Monica Potts examines how a slew of female candidates are quietly winning races on their own terms:
Before 1992, dubbed “the year of the woman” after four women were elected to the Senate in a single year, more Republican women held state and national office than Democratic women, says Jennifer Lawless, a professor of political science and director of the Women and Politics Institute at American University. That year, sexual harassment in the workplace, highlighted by the Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas case, and family and medical leave became big political issues. Democrats grabbed onto them, thereby courting female votes and candidates for a generation.