As we stand poised to potentially elect our first female president who is also a woman of color, we know this moment builds on a long history of other women and Black women trailblazers who have helped to pave the way. Having written the book What Will It Take to Make a Woman President?, I set out during this milestone election season to interview various thought leaders to share their insights on this pivotal moment—not only on what it means symbolically, but also how we can use the momentum to make sure it allows for even more women and diverse leaders in politics beyond the election.
One of those experts and activists who has spent her career working on these themes is Kimberly Peeler-Allen, co-founder of Higher Heights, the nation’s leading organization dedicated to building Black women’s collective political power from the voting booth to elected office. Higher Heights, which Peeler-Allen co-founded in 2011 alongside Glynda Carr, has helped drive the national narrative about the power of Black women voters and has inspired countless Black women to step into their power whether as voters, activists or elected leaders.
Peeler-Allen also serves as a visiting practitioner for the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, board chair of the ERA Coalition and board chair of Reproductive Freedom for All.
We talked about what it would mean to elect our first woman president who is multi-racial; why it is important to elevate Black women’s leadership; what issues are mobilizing Black women in this election; what biases and barriers women candidates face; the significance of the ERA on the ballot in New York; and more.
The following is an excerpt from our interview. You can read our full conversation here, and hear more remarks from Peeler-Allen and other thought leaders on the special election series of my podcast ShiftMakers.
Marianne Schnall: What do you think it would mean for young people to break the glass ceiling and elect the first woman president, who is also a woman of color? And what does it personally mean to you as a Black woman?
Kimberly Peeler-Allen: I think the historic nature of this is just tremendous. I think for small children to look up and see that the president of the United States possibly looks like them, looks like a family relative, for millions of children and young people who have never seen that, or the last time they saw it, they may not even remember or have really been aware when President Obama was president. And I think there are just possibilities that exist that you too can do X, Y and Z.
I have been thinking back to a conversation I had with someone, it was probably in the early 2010s where their son had said, “I thought you had to be a woman to be secretary of state”—because in their lifetime they had only seen or only heard about Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice and others. And it was like, that’s just how it goes. Just like the declaration of that. And it was just something that has just always stuck with me.
For me personally, it is really a momentous time to even be here, to see a Black woman, a South Asian woman at the top of the ticket. This is something I’ve been working on before I even knew I was working on it, having founded Higher Heights in 2011. And we were very proud to support the vice president—then she was attorney general of California—when she ran for U.S. Senate because we hadn’t had a Black woman in the U.S. Senate in almost 20 years since the departure of [Carol] Moseley Braun. So it was trying to inch forward.
And I remember having a conversation with the then-newly-minted Senator Harris, and she said, “You all were made for a moment like this because of the historic nature of my position, but also the support to be able to galvanize Black women and our allies all across the country,” to support her and overall expanding the number of Black women in elected office.
So it’s a little heady to think that I had some small hand in where we are right now, but it also drives me forward because it just reiterates what can be done if you just say, “We’re not going to stick with the status quo anymore.” It’s exciting.
To see a Black woman, a South Asian woman at the top of the ticket—this is something I’ve been working on before I even knew I was working on it, having founded Higher Heights in 2011.
Kimberly Peeler-Allen
Schnall: Why is it so important to advance Black women’s leadership in this moment and beyond?
Peeler-Allen: It’s actually part of the narrative as to why we founded Higher Heights back in 2011. Glynda Carr and I knew that, anecdotally from our interactions with Black women across the country, being involved as political operatives in New York and up and down the East Coast, we knew there was this untapped resource. We knew that the party and candidates were not unfortunately leaning into the power and the importance of Black voters and particularly Black women until the 11th hour, because they knew that they were going to do the right thing. So we thought, if we actually organized and did the work so that the investment and the outreach and the tools were provided to Black women earlier, how much more could they even do? And we started marching down that trail of trying to get people to really recognize the importance of that investment.
Early on, people were saying, “Does it really matter? There are other folks that we need to invest in.” But we said, “If you invest in Black women, it’s not just Black women that benefit: The whole nation benefits.” And really digging in on how underrepresented Black women had been.
We have had some really stellar Black women in elected office. Thinking back to Barbara Jordan and Shirley Chisholm and Carol Moseley Braun and people like Lottie Shackelford, who was the first mayor of a top 100 city, in Little Rock—they’re trailblazers and have been extremely vocal. So it feels like Black women have this outsized presence, but when you actually count up how many we have had, and how long they’ve served in total versus the number of Black women in the population, they’re grossly underrepresented.
So being able to articulate that to stakeholders and gatekeepers, as well as Black women themselves, to recognize that they have the power to swing an election. I think it was the 2015 election in Virginia where Terry McAuliffe won. It was a very, very close election, and a lot of the narrative coming out of that election was that single women had made the difference—but if you actually looked at the cross tabs and the number of Black women who voted, it was a direct correlation to the margin of victory for Terry McAuliffe. So that was really where we were like, okay, we’ve got to change the narrative and we’ve got to really drive home what is at stake, and also the importance of mobilizing and empowering Black women to really claim their seat because it is rightfully theirs.
