly women to influence them to keep the activism going. This article was written by Kate Zernike who is a political reporter for the New York Times, but also a women so she is very much effected by this story. The article was written to keep the energy going in female activism so that more women will be elected into office in the future. This is important because our government needs to represent us, but it can't properly do that when it is not made up of the same ratio of male to female as the US population.

Source

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/us/politics/women-candidates-activism.html