The events leading up to the “Year of the Woman” were a perfect storm of women’s issues. George H.W. Bush was in the White House and set to appoint a conservative Supreme Court justice, which meant that Roe v. Wade was in jeopardy. When he named Clarence Thomas, many women were alarmed by the nominee’s conservative views on reproductive health. Then, on television sets all across the country, women watched Anita Hill’s testimony before an all-white, all-male Judiciary Committee with horror. After stoically recounting Thomas’s continual pressure to go on dates and watch porn with him, she was barraged with attacks on her credibility. Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY) pressed, “If what you say this man said to you occurred, why in God’s name would you ever speak to a man like that the rest of your life?” The hearings gave off the impression that a woman’s perspective was not valued on Capitol Hill. But the hearings energized female voters, who encouraged a record number of women to run for office. That year, 11 women were nominated by major parties for Senate seats, and six won. They joined incumbent senators Nancy Kassebaum (R-KS) and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), tripling the number of women in the Senate. Since then, progress for female representation has been slow. Today, out of 100 seats in the U.S. Senate, 22 are occupied by women.
“Calling 1992 the Year of the Woman makes it sound like the Year of the Caribou or the Year of the Asparagus. We’re not a fad, a fancy, or a year.”
— Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland
At Timeline, we reveal the forces that shaped America’s past and present. Our team and the Timeline community are scouring archives for the most visually arresting and socially important stories, and using them to explain how we got to now. To help us tell more stories, please consider becoming a Timeline member.
