46th Presidential Inauguration Day
Image from the LA Times
Powerful women are all around us. Today we celebrate the ones making history! It is with grace and poise that for the first time, a woman will be the Vice President of the United States. The barriers breakers of our time, Ruther Bader Ginsberg, Hillary Clinton, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Kamala Harris, Ilhan Omar and more are paving the way for the women in this country while also carrying the immense weight of hope for all of womankind. Today, we raise our glass to them. Tomorrow will be a new day for the country and throughout the next four years, we will be able to watch with hopeful eyes, how a woman shapes our nation, our policies and our livelihoods. It is their hardwork and dedication that gives so many of us women, members of the BIPOC community, and our allies; more reason to pop a bottle of Black Girl Magic Sparkling Brut today, in celebration of the 46th Presidential Inauguration. Cheers to 2021: the year of the woman.
It feels like only yesterday that Hillary Clinton opened our eyes to the possibility of having a woman in the White House, when she announced her first presidential campaign aspirations. Her strength, confidence and ambition is exactly what drove six women including Harris, to take on what may be their most important roles in government yet. With our glasses full of bubbles and our hearts full we will see the first Woman, Mixed Race Black and South Asian Vice President be sworn into office.
Women are in such domination of 2021, that we can’t fit them all into one blog (as much as we would like to!); so we’ve compiled a list of some especially remarkable women in politics to watch in the 117th Congress, and 46th Presidential administration.
Women to Watch
Image from PBS News Hour
- Deb Haaland: Otherwise known as Debra Haaland of the Laguna Pueblo Tribe. Deb will be the first ever Indigenous person and Indigenous woman to hold office as a cabinet secretary. Her appointment as head of the Department of the Interior will see a return of authority to Native Americans who were once solely responsible for U.S lands and natural resources. In her acceptance speech for this position she promised, “I’ll be fierce for all of us, for our planet, and all of our protected land” (and we can all cheers to that!).
- Maryland Strickland (D-WA, 10th District): Like Kamala Harris, Strickland is a Mixed Race woman of Black and Asian descent. She is one of the three first Korean American women in congress, this year. Like some of her female colleagues before her, Strickland is using fashion as a powerful means of expression and politics. For her swearing in ceremony Strickland chose to wear a traditional Korean dress referred to as a hanbok, which was meant to both honor her Korean mother and be a positive reinforcement for representation.
- Nikema Williams (D-GA, 5th District): Williams is not only the first Black woman to chair the Georgia Democratic Party but she will also be the first woman to represent her district. She is following in the footsteps of the late representative John Lewis.
In 2021, we are seeing the most women ever in the House of Representatives. See the full list of Women to Watch from Politico here.
The roster of impressive women across Congress and the White House could go on, and on...as it should! 104 years after Jeanette Rankin became the first woman to be sworn into Congress, there are 26 women in the Senate, and 118 women in the House of Representatives. As if a historic 144 women in the Capitol aren’t reason enough for 2021 to be the year of the woman, President Biden has surrounded himself in the sound advice of over 2 dozen powerful female minds, not including our Madame Vice President Kamala Harris! Regardless of our political values, American women have come together to let the world know: #SHECAN canned wine and she will. As she has said before, she may be the first but she certainly will not be the last.
So today it feels even better to raise a glass of wine from a Black-women-owned business. A toast to women, trail blazers like Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Deb Haaland, and ourselves! With no glass-ceiling to hold us back, the sky's the limit.
Xoxo,