It’s hard to read the news and not feel grateful for brave, resilient women around the world. That’s been true throughout history, and it’s especially true today.
We wanted to cheer and scream at the same time when Olympic athletes Alysia Montaño, Kara Goucher, and Allyson Felix broke their nondisclosure agreements to tell the New York Times about being paid less by their sponsor, Nike, after they gave birth. We only wanted to scream when white male legislators in Alabama and other states voted to effectively ban abortion. Thousands of women came forward in response to publicly share their own experiences of ending a pregnancy—but why should it fall to women to share their most personal stories in order to defend a right we’ve had in America for more than forty-five years? What’s more, why are legislators focused on limiting reproductive choices rather than solving the real challenges pregnant women confront? A woman in America today is 50 percent more likely to die from pregnancy, childbirth, or related complications than her own mother, and black women are three to four times more likely than white women to die from pregnancy-related complications. Why aren’t these legislators concerned about keeping women alive?
Meanwhile, around the world, efforts to dictate what women can wear continue. The speaker of the Tanzanian parliament banned women members from wearing nail and eyelash extensions. The Japanese health and labor minister defended employers who require women to wear high heels, calling the practice “necessary and appropriate.” More than a few countries currently either restrict what religious clothing women wear in public or require women to wear religious clothing in public. And it’s not only governments policing women’s attire and accessories. In 2018, the U.S. Open chastised professional tennis player Alizé Cornet for changing her shirt during a break in a match, and Serena Williams was told by French Open officials that she couldn’t wear her black catsuit, even though it was helping prevent life-threatening blood clots.
As we said in the introduction, ensuring the rights, opportunities, and full participation of all women and girls remains a big piece of the unfinished business of the twenty-first century. But sometimes it seems even more unfinished than we’d hoped. Even though women in the United States have graduated from college in higher numbers than men for decades, there’s still a woeful lack of women in the upper reaches of science and technology, business and education, not to mention politics and government. Women’s representation in the current administration in Washington is the lowest it’s been in a generation, and women hold just a quarter of computing jobs in the U.S.—a percentage that has gone down instead of up since the mid-1980s.
For too many women, especially low-wage workers, a livable wage or predictable work schedules or affordable child care are still far out of reach; less than 20 percent of American workers have access to paid family leave, and those benefits are concentrated among the highest-income workers. One in three women in the United States and worldwide has experienced physical or sexual violence. Every year globally, more than two million girls under fourteen give birth.
Yet, we have made progress. Around the world, child marriage rates are declining. So, too, is teenage pregnancy. Brave women in India, Canada, South Korea, the United States, and elsewhere are shining a brighter light on sexual assault and harassment. More women are making their own reproductive health choices in more places, even as we lose ground in America. Women are running countries and cities across the globe. They’re leading Fortune 500 companies and starting their own enterprises. They’re making award-winning films and theater, shattering records in sports, and inventing revolutionary technologies.
For the first time ever, there are more than one hundred women in the U.S. Congress—the most diverse class in history. We’ve watched the first woman Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, face off with a president who embodies misogyny. A century ago, most women in America couldn’t vote; today we have enough women running for president of the United States to field a basketball team.
While writing this book, we have loved thinking back across our own lives to remember the women who inspired, educated, and challenged us. Some we’ve had the gift of knowing; others we’ve never met. Some come from politics and public service. Many don’t; running for office is one great way to make a difference, but it’s far from the only way. Some of their names are famous, others are unknown. To us, they are all gutsy women—leaders with the courage to stand up to the status quo, ask hard questions, and get the job done. Many have done heroic things, but they are not superheroes. They are complex, flawed, and imperfect human beings. They all made the world better. We draw strength from these women, and we hope you will too. Because if history shows one thing, it’s that the world has always needed gutsy women—and we know it always will.