We’ve just been pushing and pushing and pushing, and now we have—as the swearing in of [Rep. LaMonica] McIver out of New Jersey—31 Black women in Congress, which is really exciting. When we started, we had 18. So there’s definitely been a sizable shift in the number of Black women in elected office.
And we’re seeing unprecedented investments—still not as much as we would like, but unprecedented investments in organizing and mobilizing Black women voters to make sure that they have the tools not just to come out for themselves, but to mobilize their communities.
Schnall: What issues do you see motivating Black women to turn out in this election? What are the primary drivers?
Peeler-Allen: I think much of the same narrative that is driving voters across the country are the issues that are important to Black women: the economy, our personal safety and security, as well as our bodily autonomy are the three things that are really driving Black women voters to the polls.
I think the issue of reproductive freedom is not in a vacuum, and the connection to the rollbacks on civil rights, affirmative action, as well as our reproductive freedom—we are seeing all of these things as being very interconnected, like an attack on one is an attack on all. So we have to come out and vote and push back on, frankly, some of the decisions that have been coming out of the Supreme Court to try and make sure that all Americans have the opportunity to thrive and have self-determination as it is aspired to in our founding documents. Just the ability to put food on the table and have security in your life is a huge motivating factor.
Schnall: What are the specific biases and barriers for women candidates, particularly women of color, and what can we do to address them?
Peeler-Allen: I think there’s a constant need for women of color to credentialize themselves. We continuously have to prove that we belong in the room, let alone at the head of the table. So there is just the continuous labor of having to say, “Yes, I’m qualified. Yes, these are my credentials, and not only am I the most qualified person in this race, I also happen to be a woman.” So we need to kind of get past all of the questions of, “Oh, I don’t know if a woman could lead,” and be able to move beyond that.
I think that is probably one of the biggest challenges, the sexist tropes that follow women around, particularly women in their childbearing years—“What’s going to happen to your children? Why don’t you have children? Why don’t you have a partner? What does your partner say about this?”—that, frankly, men do not have to face at all. And it is just a continuous drumbeat.
Folks are definitely doing a better, more assertive job of calling out the stereotypes and the double standards, which is helping beat back some of the narrative. But I was just on social media earlier and saw some people talking about a candidate and questioning, “Well, what does her husband say?” or “She must not have talked to her husband before she decided she was going to do this.” Or “I don’t know if she’s qualified because what happens if she decides she wants to have a baby and then she’s just gonna be gone.” What does that have to do with anything? That’s not how this works. So I think there’s still a lot that has to be changed in terms of our gender norms.
Fundraising is still always a challenge. The Center for American Women in Politics has been doing a lot of research over the last year or so around fundraising trends, in terms of what are women of color overall raising, what are women donors doing, the average-size contribution between a woman candidate and a man candidate. As a longtime fundraiser, I remember seeing even women donors writing larger checks to male candidates than they were to female candidates. And so I think that continues to be something to be worked on, and I think it’s one of those things where, once you highlight it, people are like, “Oh, wait, I did that?” and really checking their biases as they move forward.
The last piece of it continues to be the gatekeepers that is also rooted in racism, sexism and misogyny. And, frankly, maintaining patriarchy of, “Who are we choosing for this particular seat?” And particularly for a lot of down-ballot local races, there are party bosses or organized labor folks who get to more or less anoint the candidates for a particular seat, which puts them on the leadership ladder. So if a woman does not get tapped for that initial step up on the rung, it makes it that much harder for her to be able to climb. So I think there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done there in terms of opening the aperture. It’s not just the usual suspects of this person’s son or this person’s brother, and so-and-so has been my intern, and they also are a guy, but being able to really be intentional about looking for all of the candidates, so that we’re not just continuing to promote the same demographic into leadership.
If a woman does not get tapped for that initial step up on the rung, it makes it that much harder for her to be able to climb.
Peeler-Allen
Schnall: The Equal Rights Amendment is on the ballot this election in New York state. What should people know about the status and importance of the ERA? And if the referendum does pass New York, what would that indicate for the future of passing the ERA in this country?
Peeler-Allen: New York ratified the Equal Rights Amendment back in the ’70s, soon after it went to the states. And what leaders in New York have seen is that the Equal Rights Amendment is the floor and not the ceiling for protecting the rights of all people.
The Equal Rights Amendment on the ballot in New York is actually an expanded ERA. It codifies the right to abortion, it protects from discrimination based on sex and sexual identity. So that is a new stake to put down to protect our trans brothers and sisters and nonbinary folks. And I think it is a huge step forward for what equality truly means in this country. And New York is a leader in this space. So I think there is an opportunity to really shore up a lot of things that the original ERA started but being able to expand that so that it is even more inclusive is better for everybody.
Visit What Will It Take’s 2024 election page for more conversations with today’s thought leaders, information on the biases and barriers women candidates face and how to counter them, and links to voting resources and organizations working to advance women’s political leadership in this election and beyond.
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